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cowslips

bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
in Problem solving
We have primroses all over our garden and have done for many years (great wine) but our cowslips never become more.
Why do the prim do so well but our cows don't?

Posts

  • shane.farrellshane.farrell Posts: 207
    Do you mean the Cowslips are not self seeding? I generally divide primrose types as then you always get the same plant. I bet you could increase plants and flowers if you divide. Now is a good time too. I have just done a few of mine.
  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    @shane.farrell We never divide the prims as they do so well through out our garden (love them). the cows though are always in the same place but this year we have had 2 plants in flower in a very different area (and they are great).
  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043
    They like different conditions. Primroses often grow in damp places by ditches. Cowslips like fields with limestone like in the Cotswolds and the area I lived in in Dordogne, France. My soil was quite thin, alkali on limestone rock and I had loads of cowslips and they seeded themselves. I tried to grow primroses but they died.

    I have moved house and now I have a deep, moister, clay soil, neutral, not alkali, and I have primroses.
    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    You beat me to it @Busy-Lizzie … I was just going to say that 👍 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • rowlandscastle444rowlandscastle444 Posts: 2,612
    Busy-Lizzie said:
    They like different conditions. Primroses often grow in damp places by ditches. Cowslips like fields with limestone like in the Cotswolds and the area I lived in in Dordogne, France. My soil was quite thin, alkali on limestone rock and I had loads of cowslips and they seeded themselves. I tried to grow primroses but they died.

    I have moved house and now I have a deep, moister, clay soil, neutral, not alkali, and I have primroses.
    That might explain why I can't get my favoured cowslips to grow, and why our primroses, primroses and primroses drive my wife crazy.
    Thank you.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Around here the sunny sloping chalky banks with a sward of thin grasses, alongside fairly recently constructed dual carriageways are simply covered with cowslips at the moment … more than I ever saw in my childhood. 

    As has been said, primroses like loamy damp hedge-bottoms and the semi-shade found at the edges of woodland. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    edited May 2023
    rowlandscastle444 said:
    That might explain why I can't get my favoured cowslips to grow, and why our primroses, primroses and primroses drive my wife crazy.

    What  wonderful way to go mad!

    My cowslips are speading nicely in a part of the garden where the original builders might have affect my usual pH.  However, as I have plenty of seed, I started to widen my distribution with fresh seed sown into the grass.  I seem to be succeeding.

    I have a few primroses, I would love more, but only succeed where they sow themselves.  They come and go. On both pH 6 sand and pH7 alluvial silt/clay floodplain.

    I bought some oxlip seed a long while back.  My memory and record keeping are inadequate in telling me whethe my plants are from that source, or false oxslip.  I suspect both, but the primroses and cowslips are a long way apart.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    Interesting and thank you all. We are on clay soil so that could explain the lack of cowslips. However our primroses are all over the garden and virtually all of them are in full sun. Don't mind them spreading as they are a joy to have the colour after dull winter days and they make such a superb wine!
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