Grow your own!

Tags

The Queen at Brandeston , Pennards plants

Courgette flowers

After a disappointing previous visit, where I had to compost all the gone over salad leaves that hadn’t been picked, I visited the pub garden this week with some trepidation. As you can see, I needn’t have worried as, much to my delight, it was looking great. It was watered, weeded and the grass around the raised beds had been tidied up. Even better some courgettes had been picked and no doubt used to make something delicious for the customers.

The courgettes are from a packet of seeds front Pennard’s plants called mixed zucchini and the pumpkin is Big Max from the same source. Looking good so far, hoping for a whopper!

There are all different colours of potatoes ready to be dug up and the first few runner beans, again a mixed pack for a variety of flower colours, just appearing.

I also spied a cucumber, baby rainbow beet and am rather taken with the saltwort, very much like samphire. Looking ahead to autumn and winter, I planted out some blue leek seedlings and have high hopes for the butternut squash.

Cutting back.

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#cutting back, #gdnbloggers

The gardens are looking good with the plants growing luxuriantly and the flowers tumbling together in a frothy mass. And there in lies the problem because, to keep it looking good for more than a few weeks action has to be taken right now which seems quite drastic at first.

It seems such a shame to chop back all the hardy geraniums at the peak of their flowering but I do it every year and I know that they will come back with a second flush. It also gives the other perennials a chance to grow. I will return to do the same to the Alchemilla mollis at a later date.

This is after the chop. It’s not visible but there is now a lot more space around a clump of agapanthus and room for the dahlias to flower – if not eaten by the rabbits!

And this is the geranium a week after cutting. I don’t know what this variety is but it grows huge and however much I dig out in the winter, one border is predominantly pink at this time of year.

Echinops 

So this month has seen a load of cutting back and a fair amount of watering but I’m not complaining about the weather!  Still to come, squeezing in the last few cosmos and deadheading, lots of it!

June – where did it go?

Wimpole Hall

 

I don’t know what happened to June, I think that I spent most of it waiting for summer to happen, and waiting and waiting! This was a family visit to Wimpole Hall, a National Trust property in Cambridgeshire which involved coats, boots and flasks of coffee in the car but the walled gardens were magnificant.

At the beginning of the month the Alliums were fading and the poppies took over providing a burst of colour in the borders. Through the rain and cold the garden always marches onward and the roses started to bloom.

The gardens all needed sustained weeding, lawn mowing when the weather permitted and neat edges to give some element of control. Bees were becoming more numerous and also the odd butterfly in the odd sunny moment!

I have just been looking through my June pictures for inspiration and of course there were the foxgloves, the peonies, the clematis and of course more roses and more poppies. Each one exciting as the last at it arrived.

I think that it rained at least some part of most days this June and slugs were a big feature but things grew well in the polytunnel and I started a little stall at the end of my drive to try and make enough money to cover some costs and get rid of my huge amount of rhubarb.