Brilliant Tips From My Dahlia Mentor, A Lovely Caterer Visits & Ranting About Hose Pipes

Hello, it's Friday 24 July 2026.

This hasn’t been my favourite week and I’ve lost most of my motivation and mojo. I’ve had enough of the heat and drought, everything is looking a bit exhausted now and don’t even get me started on hoses and watering. So tonight’s episode starts off with a bit of a moan and then (thankfully) gets better.

I spent this afternoon with my dahlia mentor, Richard Bailey, who is a professional exhibitor and has won many awards for his dahlias. He’s an incredible human and shares all his knowledge with me, plus some of his dahlias. Tonight I’m sharing what we talked about and did on his allotment today and the tips he passed on. 

Thanks if you’ve sent me a DM to let me know how you’re getting on in this weather, and special thanks to new listeners who sent me DMs on Instagram to say hello. I love hearing from you! 

Please come back and join me for the next episode - you're always very welcome.

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If you like what you hear, please follow/subscribe to this podcast so that you're the first to hear new episodes when they become available every Tuesday and Friday. And if you enjoy this episode, please take a minute to leave a review because it really does help more cut flower-lovers just like you to find the podcast. 

Follow me on instagram @henhillcutflowers for a behind-the-scenes look at life on my cut flower plot. And you can find my website at www.henhillcutflowers.co.uk and my email is lydia@henhillcutflowers.co.uk.

Join me on my journey through a year of growing and selling cut flowers in England. I'm giving you the low-down on what it's really like, how I'm getting started, what you do and don't need, what I do when and why, the successes and failures, and just about everything in between. All in real time. With guest appearances from my chickens every now and then. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi, welcome to my podcast, Becoming a Cut Flower Grower. I'm your host, Lydia, and I'm here to share my year of growing and selling cut flowers. I'll be giving you the lowdown on everything I'm doing and sharing all the highs and lows, the good times and the inevitable disasters, all in real time. Join me on my cut flower journey starting right now. Hello and welcome to the latest episode. It's Friday, the 24th of July 2026. Now it's going to start off really, really moony, and then I promise you it's going to get better because I have had absolutely enough of this weather. I've had a really annoying, frustrating week, and I just hate everything right now. I've just completely lost all of my motivation, all my mojo, all my energy, everything. It's just been rubbish this week. And I was looking at the field this morning, I was kind of sad when I was looking at it because although lots of things are fine, and they are fine, like they're not all fine, and I'm really seeing like maybe it's just because I'm a bit negative, and I was just really focused, hyper-focused, on all the negatives this morning. And I was looking at all the things that I'd bought in an emergency that I thought would be a good idea, like the Clark here, which really not a good idea. Uh, I mean, I love them, don't get me wrong, and I was gonna grow them next year, and maybe I will. It's just I don't know, I haven't sold very many of them. They weren't very tall. This is the theme across the whole field now. I'm just looking at everything with a really critical eye, and I'm just I don't know, I'm just I've just hit a bit of a wall, I think, a bit of a motivation and yeah, just just a wall of heat and tiredness and frustration with weather and everything. And um, yeah, I could well I couldn't walk away from it all now because I'm fully in it, and I'm sure by the next time the next episode comes out, I'll be back on track. But just today I'm literally not feeling it at all. And you know, I've had just murders with some of the gardens that I look after this week because where people have been irrigating, great, amazing. Where they haven't, everything is just burnt to a crisp, and the ground is just rock solid. And I get that there are circumstances where people can't water, but sometimes people are just just are not watering, and it just has driven me nuts. And the hose pipes at people's houses have driven me absolutely nuts this week. I don't understand how you can own a multi-million pound house and your hoses are broken, they are kinked, they are leaking. Why are the fixings mixed missing or broken or they just don't work? Like, why are those really annoying little roly trolley things that the hose pipe has to go around? Why do the hose never go back onto those little trolley things properly? Why are the hoses never long enough? I mean, I've just spent £34 on 50 meters of hose. Not the most expensive, definitely not a brand name. It's like a basic hose, but it's perfectly adequate. And if it gets looked after, it's gonna last me for years. And 50 metres is quite a lot of hose for 34 pounds. I was quite impressed with myself. I mean, why are the standpipes not in better places or just sensible places? Um, going back to that silly trolley thing, why do they always fall over as soon as you look at them? Like, just just what happens to them? Why aren't the bases heavier or more stable or better balanced? Like, who is making these things? I was thinking today, after this week, that I'm just gonna set up a company that makes hose trolleys that actually just stand up and like wheel around properly. I'd anyway, I would like to say that I'm really only ranting about people who've got domestic gardens and not people who've got like farms and livestock. Because obviously, if you've got livestock, water has to be prioritised for them. So I am absolutely not having a go at anybody that chooses not to water because they have to prioritize the water for their animals because that's what I have to do. I had to stop watering tonight because I'd pretty much run out of the allocated water for the flowers, and I need to make sure that I've got plenty of water for the chickens, for the ducks paddling pool, and for any disasters that happen up there that requires water. Anyway, it's it's just been that kind of week to be honest. Um, the good news is that I found that missing hose pipe fitting that I had lost, and it was actually on the tap, so technically I hadn't lost it at all. That's amazing. The good news that well, that is the good news. The bad news is that the batch cooking has gone completely out the window. That was a very cunning technique that I was going to employ this year so that when we get to a busy time, I don't have to worry about meals, otherwise, things go a little bit crazy, and that's just completely been abandoned because there just isn't time, excuse me, or motivation or energy to do it. So last night, despite the fact that I actually have a proper vegetable garden up on the field, last night for my dinner I had two bowls of frozen sweet corn that I microwaved and then just put ketchup on top and ate them with a spoon. That's that's pretty much how bad it has got. And also, I I'm gonna tell you about this in a second, but I had this amazing events planner, caterer, come and do a plot tour yesterday, and I was so excited and I felt like quite under pressure to get it right and like not messed it up. And I went to the shop and I bought all these different cans of sparkling water and nice drinks because I'm off-grid up there and I can't sort of cater properly, so I have to bring everything in. Bought this great big bag of all these different flavours and everything, kept them cool with an ice pack, and and then I completely forgot to offer them to this lady. So we sat down at the table in front of Kylie's room in the sun, and I did not offer this woman a drink, which is just absolutely mortifying. So now I've got a whole bag of fizzy drinks that I have to work my way through. So it really hasn't been my week on the field. I have done a lot more mulching, so I told you I was going to do this, and this I think is my new technique for actually getting things done. I feel like if I tell you, then you're gonna hold me accountable. So I actually managed to get that done. Uh, right at the moment, it's like more for a kind of sunscreen and soil protection issue, it's not really about keeping the moisture in. Normally, I would mulch after the soil is wet because you want to kind of trap that moisture in, but that is not happening, and when I'm watering, I'm not really watering enough to like totally soak the soil, so it doesn't matter, the bark mulch is going down. Only yesterday I left the gate to the flowers open, and some of the birds were out. And when I did a head count, I couldn't find Kermi. Kermi'd gone into the field and she'd scattered my bark absolutely everywhere, and I put a really amazing batch around some salvias that I have that I'd given them a very hard cutback to sell the stems, and they're sending up all this amazing new growth. And Kermi had just got in there, ripped them all to pieces, made a right old mess, and she was really proud of herself. And I thought, gosh, if you had enough meat on your bones, I would slow cook you because I'm so cross with you right now. Luckily for Kermi, she doesn't. Um, I'm kind of watching my compost bays just completely desiccate in the heat. Um, I really want to water them, so I can't because there just isn't enough water, so I'm just kind of watching them go crispy and not make compost, which is really really upsetting. And they are sighted in the right place. I think the rule supposedly for where to put your compost heaps is where you would want to go and sit on a bench to catch the evening sun, and that is apparently where you're supposed to put your compost heaps. They like to have a nice, warm, sunny area, but not too sunny, so the evening sun is great. So I thought I'd been really clever, and they're kind of in the centre of the plot, so you don't have to cart stuff around because there is there is probably just about enough room to get wheelbarrows up the paths, but often I just carry things or I chop and drop and then I put in the compost bay later. So that at the moment with this weather, also very, very depressing. Um, so the other thing I meant to tell you is that if you've got any chamellias, they definitely need a lot of TLC at this time of year. They make their buds for next year's flowers during the summer, so they definitely need watering. Um, I remembered that I'd got one of those yesterday and was frantically watering that at 11:30 at night. So the private events caterer that came to visit on Thursday, she was such a lovely lady, she's a local lady. I hadn't heard of her company, but then I'm not one for private catering, so I probably wouldn't have done. And she was absolutely fantastic, really wizzy female entrepreneur, and I thought, yeah, I like you a lot. So she had a tour of the field, and um hopefully we're gonna be able to work together. I did find out that she normally gets her flowers from one of the wedding and event florists that I supply to, so I want to be able to navigate that without any kind of conflict of interest or the sense that I'm pinching business from somebody else, but I'm hoping that's not gonna be the case because I think she, if she ever did decide to buy from me, it's gonna be a different type of product and experience than what she would get from a florist, obviously, because I have zero floristry skills, so I'd literally be supplying things in buckets, which is totally different from what any of my florists do. Now, I had a fantastic question from Allie at Bank Farm Flowers, and her snaps have been absolutely smashing it. I'm incredibly impressed by what she's done. She asked me a question about judging the right stage for cutting in advance of orders going out of the door. I at least I think that that is how I interpret it anyway. Ali, if I've got it wrong, send me a DM and I'll re-answer the question. Um, so basically, like, how would you know the numbers that you're gonna have, say a week out that are going to be ready on a certain day? This this one is super tricky. I'm only year two, so I am still learning how to do all of this. And it's my opinion that you could be growing for years and still get caught out. So if you're listening to this, not just Ali, but whoever you are listening to this, don't give yourself a hard time if you think you haven't got it right, because it is super challenging up there, I think, with pricing to try and get it right. So I don't think it's a lack of experience per se. I think it's a combination of a number of factors like the unpredictability of the weather. I mean, what is the weather going to be doing? Is it gonna be hot? How hot is it gonna be? Is there going to be any rain, or are you gonna be in a drought? Are the temperatures going up or are they coming down? Is it windy? I mean, there's just so many different factors could affect the time it takes for the buds to either form or to develop or to start to crack open or for the flower to actually to develop fully. Then is it a case of does it get pollinated really quickly and then it's just gonna go over quickly? There's also in insect pressures as well. You can go one evening and everything is amazing. You can go back the next morning, and a whole load of aphids have just arrived from nowhere, and the plants are covered, and you just can't factor that in, you just can't predict. I had um a problem with oh, the name is gonna escape me now. Uh, pollen beetles earlier in the season. These little tiny black beetles that were on absolutely everything, in everything, on everything, they were everywhere. Easy enough to get rid of, you just shake the stems and they all fell off. It was fine, but I've no idea where they came from. They literally just appeared. I've never seen them before, and they have all completely vanished now. Hopefully, they haven't laid loads of eggs everywhere, but they probably have known them. And the other variable, of course, is the plants themselves. Like they just are doing their thing, they've got a whole load of things going on, and there might be problems that you don't know about. Uh, they might have be having some issues with their nutrients or with their roots or whatever. So, all sorts of things can affect whether the flowers are going to be ready when you want them to be ready for. So, my technique is to make an educated guess, which, if it sounds like I make it up, then it's not far off making it up, but it is an educated guess based on my experience, which is limited in terms of growing flowers, but I do look after plants for my job, so I have a vague clue of what they're going to do. But I tend to give my florists a number when I quote the availability, I normally quote a number lower than what my educated guess tells me. And I normally say, I don't actually know, I don't normally say they're approximate numbers, but I normally say to the florists separately to the availability list that they are approximate numbers. And um the good florists will always say, just give me approximate numbers because they know that you can't pin it down to an exact number. Uh, sometimes I have a backup plan as well. I might have a similar type of flower, so spike or line or disc or airy or whatever type of flower, in the same colour that I could potentially offer to swap in if the main crop disappoints in numbers. And I also regularly keep my florists updated if I'm not 100% sure about how things are going. So I send pictures or I send videos, and if they're buying British flowers regularly, they will understand, and they will probably have a backup too. They're probably hedging their bets just so that they've got all bases covered. And I really only offer what I'm absolutely confident about. So if it's very early season and maybe it's cold and the growth is slow, I'll stress that it's just a maybe that I'll have the stems ready. It's definitely harder if you're growing something new that you've never done before. So with plants that you've grown before, you will have a general idea of how long it takes for a bud to develop, for the stem to elongate, for the bud to open. I mean, for dailiar exhibitors, for example, they know precisely how many days it takes for a bud to open. And if you think you might forget, then you could just always make a note. I mean, I was going to make a note of all sorts of things this year, like when my first flower was harvested, and when this happened, and when that happened, and that has all completely gone out of the window. I am still doing all of the data collection that I am supposed to be doing, but the sort of extra layer of stuff I just completely forget. I'm normally so excited that something is flowering. Sometimes I take a photo, so I can go back and check through my photos. I like to photo things a lot so I remember where I was and what I was doing. If I've got an order in the diary, then I make sure that I either cut stems or deadhead the plant the right number of days prior to when I'm gonna have to cut for that event, so the next flush is ready for the event. This one is like on a knife edge as well, because again, it comes down to the weather, to the plant conditions, the time of year it is. I get so many variables. So you can really, you really it's just best endeavours, really, especially at the scale I'm growing at, there isn't much room for error. Um succession sewing definitely helps enormously here. I mean, this is almost like a backup plan, anyway. The idea being that you have a continuous stream of flowers opening over a certain period of time, so you're kind of hedging your bets, and you might be able to cut from the end of one batch and maybe the beginning of another, so that you always have an overlap of that particular flower. So I managed to do that with one crop this year. That was the agristemmer that worked in an absolute textbook example. Very much doubt I will ever be able to replicate that again. Total fluke. Um, but it actually happened for them, it was amazing. Now, if you're somebody that's got access to electricity, which I don't have, you could cut some of the stems and keep them cool, just chill them just to slow them down. Um, make sure you don't put them in a chiller with anything that's giving off um ethylene. So if it's an ethylene-sensitive stem, they need to go into a little area all by themselves because if you put them in with something that gives off ethylene, they'll just carry on ripening, carry on opening. But things like peonies are harvested when they're at that um rock-hard marble stage and then cold stored and then put out for sale, and that's why they open so quickly in your house because they've just been basically put on ice for ages, not literally, but kept cool. So that is also something that you can do. You can cut in advance and just keep everything cold stored. Um, but having said all of that, um, this summer's just thrown basically all of that in the air, really. I mean, a lot of the crops are basically just a bit of a bin fire at the moment, um, they're far too short, the not quality the quantity, sorry, the quality is not good enough sometimes. Um, they just, you know, just baked in the sunshine, really, and um they're over far too soon. So definitely give yourself um some leeway when it comes to to you know being critical of yourself for not maybe getting it right because it's hard enough at the best of times. And I've had quite a few crops last year that I was going to order for my wedding and event florist that needed to be ready for a certain event, and I didn't manage to get them ready. Uh so they were ready like a week later or four days later, which was no good because they couldn't be used for the event, and then I had all these crops that nobody else wanted because you know it was the middle of the week and nobody wanted blue Nigella then. So I made tons of mistakes uh last year. And if you the other thing you could do, I don't know how you would feel about this, but the other thing you can do is top up your numbers from another grower. So if you're not already in a local growers group, join one or set one up, and then you can always buy stems from each other. Now, if you're chemical-free or you're organic, or you've got any other certain requirements that your entire business hinges on, then you obviously got to choose wisely when you buy stems in from someone else. But that's not to say that it is not possible to do that. Right, that was that. Now I've got a couple of shout-outs to do, actually. Um, I've got a shout-out to do to Flowers of Tower. Uh, this is a fantastic grower near Wellington in New Zealand. Uh, she sent me a message on Instagram, which for some reason I missed it again. And I thought I'd crack this, but clearly I haven't. And one of the things that I did do a few weeks ago, I started to get these um notifications from Instagram um in a called um for you, which was completely new and it drove me mad because it was just sending me absolutely random nonsense about people I didn't even know. So I had to switch my notifications off, apart from if it was a message, but then the messages that came through are only from people that I'm already having a conversation with. So it doesn't tell me when I get a message from somebody that I'm not already having a conversation with, which is just bananas. Anyway, I love that you found me. Welcome to the podcast, and I totally relate to what you said about DMing people that you don't know. I feel the same. I'm too scared to DM anybody that I don't know, having been ignored by a few people, so I don't even risk doing it. So I really appreciate what it takes to actually send a DM to somebody that you don't know. Uh, also, your anunculus are spectacular, and um, yeah, the Delphiniums are outstanding, so very glad to have you as a listener. Second shout out, Alison in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. She is starting at the beginning of the podcast, right back to episode one, which is amazing. So well done for that. She's got up to April 2025. Now, if you're a regular listener, you may remember this episode. I ended up in floods of tears because I'd left a tap running overnight and I managed to empty one of my IBCs. And I think actually I emptied the one next to it as well because they were linked by a hose pipe. So I lost over 1400 water litres of water overnight, which coincided with the start of a Heat wave and a drought. It was an absolute disaster. And I lost the plot on the podcast and I was crying. So thank you, Alison, for getting in touch for your thoughtfulness to get in touch about that particular moment and for your kind words about the podcast. I'm so excited that you two are now regular listeners. Um, right, what else did I want to tell you about tonight? Um, oh, I know. So I've spent the afternoon with my dahlia expert Richard Bailey, and I made a whole load of notes. So we were actually really busy on his allotment. And um, if you haven't, well, I haven't talked about Richard for ages, so I should give you a bit of a recap actually. So Richard Bailey is a dahlia exhibitor, he is an absolute expert on dahlias, there's nothing he doesn't know. And he grows about a hundred plants in an allotment in my nearby town. And uh I met him through my local horticultural society and I asked him if he would mentor me with dahlias, which he agreed to do. So I've spent a couple of years shadowing him, and every now and then I'll go to his allotment and he will talk me through everything that he's doing, tells me what I need to do at that particular time of the year, and I normally help him out with some bits and pieces. And so I thought I would share with you everything that he and I got up to this afternoon. Because if you're a dahlia person, you've got dahlias on the brain like me, you might find this interesting. Now, the first thing to point out is that Richard grows only for exhibiting. So, what he does is he has about five main stems per plant, no more than that, and he's quite ruthless about removing stems, so he just ends up with five, and all he wants to do is have a certain number of really excellent top quality blooms from each plant, and they have to be ready for the end of August, beginning of September. So the National Daily of Society show in the UK is at the beginning of September, RHS Wesley. If you haven't been, it's well worth going. And then at the end of August, we have some local shows which he always takes part in. The second thing to say is that Richard and I diverge well fairly significantly on the use of fertilizers and chemicals and in some of our techniques. So I'm gonna tell you what he does, but I'm not endorsing it or saying that that's what I do because I'm no dig and I'm no chemicals whatsoever. I haven't even done any liquid seaweed this year at all because I've just wanted to keep everything like on a closed loop on my field. Um, and I don't use any artificial chemicals whatsoever. But Richard does. He also does a lot of really complicated stuff like hard stopping and um double double disbud no, double stopping, hard stopping, double stopping, and then the disbudding as well. So um if you're thinking about getting started with dailias, do not let it put you off. It's it's very, very straightforward. Once you've done it a couple of times, you'll be like, oh, this is fine. Um I'm double stopping this, that, and the other. But the reason the techniques that we employ are different is because he wants to have a small number of excellent, excellent quality blooms that are good to go into a national show. And I want to have as many blooms as possible, obviously a decent size and nice long stems, but they do not need to be exhibition standard. And if you've been to any daily shows, like it will blow your mind how incredible they are. Some growers will grow a hundred plants just to take five stems to the show. It is it is mind-boggling how it all works, and so that is not the same for me. So I don't hard stop mine. I am careful with the number of stems that I have per plant. Like, I don't want more than five or six, I don't want more than six stems per plant because I do want the plant to make fantastic blooms, but I also don't do like the double stopping and everything, which basically just means that you just cut off stems quite low down so that the plant puts its energy into the remaining stems. Um, disbudding, definitely, we need to be disbudding, no doubt about that. So you'll have the central bud that comes up, and then you'll have like what's known as wing buds, which are like one bud either side of the main bud. They need to come off so that you get a really nice long stem. Very painful to do the first few times. You think it's gonna be like awful and you're gonna make a terrible mistake. Once you see the quality of the blooms you get, you'll be convinced, and then you'll do it without thinking about it. Um, and you will get more blooms coming up from further down, so you don't think to yourself, oh, I'm gonna do this and I'm only gonna get one flower from this stem. They will just keep flowering, but you want to have those really good singular stems. So he's growing all fimbriated dahlias this year. Fims are like Richard's speciality, he loves them. Most of mine are fims because I've got a lot of my dahlias from him, but I do have some cactus and some palms as well. He loves the fims, I love the fims, they're incredible, they're like a dahlia on speed, like absolutely amazing. All the petals are twisted around, so it's just it's just outrageous. Um, the hard stopping that he's been doing is to delay the flowering. Now, because of the weather and the conditions this year, the tendency's been for the dahlias to just flower too soon, and bearing in mind he needs his ready for the end of August, beginning of September. So that's why he's been so ruthless with his. I don't need to worry about that. I'd be quite happy to have more flowering now. I've got about, I don't know, eight plants, I suppose, out of my 70 odd that are flowering. I'm quite happy for them to, you know, do their thing when they're ready, but I'm not going to be doing any hard stopping because I'm quite happy to have them now. Most of his stuff is very short this year, like you can definitely see the difference. Like mine are much shorter as well. Kind of doesn't matter how much you water because it's just the conditions. It's just if you think that the plants, I mean the dahlias are they're great, thumping, great things, they're absolutely enormous. They have those very thick stems, they have to put so much energy into transporting the water around. Oh, that dog. They have to put so much energy into transporting water around their systems, and in these conditions, when the heat is too much, the stomata on the leaves will close to stop excess transpiration. And if that happens, they can't photosynthesize properly, so they the growth will just slow down, there's no way around that. So I was pleased to see that his plants were also short because every year is a new learning experience for me with dahlias, and sometimes I look at them and think, Are you doing what you're supposed to be doing? Have I remembered everything he's told me? But no, we're on the same page as that, which is amazing. He's been bulk buying fertilizer from garden centres because he thinks the costs are going to go up, so I'm just passing that on to you. I mean, the the oil situation and the Iran situation would probably suggest that the prices of fertilizers are going to go up because the fuel at the petrol stations has certainly gone up, but then things could just change on in a second and everything could go back to normal, so who knows? He um he's got quite a lot of yellow centers on his flowers, which is an absolute no-no for exhibition. They pretty much throw your flowers in the bin if you turn up with a yellow center, it's like the ultimate, ultimate sin. Um, it is apparently a sign of nitrogen deficiency. Um, what Richard does is he actually feeds his with a lawn feed two weeks prior to the shows, and that fixes the yellow centres because lawn food is extremely high in nitrogen, and it's just like a huge boost of nitrogen for them, and that apparently gets rid of the yellow centers. Now he's got a whole load of seedlings growing, they're actually really decent-sized plants. Richard is really big into um growing new seedlings for dahlias, and he collects all the seed and cultivates them, and he's actually had two dahlias named, which is really like a huge process that takes, I don't know, five or seven years, something like that, to actually get a dahlia registered as a new variety, and uh he's done that a couple of times, and he's got some really, really pretty ones this year. He puts he incorporates bone meal into the soil three weeks before he plants out. Now, I think most people will probably have their dahlias in the ground by now, but there is a possibility that they haven't. So he adds bone meal to the soil be three weeks before planting out, and at the moment he's doing feeds with a mixture of Miracle Grow and Seaweed in the watering can. So one scoop of Miracle Grow and half a cap full of seaweed in a 10-litre watering can. He's also, and this is a new one on me, he's also been adding Epsom salts as a um not foliar feed, but just like a soil feed. And I've heard some people doing this, so I had a look on the packet, and Epsom salts are made up of 32% sulfur and 16% magnesium. So he showed me the plants that he put the treatment on in the early July, so that was like three weeks ago, and the plants have definitely greened up and look more well, they look pretty amazing to be honest. Um so that I guess shows I suppose that the treatment has worked. Um, and what else does he do? Um, oh yeah, he gave me another useful tip. He he waters his tomatoes with warm water. So he'll put a watering can of water in the greenhouse and let it warm up all day, and then he waters the plants with warm water so there's no cold shock. So I thought that was quite an interesting technique actually. Uh so it's the job for today was to water and feed some of his palms and completely soak them. Like he does a proper sort of well around each of his dahlias, unlike me. I have tried, but then it sort of just doesn't work. But he's very good at doing that. And then so we fed them with the scoop of Miracle Grow, the cap full of seaweed in the 10-litre watering can, and then we mulched them with a mix of his homemade compost, so he cold composts, so it takes him about a year to get his compost ready, and it's lovely. Had a bit of mixture of horse manure in there as well, and then he also adds into the mix um hops, um, like the shell casings from the hops, which we have a brewery um in our town, and the brewery give away enormous sackfuls of the old hop flowers once they've gone through the beer making process, they get boiled and then put outside the brewery, and they're free, so people can just go and take them. And he uses them as a mulch. And what else did we do? Uh no, that was about it actually. Um, he was telling me that the time it takes from a bud to a flower for a pom is 15 days. So we did some disbudding today because he knows that he needs these to be ready again for the end of August, beginning of September. So he doesn't want any flowers in 15 days. But that 15 days is also based on normal weather conditions, so we're not the only ones trying to predict when things are going to be ready on time. Like exhibitors really, really have it tough as well. So I think, oh yes, one final no, two final things, two final things. So, you know, I'm growing rose lilies this year, which are these fancy lilies, which are doubles, and they don't have any pollen or stamens sticking out of them, so you don't have any risk of getting pollen or on your clothes or being toxic for cats and dogs, and they are just stunning. So I bought myself some, finally got them planted out in some tubs with ericaceous compost, and they're amazing. I'm just about to get my first flower to open, and I saw a post on Instagram from Six Duchess Farm over in the States who are amazing growers, and I put a comment on and got a reply to say the most useful tip ever, which is to harvest once at least one flower is open, and that is so useful for me because I don't know what I'm doing with these things. That is a great tip from somebody who is growing them professionally on the scale, and they look absolutely amazing. So hop on over to Six Dutchess Farm and check their rose lilies out because they're absolutely amazing. And finally, one final thing, oh, two final things actually. Plant profile of the week. I was gonna talk about Uonymus because I cut some to put in a tiny little um vase arrangement that I made the other day, and I was reminded of how amazing this plant is, so I thought I'm gonna talk about that tonight, but I have actually run out of time, so I'm gonna talk about that next week. The last thing I wanted to say before I go is a reminder not to compare yourself on Instagram to other growers. I mean, I I um sometimes I go down an absolute doom hole of doing this, and it's so bad for me. And I posted a reel last night for the first time in two weeks. I I'm not sure why I took such a long break exactly. I don't, in fact, I don't even know where July's gone, to be honest. Because I had just been massively overthinking what I should be doing in these reels, and there's all these other reels that tell you how you should be doing your own reels, and there's just not enough hours in the day to do all of this stuff. So I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna do a reel of me explaining why I haven't posted and just showing my Echinacea, which I'm very proud of. And yes, they look great, but I would like you to know that right behind me is an entire bed of bindweed that I have not got round to getting out yet, and a table full of dead stuff in trays, which I was actually quite embarrassed about before the caterer came to visit, or private events company came to visit on Thursday, so I hid everything that was dead on the table underneath the table. So hopefully she didn't see it. But it's just you know, that reel is like one shot, one angle facing what I wanted you to see. Maybe I should do a reel of all of my dead stuff that would probably be more interesting and more relatable than a whole load of echinacea, which lots of people are growing echinacea, and um, you know, it just kind of does its own thing, so I can't even really claim any credit for it. Um, and I didn't even grow it myself. Um, I bought it from a local grower who is absolutely amazing and um planted it out, and I do take care of it, obviously. But yes, you you just should have seen what was behind me, so don't be put off if you're watching reel after reel of people doing amazing displays and loads of stuff in buckets and all of this impressive stuff because it is oppressive and everyone's working really hard this year, and it's amazing. But don't forget that they've got an absolute ton of weeds right behind them as well, and loads of dead stuff as well, and um, yeah, it's um yeah, there's always something going on behind the camera. So that's all I want to say, and I want to wish you the most amazing weekend because I am really excited about the weekend. I've had, as you know, a horrible week, and I am so glad it's over. Roll on the weekend and have a wonderful time. And please come back and join me on Tuesday for the next episode because you're always, always very welcome. All the best.