Sweet Peas, by Lesley Gambin a specialist Sweet Pea grower. June's meeting

Our speaker last month was Lesley Gambin who is a specialist Sweet Pea grower based in Essex.  Their garden at Blunts Hall Nursery (http://bluntshallgarden.co.uk/) is open for the NGS by arrangement for visits.  They grow mainly for the production of seeds.

We were told about the history of sweet pea growing and some historical growers who investigated and propagated sweet peas.  John Ray was a botanist whose mum was a herbalist.  He discovered the 'Cupani' variety which is small, red and mauve with lots of perfume and still popular today. He is followed by Henry Eckford who came from Scotland a horticulturist and reputedly the most famous breeder of sweet peas. There was a lot of competition amongst seed suppliers over the supply of seeds. Ernest King of ‘Kings Seeds’ who still exist today, had their extensive trial beds in Coggeshall Essex supplying 160 varieties of seeds. Ernest called himself the ‘Sweet Pea King’.

Blunts Hall Nursery have sandy loam soil with a ph of 7.5 which is slightly acid.  Its is generally sandy loam along the A12 corridor and so ideal conditions to grow sweet peas. ‘Painted Lady is one of their favourites. It is small and dainty and can be grown in a pot.

There are different varieties of sweet peas.  The older varieties tend to be smaller. Grandiflora varieties are medium sized and Spencer varieties are larger.  Grandiflora have a better sent. Sweet peas are annuals grown from seed each year.  You can either sow your seed in late autumn October/November or in early spring (January/February).  Plant them on wigwams or in rows up rows of parallel stakes supported at the top (an elongated wigwam). Add lots of compost and maybe a little manure if possible. In order to keep them flowering it is essential that you cut off the dead flower before it forms it’s seed pod. It is best to cut the flowers daily and put them in vase so they never go to seed.

Lesley recommended a trip to Helmingham Hall near Ipswich if you would like to see a good display of sweet peas growing. Helmingham Hall is open Sunday to Thursday.

Cupani  

    

                                       

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painted Lady

 

All about bees by Katy Langley. May's meeting

We had a wonderful and interesting talk by Katy Langley all about bees. Katy is a professional bee keeper. It covered everything from the early beginnings. We saw Egyptian pictures of bee keeping and cave paintings featuring mostly women doing the bee keeping.

There are various types of bees, the honey bees, bumble bees, solitary bees and while only the honey bee makes honey the others perform an important role in pollinating our plants and crops. In fact the bumble bee is a better pollinator as it has a wider rounded body and gathers more pollen on its fur which is distributed to other flowers. Without them we would have no food.

We learnt about their anatomy. They have 4 wings, 2 stomachs and 5 eyes and they see colour differently to how we humans see it. Female bees have stings, but males don’t although I’m not sure how we will tell which we should fear. Although in fact a bee isn’t going to sting unless it feels threatened. And they communicate with each other with smell which is why bee keepers use smoke when they want to retrieve the honey so that they bees can’t alert each other.

Each hive would have one queen bee who lays 2000 eggs a day. The eggs turn into larvae after 6 days. The queen mates with various male bees while flying. Male bees are called drones and their job is to collect the pollen to make honey. They also keep the hive clean removing any dead bees or plant litter. The hive will identify a new queen and then the bees will swarm when a new home has been found.

Some threats to our bee populations include pesticides and the Asian hornet. If you want to encourage and care for our bee population (and remember we rely on them for our food) then plant trees where possible (Kew Gardens

is currently carrying out a study to find out which trees bees prefer), have shallow water in your garden for them to drink from (a dish kept topped up with some pebbles in is ideal), and some shelter for them to overwinter. Remember only honey bees want hives other bees nest in bird boxes, containers with straw inside, underground in piles of leaves etc. I’ve had bumble bee nests in my compost heap a couple of times. 

 

We also had an opportunity to buy some local honey. We learned that honey is only legal if it contains less than 20% water. Honey is made up of fructose and glucose. The higher the content of glucose the quicker it will solidify. However, we were told all honey will solidify in time. If you want to return it to a liquid/runny honey then stand your jar in boiling water to heat it up and it will turn runny again. The taste of honey will vary according to the plants that the bees collected the pollen from.