Garden Update

The garden is in full flood. I'm really behind on jobs to do, there are just so many! (Especially now I work at a bamboo nursery 3 mornings a week - I get pretty fed up with watering). Here are some pics I took this afternoon.




^ The alliums are slowly but surely coming out.



^ Fennel flowers.



^ Lovage and purple verbena flowers.



^ Lilies.



^ Himalayan Balsam flowers. This stuff is apparently a real nuisance, blocking up the UK's waterways (it's what Boris Johnson was clearing when he fell in a river recently. Personally I think we should conserve clumps of it purely for that reason). It grows along the Usk where we go in Wales and although it's a pest it's beautiful walking through a forest of it! Bees love it. I think that providing you can keep it under control (admittedly difficult, as the seed pods pop and the seeds go everywhere) there's nothing wrong with this lovely plant.



^ Tomatoes ripening up.



^ Honeybee on a pretty borage flower.



^ My "New World" corner: squashes, beans, tomatoes, sunflowers, sweetcorn.



^ First French bean!



^ Pretty bean flowers.



^ Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco pods, fattening up...



^ Blue Hubbard squash...I'm really excited about these ^^.



^ Greenhouse: cucumbers and you can just see the loofa. They're getting so big I couldn't fit them all in one photo.



^ Aubergines and a couple of peppers, just beginning to put on flower buds.


^ A flower on one of the okras?! This seems a bit odd as the plant is still only 5 cm tall...it's the first time I've grown okra though so I don't expect it to work! But I'm not complaining!

And finally I leave you with:

Gardening Tip:

Members of the curcurbit family (i.e. anything remotely courgette-like, including cucumbers, pumpkins, squashes, melons, loofas, etc.) tend to be very prolific, producing lots of fruits in even a short growing season. Often you'll find however that some fruits rot on the plant, particularly at the beginning of the season. This is because these plants produce more fruit than they can ripen. Some fruits inevitably have to drop off. This shouldn't stop them from going on to produce a bumper crop! I occasionally remove a fruit or two if a plant seems covered in rotting ones but otherwise, as you can probably glimpse in the photo of the squash above, I just let the plant do the work!