Thanks to Mike & Julia for sending some updated pics from their garden near Coventry. This time it’s cerise coloured sweet peas and pink poppies which were spurred into action with a bit of overnight midlands rain. They plants look like they loved those night showers.
And below are another few pictures from their Crete holiday. Cheers again for the ace pictures, Mike and Julia!
As we mentioned, the weather here has been odd but the combination of the sun and rain is making things grow like mad! The side bed up near the house (above) is getting off to a great pace with the assorted bulbs we got from Lldl breaking through and the sweet pea seedlings started off on the kitchen windowsill not being eaten by slugs.
Even the combined wild bed and vegetable patch (above) is looking a bit structured this year rather than the usual anarchic horticultural madness! We still are pondering what to do with the side of an old shed at the back. Any ideas?
As for the weather, someone once said to us “Wouldn’t it be great if it only rained at night and was sunny during the day. Us gardeners would be so happy”. If only life really was like that.
As we’re working from home we do have a bit of an advantage that we can do a litle bit of gardening at lunchtime during good weather. Today as it was on the warmer side we decided to sow a few more seeds. The kitchen window has become a little crowded so we utilised some spare space in the raised beds under plastic out in the back.
The second covered raised bed is starting to fill up too. The celery cut from the base is starting to grow, those volunteer giant garlic bulbs are doing well and we have some parsnips in the middle so we decided to put some pots of sweet peas either side. Hope they like the heat under the plastic as we haven’t had decent sweet peas for a few years now. The below pic is going back a few years but it is inspiring us to have some sweet peas back in the garden again.
A couple of years ago we found a very odd looking hand-made coat stand in the street that had been thrown out and since obtaining it have tried with little success to try and grow something up it. We’re trying again this year with some sweet peas. We’ve put some small bamboo sticks in to give the plants a way to get to the main truck and we’re hoping for some climbing action. Perhaps we should just bin the thing but it’s so odd we have to keep it and at least it’s a alternative to the normal bamboo tripod. Who said gardening had to be conventional anyway?
And talking about oddness this thing has just popped up through the soil very close to the pavement in the side bed that has the new fence behind it. We have no idea what it is and we can’t remember sticking anything in that area. It’s a robust looking thing whatever it is. Any ideas?
Don’t forget this Sunday 2nd May 2021 at 2300 UTC (Midnight UK time) Radio Lavalamp will be taking to the shortwaves on 9395 kHz via WRMI which will include “The Purple Nucleus of Creation 004” mix by One Deck Pete with tracks from Floating Points, London Symphony Orchestra and Pharoah Sanders, Betelgeize ft. Ilya Chistyakov, Tranquility Bass and Hrair. Like the weird and wonderful and tunes like the GATS track below? Well tune in on Sunday night and see if there’s more stuff to your liking. If you haven’t a shortwave radio click here at the allotted time.
We’ve started early with putting out the sweet peas in the side bed with some wigwam cane arrangements. They were grown from seed and hardened off for a few days outside before going out this afternoon. Well, we’ll give them a try and if they don’t succeed we’ll try (and try) again.
The plants in the raised beds with protection are starting to get going. There’s onions, shallots, chillies, spuds and tomatoes. Can we stick anything else in them? The old window frame we found in a skip donkey’s years ago has some cabbage seeds which have’t germinated yet. And in the foreground remains of the front garden wall that was stripped of its ivy (that was actually holding it up!)
We don’t know if it was the great Joe Maiden or someone on the council who told us this great “pinching out” tip that makes sweet peas that little bit bushier but whoever it was, it works.
We’re also not sure if we should have waited a little longer (when there were more sets of leaves) but the other week we just went for it and nipped the growing end out (just above the leaves) and you can see now some new growth from out of the lower leaf nodes. The whole idea is to stop the plants becoming tall and “leggy”, encouraging more side shoots which in turn will bring more flowers. We haven’t done too well over the last couple of years with sweet peas so let’s see if that changes this year.
On Wednesday morning the weather weren’t too bad so we put out the tray of sweet peas and tomato seedlings and all the other stuff we’ve got on the go on the kitchen windowsill to give them a taste of the outside world of SE23.
This process called “hardening off” allows the plants to get used to the change of temperatures outside compared to the relatively controlled conditions of our kitchen windowsill. There’s a very good chance if you just plonked a plant outdoors without any hardening off that would give it a right old shock thus checking its growth and it may even possibly keel over depending how much the contrast is.
We’re a tad early on doing this as it’s still nowhere near the climate you can be putting out plants like these. When the weather gets a bit milder we’ll stick them out on good days and take them in at night for a week or two until conditions are right for a permanent move. More on “Hardening off” here.
As another example of impatient gardeners we sowed some wild flower seeds in the strange bed behind the decking. Spot the old kitchen clock, the champagne box which magically appeared on our doorstep overnight years ago and fence post footings which should be covered over.
And also this week this tune from many moons ago from Tranquility Bass (think we originally heard it on Patrick Forge on KISS) popped up a couple of times in our head this so it has to be put up now.
We’ve heard it’s going to be a nice weekend by the way!
Well it’s the first day of spring today but it didn’t really feel like it weatherwise. We spent a couple of hours in the garden as the neighbours have put up a new fence so we cleared the bed on the side so we can actually see what plants are called for this year. We need a few shrubs so we’ll be researching them over the next few weeks.
There’s seeds galore on the kitchen windowsill including two types of tomatoes and sweet peas, cut and come again lettuce, chillies and various herbs. It’s all about being prepared as the growing season is going to come around sooner than you think!
There was a load of clearing up going on down the bottom end of the garden too, lots of ivy to be cut back and we found a nice pile of very dry clippings from months ago. So to end a good couple of hours in the garden we christened our fairly newly acquired incinerator, cheers Marc! It’s been a while since we’ve had a fire and we’ve forgotten how nice it is to sit around a burning bright dustbin feeling the warmth. Hands up who loves a garden incinerator!
It’s a lovely day here today in south London as the sun has made a bit of a comeback this weekend. The dahlias in the garden are looking great especially the deep red cacti ones (above). We love this half opened one (below) too which has a bit of a punk rock look about it!
Below are some plum tomatoes that are a bit of a mystery as we don’t even remember sowing them. Perhaps they were left over seed from the ones had a few years ago? The delights of a non-named seed envelope at the bottom of the seed box eh?
The sweet peas were a bit of a disappointment though this year (below) god knows why that happened. The sunflower beside it weren’t that brilliant either, perhaps the soil needs a good bit of organic matter?
Whilst on a jog come fast walk around the area this morning these great cacti dahlias (below) were spotted in a front garden near Catford. How good are those?
We hope the weather’s good your side and you’re enjoying the last little fling of summer!
#septembersunshine #haslockdownendedyet?
Looking out into the garden this morning it could have been March seeing those daffodils a sprouting and the sweet peas making a gallop to get up those canes. Pray tell me, what season is it?
Weeds up to me knees 