Mashed Potatoes (James Brown)
Charlotte potato flowers
I was checking the garden today when I noticed that our potatoes have started to flower. There are two rows of Lady Christl and two of Charlotte, but it is the Charlottes that are coming into flower. Their flowers are really rather lovely, pale lilac and white and could be mistaken for petunia flowers at first glance. So I picked some and decided to add a few other flowers to join Cathy’s ‘In a Vase on Monday’ challenge.
It’s a shame that they were hanging their little heads, but they look cute dangling over the edge of the vase.
I added some nigella (love-in-the-mist). They are the most fantastic, easy-to-grow annual flower ever and they self-seed readily:
And picked some of those beautiful, strongly-scented, two-tone Matucana sweetpeas:
Plus some foxgloves, linaria, ox-eye daisies and quaking grass, Briza maxima. All self-seeded in fact.
Eventually I remembered that I had seen some potato vine flowers (Solanum laxum) by the greenhouse, so I couldn’t resist pick those too and mashing them all together …
See … Mashed potatoes
(Dee Dee Sharp this time!)
Don’t forget to check Cathy’s post for more vases.
Your title certainly aroused my curiosity! Very clever.
A lovely combination – and aren’t self-sowers marvelous? I was just thinning Nigella seedlings this morning– we’re quite a bit behind you, but with the onset of hotter weather, I expect things will catch up soon.
We are certainly racing through the year with all this heat in April and May. It means everything is going over quickly too, which is a shame. Self-sowers are great. I’ve just watched a Zoom lecture from Great Dixter where they were describing the extra dynamics self-seeders add to their layered plantings. 🙂
My annual cutting garden depends heavily on those self-sowers. The hardest part is thinning the seedlings!
Yes, agreed and timing it right …
I think the combination of colors is luscious. And believe it or not, even though I was in high school when that song was introduced, I don’t remember hearing it. I vaguely remember the dance called the mashed potato, but I don’t think it ever took the midwest by storm!
Lol, I only found those songs because I was convinced that ‘mashed potato, mashed potato …’ was a well known skipping chant!
I’m swooning over all your pinks and purples!
Thanks. They are my favourites … a lot of my planting schemes tend towards this bit of the spectrum. I have to steel myself to go oranges, reds and occasionally yellows!
These are so beautiful. Lovely colors.
Thank you!
Oh your mashed up vase is such fun, particularly with self seeders to join the potatoes – those Charlotte flowers really are pretty and it’s lovely to see them. I haven’t grown potatoes for years but do flowers mean that they are ready to dig up? I can’t remember… Seeing more blue nigella in a vase I must ensure I encourage it to self seed here too – I have pink and white but the blue is probably the most striking. Thanks for joining us today, Allison
Soon for the potatoes, but not yet. I am anxious about the crop though, because of the minuscule amounts of rain we have had. Funny, but I’ve never grown mixed colours of nigella, just like I always grow blue clary sage, not the mixed. Says something about my character perhaps!
Oh me too, Allison – the only mixed things I am happy to grow are sweet peas and Busy Lizzies! The nigella are 2 separate varieties and interestingly I also grow a pink variety of clary sage as well as the blue, and did search for a white variety this year too – but it only seemed to be available in a mixed pack, which I didn’t want! Apparently the farmers near us who grow early potatoes couldn’t lift the crop because it was so dry
Oh dear 😦
Fabulous colours and fun mixing in a few unusual flowers too. The sweet peas are beautiful. 😃
Oh yes, those L. ‘Matucana’ shades are divine and the scent is very strong, so overall a total winner! 🙂
What a perfect combination. Really lovely.
Thanks! 😉
I grow Charlotte potatoes and I never noticed the pretty flowers. Such a pretty arrangement.
Thanks. I think the flowers on the Charlottes are particularly large and upright.