A big thanks to our good friend Rich R up in the Lake District for sending over the photograph of his cosmos (and a shout to Debby H too, as the seeds came from her plants). Rich writes, “Really cold here today, wind chill feels like 2°C. With hard frosts and snow on the way, I thought I’d better send you this pic of the cosmos before it’s too late.”
Brilliant stuff, Rich – thanks again (and to Debby H) for sharing!
It’s been just 8 days since we received some egyptian/walking onion bulblets and as soon as we got them, we put them in a pot as directed and stuck it on the packed kitchen windowsill. We ordered our bulblets from Real Seeds, and although we only paid for one, they kindly included a few extras—just in case. We noticed yesterday two had germinated and there may even be more to come! Great value by the way as they cost £3.29 for one. We’ll keep you posted.
And here’s a realy wonderful track to accompany those onions bulblets.
The back garden is in a bit of a mess at the moment as we haven’t been able to go out there as much as we would have liked to of late. There’s a still a couple of things that make us smile though. This morning we saw this cosmos (above), peeking through the broken paving slabs at the back of the pond after our “throw them everywhere” sowing experiments earlier this year.
The echinacea we got from B&Q (above) is still making a stand and hopefully if it don’t rot off over the winter due to the heavy soil here we’ve get more next year and the calendula (below) which was sown by the same method is great too. Do send us your end of season pictures (to one deck pete at gee mail dot com) and we’ll post them up.
Cheers to Debby H for getting out in the garden and taking some pictures for us now things are coming to a close but you wouldn’t think it with these photographs though.
Above are the cosmos that are still flowering and looking great and below are some cosmos deadheads which’ll be used for seeds. Debby told us you don’t even need to break the seed heads up that much, just put them as they come in a seed tray in the spring. We have to deadhead ours actually, before it starts getting wet and the chance of things going mouldy on us.
After a bit of rain last night in SE23 we viewed a few things this morning, the first being a small water lily on the pond. It’s been taken close up and looking again we’re still not sure what that is in the top right hand corner, micro frog spawn perhaps?
We’re seeing flower buds on the cosmos. We did sow a few seeds in various places but these are the ones that survived. There’re under an old dead cherry tree and they seem have taken well. In a few days there should be flowers (Cheers Debby H again).
And this look like a couple of the Thompson & Morgan seeds here. The above must be the Quick Fire Chilli Pepper to the rear and in front the Quick Snack Cucumber.
We’ve bought some plant feed now to supplement our ever dwindling amount of Comfrey liquid and with the supposedly 25 degrees C today, all should be the right stuff for these plants to grow well. Or so we hope!
Morning! While we were giving the garden a comfrey feed this morning we noticed that the Thompson & Morgan‘s Black Moon tomatoes are doing well (above). There’s a little bit of green in the underneath of the fruit but they are mainly black on the top and look great.
And on the poppy tip (from the anarchically sown “thrown them anywhere” method) here’s a couple of nice ones that have sprung up this morning. Poppies are well worth it!
Also we may have news about our cosmos but they are so planted so close to some love in a mist we’re a bit confused, more on those soon.
Here’s a picture of the impressive Danish Flag poppy ready to open up this morning. You’ve got to be quick with these things as they don’t last too long but these poppies are well worth having! More on the Danish Flag variety here.
It’s great to hear that Gerry Hectic is taking on a new seed saving project after tasting a strawberry that was so nice he got given one that he is now saving seed from and trying to grow a plant from it. He is now trying the same method on the above!
We will keep you posted on how he gets on! Fascinating stuff though and more free plants if they take. We found a great link about seed saving here. Good luck Gerry.
We’ve a couple of raised beds that have spinach, lettuce and onions in them or they did have until the poppies took over. You just can’t pull out a poppy seedling can you? It’s the same with the veg patch at the bottom.
Best thing about this is collecting the seed and passing them on to anyone who fancies some great looking poppies!
Cheers to our good friend John F for passing this little bit of joy on. Free wildflower seeds from certain train stations this monday coming. Cheers Sadiq!
Weeds up to me knees 