Hollyhocks: the long and the short of it

The tail ends of storms have decimated sweetcorn, sunflowers, late hollyhocks, runner beans and anything else which previously stood tall and proud in our gardens.

Mick Lee sent me a pre-gale snap of his hollyhock which had reached an impressive height of 12ft in his Shanklin garden, asking if this height is unusual. Well, Mick, impressive though it is, hollyhocks — especially in sheltered positions — often reach impressively for the skies and for that reason, like sunflowers, are a plant to especially enthuse new generations of gardeners.

The Guinness world record of 19ft 7in (5.97m) has stood for more than 40 years, set by Surrey gardener George Palmer and my guess is he employed special support for that flower spike.

They are an enduring architectural stalwart of any cottage garden and as a stand-alone feature, and once planted, will obligingly self-seed all over the place.

They will also probably never cease to surprise because they will readily cross-pollinate with neighbours’ blooms, so you can never be sure of just what you will get...

Most of the tall spiked varieties are biennial but there are now annuals and short-leaf perennials out there too if you want immediate results.

Some have double flowers and the crinkly petals come in shades of apricot, cream, pink and my personal favourite variety, Nigra, a deep, dark red verging on black.

Hollyhocks will grow just about anywhere in full sun, evidenced by the fact that they will flourish even in cracks in paving where you would expect nothing apart from weeds would survive.

Older plants are very prone to rust, which causes unsightly orange spotting on leaves and affects vigour. If that becomes a problem it is best to remove old-established plants and let the new generation of self-seeders take over.

Now, I know I promised last week that there would be no more mention of tomatoes in this column this year, but you can never legislate for the content of emails and Terry Wells, from Newport, sent me an impressive picture of his Gigantimo tom tipping the scales at more than one and a quarter pounds.

And, still talking of giants, I have had some impressive onions from sets this year and the usual, unexplained, result of neighbours coming out of the ground the same size as when they went in!

No matter what their size, the perennial problem remains of how to dry onions for storage after the weather has turned.

I’m lucky this year in that I have a large area in my new, airy, workshop under a baking roof light, but I would be interested to hear other readers’ solutions because when they need to come up they have to, regardless of the weather — and there is no leaving them on the plot to rot.