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.
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 mulleinplant (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.
Thanks again to Mike & Julia for sending us some photographs today, the first (above) is a wonderful poppy in situ and the second (below) a self-seeded one in the pavement that they are going to leave to flower which sounds like a good idea. It looks as Mike says “It’s going to be a corker!” Love the photo intruder in the top left corner by the way. Too good to leave out.
It’s the same here with self-seeded poppies (AKA volunteers). We know the definition of a weed is just a plant that’s in the wrong or unwanted place but we don’t think poppies could ever be called weeds as they are too great a plant!
Above are some self seeded poppies in the kale/pea lane in our veg patch at the bottom of the garden that we can’t bring ourselves to pull out. As we’re in the veg patch, here’s a picture below of our results of our beetroot sowing this year, there’s hardly any!
A big shout to the staff at Honor Oak Park train station for maintaining the wonderful display of pelargoniums there. They get a good daily watering and when we have some comfrey liquid ready, we pop some in. We think they’re serious on the annual stations in bloom competition and with that display they should be!
We’ve taken some cutting from said plants (above) and they seem to root very quickly and now flowering after not many weeks.
While we’re looking at flowers here’s a new poppy from this morning!
Often short-lived, the flowers of the poppy are something to behold as they say. We took a trip down the garden this morning and took a couple of photographs and the two at the top are now missing a few petals, it’s a case of catch them when you can!
Those two are a result of randomly flinging the seeds about and the bottom is the oriental poppy (a perennial) we grew from seed a few years ago and it just keeps on giving. Poppies are go!
We can’t believe that it’s July next week, how time flies (pic above: self-seeded poppy down the garden yesterday). It was just the other week we were thinking if there was going to be a frost or not so we could put those leggy tomato plants out. Gardening is all about patience and just getting on with it, the waiting game so to speak but we’re not very good at that. And talking of tomatoes we’ve got our first trusses of fruit developing on some of the plants we grew from seed (below). That weekly feed of comfrey liquid must be helping as well as sideshooting and a daily water.
The chilli pepper we were given the other week has now got fruits (below) and we were told by the patron of said plant that she started it off very early in January. We’ll be bringing the pot in this winter and see if we can keep it going next year. Peppers and chillies are perennials so we’re told, as it says here “...all peppers – that is sweet peppers and chilli peppers – are perennials, capable of living for several years. Peppers come from the tropics where there is no winter period.” The things you learn eh?It’s funny what with our “sow the seed willy nilly and forget we even sown them” method we still get suprised when something pops up like in the case of the oregano seedlings below. Yes it is in a pot with a plant label with “Oregano” written on it as clear as day but we’re still suprised. Perhaps we should have a colour coded spreadsheet with a map of the garden so we know when we sowed something and where. We reckon that would take the fun out of it though. Happy growing and may that spot of rain we had earlier today further boost up your garden’s growth!
Blimmin eck! How hot was it today? These two poppies which we’re sure we grew from seed a couple of years ago are blooming again. We gave them a good watering this morning as at its peak it hit nearly 29 degrees C today here in SE23.
We’ve got two trusses of flowers on our tomatoes (above), the gardening calendar is cracking on this year and it’s nearly summer solstice. There’s now warnings or a time marker which says “You have just reached the end of spring” or anything, time marches on as Jungle Wonz once sang.
Also we’ve been nipping out any sideshoots on our tomatoes and read in the Vertical Veg email newsletter about using the sideshoots on tomato plants as you would cuttings and we have one which looks like it may have taken root, well it hasn’t gone droopy yet (above).
And something else we love here as well are suprises. Here’s some oregano we don’t remember sowing growing underneath a rosemary bush (above). Now that’s a bit of a bonus as we do love oregano here! We bought a marjoram plant a few years ago as an oregano alternative which is doing great but it’s not the same. 30 degrees C tomorrow you reckon?
Happy Midsummer/Solstice/Longest day to you all and contrary to popular belief it’s not all downhill from here, the hours of sunlight just get that little bit shorter that’s all. There’s still a good few months to enjoy in the garden and good weather is forecast for this week coming in London so John Craven said on Countryfile last week.
To celebrate the longest day here’s some poppies we’ve spotted of late, one on the road (pic below) but mostly in the Weeds garden.
And if you weren’t at Stonehenge at the crack of dawn this morning just stick this on below and watch the action replay. Good vibes to all and do raise a glass to the longest day!
And if you want to listen to a good midsummer type mix, put this great Laut & Luise one on for some nice downbeat business.
Big shout to Gerry Hectic for sending us a pic of his dustbin fruit container conversion job which he did last year. It’s coming on a treat at the moment, look at those strawberries turning red! That’s a great idea Gerry!
And (below) here’s a few random flower pics from the Weeds garden taken this morning.
If you’ve got pics ofyour garden do send them in! Email them to onedeckpete (at) gmail.com and also send us a tune if you fancy it as well!