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.
Category Archives: Wildlife
Why buy seeds when you can dry seeds
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 got a Barbara Hepworth in our garden (supposedly)

Cheers to our mate Nic G across the pond for letting us know that the thing we found in the skip the other night is more than likely an example of sand-casting leftovers.
We’ve now got it as a sculpture at the bottom of the garden (just by the part under fence that is used as a cat/fox run) and with the sunlight on it this morning looks like a fox looking up at the sky.
We are hoping to pass it off as a mini-Barbara Hepworth next time Antiques Roadshow visits Catford and give the “specialists” some spiel about “Dame Barbara gifted it to my late father after he tidied up some flower beds in St Ives.”
We do think it looks similiar to a fox today. Who knows what it may look like at 3pm, sand casting leftovers perhaps? We do hope not.
What is it?

This was found in the skip the other evening. It’s a heavy old thing, some sort of sculpture just under a foot high. What is it? Where can it go in the garden? Any ideas?
This is (not) a veg patch

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!

On a pink oyster tip

Big shout to Mike & Julia for sending us a picture of some pink oyster mushrooms that they grew in their loft. As Mike said “We used them for a stroganoff and a stir fry. Bit chewy but a decent crop!”. Great stuff!
Closer to home AKA fish food, courgettes and tomatoes
Things are looking great in the garden, the late sown Courgette/Zucchini plants are flowering and here’s one of them with a little fruit showing on the left hand side (above). In the picture is also some sort of wild geranium/pelargonium that came out of a wild flower seed mix we flung around the area beside it.
There are a couple of fruits starting to ripen on the very early sown tomato (above) we put in a broken food recycling bin that is up near the house. And (below) an ebay purchase (of £11) of fish food for the goldfish in the pond (50p for size comparison). Reckon this’ll last until the end of the decade! Does fish food have a “use by” date? Another silly question put to you by Weeds up to me knees.

Have a good gardening week and “may the comfrey liquid, bees and weather by with you” as they say on GQT.
International Report AKA a rose abroad

Thanks very much to Debby H for sending us some pictures from the south of France where she is staying at the moment where it’s been up to 34 degrees C since she arrived.
The first is of a lovely rose plant (above) and she said “This would be nothing special in the UK, but this plant rarely flowers after April or early May here. However, they had such a wet spring it seems that the rose is much happier this year.”




Free seeds on Platform Two on Monday

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!
SE23 update

We’re days away from the summer solstice and it’s crept up so quickly that we hadn’t even noticed. One minute we’re checking when the last frost will be and now it’s nearly summer, crazy business!

The random sown poppies are popping up all over the place (above) and that mullein plant (below) is sending up its mad flower stalk and it won’t be long until it flowers now!
How does your garden grow? Pictures to one deck pete at geemail dot comm please.
