Olga's Garden Blog

April 23, 2012

Slow spring 2012

Spring is so slow this year. After a few weeks of unusually warm weather in the beginning of March spring took a break and getting pretty late. But today it was sunny and warm for the first time during last weeks. My young dahlia plants spent first night and day out in the greenhouse.

One of my garden beds is filled with early flowering bulbs and today they were happy to meet sun. I used my chance to take some pictures.

Iris reticulata together with Crocus chrysanthus 'Romance'

Crocus vernus 'Jeanne d'Arc'

Tulipa kaufmanniana 'Show Winner'

Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin'

Perennials look very pretty when just unfurling from the winter sleep. Leaves are fresh and strongly colored.

Aquilegia

Dicentra spectabilis

Aruncus aethusifolius

One of my favorite minis 'Cat and Mouse' shows 6 buds ready to unfurl. That's a nice increase from 3 shoots last year.

Hosta 'Cat and Mouse'

April 16, 2012

Svenska Dahliasällskapet at Nordiska Trädgårdar 2012

The Fair is over. Since January my mind was occupied with thoughts on organizing the stand for Svenska Dahliasällskapet and now I have a bit strange feeling that I don't need to worry about how everything would work out any more. We all had a great time. Interest in our stand was enormous, many new and experienced dahlia enthusiasts found their way to us. It was very nice to meet all the fair visitors and to share our passion for these magnificent plants. Here are some pictures from the 3rd day of the fair in our stand.

On the background of our stand we had beautiful canvas pictures made by our new sponsor KB Foto. We are very grateful to them for making our stand so impressive this year. Hopefully we'll keep our fruitful cooperation in the future.

Our selling area is starting to look not so full as it was on first days. We had tubers, cuttings, seedlings and seeds for sale. Everything was very popular.

Charlotte is showing how easy it is to divide tubers and propagate your own dahlias.

We had some potted tubers for sale as well. Karin is showing one of them to the fair visitors.

April 14, 2012

New arrivals to my dahlia collection. Spring 2012

In March I received a new order from my favorite dahlia grower Accent Dahlias. Here comes a preview of the varieties that I've got from Ken Greenway.

AC Abby

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

AC Aquarius

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

AC Golden Nickles

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

AC Clouds and Rain

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

AC Twist

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

Harvey Koop

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

Mary P

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

Show'N'Tell

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

Hollyhill Spiderwoman

Picture borrowed from Accent Dahlias

Woodland's Merinda

Picture borrowed from Dave's Garden forum

Wyn's Delta Frank

Picture borrowed from Dahliafrance

April 10, 2012

Beginning of new dahlia season 2012

My dahlias have started their preparation for the new season back in the middle of February. I brought up from the winter storage some tubers of my favorite varieties as well as tubers that I received in exchange with Nadezhda and those that I bought from Peter Haslhofer and put them in trays filled with potting media. It took a few days for the tubers to wake up and start to sprout with new growth.

Since beginning of March I'm taking cuttings. It takes about 14 days for them to root in moist coir substrate in a mini-greenhouse.

As soon as the roots appear I plant cuttings in nutritious potting mixture and keep them on sunny windowsills.

Last summer the plants developed from cuttings were growing very well and flowering earlier then those that were grown from tubers. Tuber production from cuttings was fine as well. Some of the cuttings I'm planning to offer for sale in our society stand at Nordiska Trädgårdar 2012.

April 9, 2012

Nordiska Trädgårdar 2012, April 12-15

Long Easter weekend is almost over. On Thursday starts the main garden event of the spring - Nordiska Trädgårdar 2012. The fair lasts on from April 12 to April 15. This year I'm responsible for organizing of Svenska Dahliasällskapets stand. The Stockholms planning group worked hard to organize a twice larger stand then our society used to have. We'll have several workshops on tuber dividing and planting dahlia seedlings. Many unusual and hard to find dahlia varieties will be offered for sale by our members. Everybody is very welcome to visit our stand A01:20!

There is an excess of tubers in my stock that I'd have for sale as well. These sales are raising funds for Svenska Dahliasällskapet and give me opportunity to get new varieties to my collection. I shall have tubers of about 50 different varieties to offer to the fair visitors. Here comes the list of these varieties:

AC Rooster
Alauna Aurora
Alauna Luna
Anthéa
Arica
Birka Alf
Birka Hallon
Birka Scandinavian Sunshine
Black Jack
Carmen
Chiffon
Clair-Obscure
Colorado Classic
Dagla-80
Electric Flash
Flirt
Fruti
Gallery Art Fair
Gallery Art Nouveau
Gallery Matisse
Gallery Salvador
Giraffe
Hapet 2008/121
Hapet 2008/620
Hapet 2009/48
Hapet 2009/77
Hapet Red King
Hapet Spartan
Hillcrest Suffusion
Isadora
Kalinka
Kenora Macop B
Magic Moment
Melody Dixie
Melody Dora
Melody Gipsy
Melody Harmony
Melody Latin
Melody Mambo
Mick’s Peppermint
Mingus Laura
Moor Place
Nenekazi
Olga
Pinelands Princess
Pooh
Rebecca's World
Simon's Honor
Skipley Swingtime
Star's Favourite
Trelyn Rhiannon
Vicki
Vista Lindsey
Wyn’s Pinking for You
Wyn’s Radiant Star

January 19, 2012

WOW! I won two tickets for Rum & Trädgård fair!

Thanks a lot to Slottsträdgårdsmästaren for the chance to win tickets to the first garden fair of 2012 in Stockholm Rum & Trädgård! Now I'm looking very much forward to this garden fair. Last year it was a very inspiring fair.

January 12, 2012

Wild life in the garden...

...and around the garden is quite intensive. This beautiful female of cross spider Araneus diadematus lived on the window of our house last summer. She was almost 2.5 cm in size, really big and was catching wasps in her net.
Couple of weeks ago the municipality started to build a road close to us so the forest will be partially cut over. This forest is providing home for quite a lot of animals. Roe deers, hares, badger and foxes could be found here. Björn took very nice pictures of some of these animals when they were passing by our garden. Hopefully, all of them will survive deforestation and will stay around for long.

Roe deers are beautiful animals and I started to like them even more since we built a fence that keeps them away from our garden. They can't feed anymore on my tulips, coral bells and astilbes and don't spread ticks in the garden.

This fox likes to tease our neighbors dog by coming close to their fence and staying there for a while.

Every summer morning around 7:30 this hare used to pass by our garden. Here he is checking out our car on the parking.

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year!

Winter keeps the garden dormant, but new year has started and new gardening season 2012 is getting closer. What does gardener do during garden winter dormancy? Yes, planning and organizing. Last few weeks I was busy with updating the page with the catalog of my dahlia collection. And now it is up to date with photos from the past season. All varieties that have active links with their names were grown in my garden during past season 2011. Those that have not been linked yet are newcomers that I acquired recently for the coming season 2012. So far I received new varieties from 2 sources, from my Russian friend Nadezhda and from Austrian Peter's Dahlias. Here is a preview of these new acquisitions.

Alauna Sylva