It is amazing how quick and how slow things grow. We have been spending as much time as possible in our garden this summer weather permitting. The flowers have really outdone themselves this year and I think we have had more blooms than ever before.
And what is lovely is the blooms are staggered. They don't flower all at once so that you have a burst of colour and then nothing. Alan Ticthmarsh said in the Radio Times something about this being the time of the year where you don't have alot of colour in the garden. He hasn't been to our tiny garden.
The veg patch is going strong. We have had some successes this year and some failures. We got a cold rainy snap so some of my plants came down with mildew. And that really stresses them. So my courgettes and squashes didn't do all that great. I have had to battle slugs and snails all year and every morning just about go on a slug hunt and then put them in the bin for removal. I hope they can't find their way back from the landfill site. I just can't bring myself to personally kill them so they are banished to a bin and I even throw food in for them until they are collected.
We have had a pair of frogs in the garden this summer and off and on they hop out and scare me. One was taking up residence in the grow bag next to my tomatoes.
We did get a nice little crop of peas, but not as many as I would have liked. They didn't come on until late and have just now finished. I have lettuces in the bed now. The tomatoes are late this year and everyone I speak to is also late. I grew some from seeds this year that I saved and we have a load of volunteers this year too. Since we started the recycling some of our waste food goes into the compost bin. Brian sifted some of the nice compost to use in planters this year and we have had tomatoes popping up all over the place. I believe in letting volunteers grow!!! They seem to always do better. We have also had a few borage plant volunteers and the bees who finally showed up this summer love them.
I even grew a few stalks of corn in our planter with the broad beans. Hopefully we will have it for supper tonight.
The lettuces have been going great!!! And we have salads most days or lettuce on our sarnies. I seem to be doing well growing Swiss Chard too and Rainbow chard. Turnips did okay and so did some black kale. I have some beets growing and getting bigger. And the last 5 drawf French bean plants are finally producing. The slugs didn't get them all. I did surround them with lots of broken up egg shells to protect them. We also got a nice crop of potatoes and red currants from the garden this year. Brian has cut down one of the large bushes by the veg patch and hopefully I can get some Raspberry canes to put in there. Or maybe fix up an asparagus bed.
The fushias are growing well and showing off as usual.
And our new rose had a beautiful bunch of flowers for us too. I bet next year it will have even more. It is growing along the fence on the patio and is already spreading quite a bit.
This basket of Busy Lizzies has done really spectacular this year. And the stray volunteer lettuce plant. We did try to grow a basket of sweet peas, but unfortunately the birds have mangled worzzled them to bits. Though we did get a few flowers. There is a sunflower at the moment in that basket that is about ready to start blooming. Again another volunteer, but I think it had some help from the birds.
We did have one or two really hot days where the cats just couldn't be bothered. Honest we don't spoil them!!!!
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