Big thanks to Debby H for sending us a couple of pictures of the signs of spring. The first is of her canna lily that is about to flower. Brilliant, we look forward to seeing when it finally flowers. And below is the cactus that if flowering, and they look great. Thanks for the pictures Debby!
Cheers to Mike and Julia from near Coventry for a picture of their new basil grown hydroponically and we must say the basil is looking far better than ours that we’ve started to grow on our kitchen windowsill.
Also thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of the first flowers in her garden. “Our snowdrops had their flowers eaten by something, which was disappointing. We have been more successful with the dwarf daffodils (tete-a-tetes?), which are now beginning to flower.”
“We have had primroses/primulas for quite a while. They are the conventional yellow colour but there are also a few red/purple ones. Lovely to have some colour in the garden.” Debby’s right
We here at Weeds hope everything is starting to pop up now in your gardens, if you’re not in those parts of the world that are covered in snow at the moment.
We’re in Storm Bert at the moment here in SE23, it’s windy and very dour when you outside. It’s always good on days like this to have something to cheer us up so a big thanks to Debby H for sending us more cosmos pictures taken this week. We must rememember it is late November and as Debby wrote with the attached pictures “Come snow and frost, the cosmos plants struggle on valiantly!” and she’s right. Cheers for that Debby!
On the stereo we have this playing in the background to cheer us up despite the bad weather. It’s a bit of an off kilter bit of dub by the great Bjørn Torske called Dub Vendors (the B side to the single Disco Members from 2000.)
Alongside the pictures of her outdoor plants that have been brought indoors, Debby H sent us a great photograph of her fern that lives permanently indoors and has grown lots since she was given it about 10 years ago. Ferns are something we don’t know a lot about here sadly.
We mentioned that we were thinking of getting some for the bottom of the garden, which is well shady and because we heard they need a lot of moisture were a bit unsure about it. Debby said “There are different sorts of ferns. I only know about indoor ferns. I read that it’s a common mistake to think that ferns need lots of water. Actually they don’t. They do like shade though. I suggest you try planting them at the bottom of your garden. You can tell if they need water as they start to droop. You may just need to give them a watering in the summer if it hasn’t rained for quite a while.” Now that sounds great to us and we may give it a go now.
She also noted “Did you notice the claw-like thing sticking out of the fern on the right hand side? I think this is the equivalent of its flowers, but it doesn’t make petals. You get small round green balls that are its seeds. The seeds turn brown and sometimes black eventually, and the claw sometimes goes orange. If you look in the centre of the plant towards the flower pot, and slightly to the right, you will see one that’s going orange but they can go much brighter orange than that though.” Brilliant stuff Debby!
Anyone else have any ferns?
STOP PRESS: Thanks to elradioescucha, for getting in touch telling us it’s the indoor palm tree Chamaedorea!
Cheers to Debby H for letting us know that she’s now brought in most of the tender plants from her garden what with the weather starting to get a lot colder now. In the above picture, on the left are all of the tender plants from outside and on the right, a view of the rack with house plants on it. As Debby said “Most people use stools to eat at their breakfast bar. We have given our stools over to the larger plants!” Brilliant!
Above are the two strelitzias, which she said are not that overly keen on direct sunlight when outdoors, “Strangely they like being outside, but they don’t like full sun. We have to keep them in the shade or the leaves go brown and crispy.” The actual plants were grown from seed as well and we do love the moveable circular platforms that the pots are standing on. It’s a great idea for moving plants around to follow the sun. Our mate in Berlin, Phil Harmony uses the same method with all his plants on a platform so he can wheel them about his patio.
Hi to Debby H for sending us pictures of the state of play in her garden when it comes to continuing cosmos flowers at the moment and it is really crazy stuff. All the garden borders have the plants in them and the volunteer/self seeded one in the north bed has the most amazing colour (above).
“I have borders on 3 sides of my lawn, and there are cosmos flowers in all of them, including the northern border where I didn’t even plant any!” said Debby. They really are brilliant and as we said a few posts ago we ask our readers to send us some cosmos pictures next year, wherever you are in the world. Cheers Debby, you’ve started off a growing cosmos trend hopefully!
One of the best things about this gardening lark is when people pass on things and we’ve picked up all sort of stuff from out in the street or left on garden walls with a “Take me” note on it. We’ve found gardening tools, a very strange coatstand that works as support for climbing plants (here) and even our silver birch that is growing so tall now (here).
In the last week we’ve kindly been given some seeds (Cheers Debby H!) and the other night we happily received a couple of bags (pic above) of Russet Apples (Cheers Adrienne!) which we’ve never tasted before and were very pleasantly suprised when we had them with some frozen berries (found at the bottom of the freezer) with a sponge top.
So keep that circle-a-turning and if you’ve got something that you don’t need, pass it/them on!
Cheers to Debby H for influencing us here at Weeds to grow that plant with a lovely flower called cosmos. We’ve only got one flower on ours at the moment (above) but we’re not complaining, as it is November.
We had a daft idea here, to make 2025 “The year of the cosmos”. So next year we’d love to see lots of cosmos pictures and we could even do a cosmos from around the world feature. Spread the word to “Make the cosmos come alive in 2025” (and boy do we love a cliche here!)
And here are 3 great cosmos tracks:
Weeds up to me knees 