End of Month View of the Garden: End of June 2017

We had 16 consecutive days with no rain, and many of those days were joined by scorching weather and temperatures in the region of 30°c.

Begonia ‘Apricot Shades’.

Much watering of tubs was done, and very little sleep was had. I don’t like to moan, but I will, I don’t do very well in very hot temperatures. Something perhaps to do with working outside for a living….

The hot spell ended with heavy rains, most of which came down during one night towards the end of the month, this provided much relief.  Total rainfall for the month was 67.2 mm.

All this warm and wet weather has made the garden burst into growth in a big way.

The fence border full of growth.

At the front of the picture is my Cercis Canadensis pauline lily showing off its lime green floppy looking leaves, it’s taken a few years to recover from planting, but it’s starting to grow up nicely now.

There is also an assortment of ferns, A large Hardy Geranium psilostemon and Hamamelis jelena in this border. I’ve been seriously considering removing another strip of turf and widening the length of this border for some time now, I last did it a few years ago and gave the existing plants more room, but as usual I then planted up the  gaps with more plants and lost the space. So many plants to own, so many few spaces.

Further up the garden is what we lovingly call the old rockery bed, it’s a dodgy circle shape, and it used to have 5 large rock in it. Hence the rockery bit.

This bed is currently very frustrating as it’s gone wrong.

Not very summery.!

It’s my hottest, sunniest bed, yet it’s currently all green.  None of my summer flowering plants are actually flowering, and it’s occurred to me I have more spring and autumn flowering plants in this bed than I perhaps should have.

As this bed is the bit of the garden I see most from my spot on the sofa in the house, I have filled it with all king of random pithery, wooden mushrooms, curly steel rods, random fairy lights etc…. I’ve been toying with the idea of at some stage digging every plant up and re-planting in a more structured and colour coordinated way. I’ve been to so many big garden/plant shows recently that I am really craving a purple/ orange planting combination somewhere in my garden and this bed is crying out for some kind of kick up the bum. It’s such a random plonking of plants.

Tree Fern spot.

In Contrast to my disliked area, I’m loving the effect my Tree Fern and  Acers are having in a spot right up against the house and patio doors, it’s in the shade until quite late in the day when the sun has lost its heat. It’s all foliage and no flowers except for a few Primula Harlow Carr which make a brief appearance in the spring.

Greenhouse full of Heritage Tomatoes.

Other Greenhouse full of Cucumbers.

Soon!

Currently my favourite plant in the garden is once again my Sanguisorba hakusanensis ‘Lilac Squirrel’.

Sanguisorba hakusanensis ‘Lilac Squirrel’,

However the plant has grown huge, upwards and outwards and will have to be moved in the autumn, it’s currently trying to prevent me from getting to my greenhouses along a small path, I’m tempted to dig up some more lawn in order to provide it with a pride of place spot so it can be viewed from the patio doors, but this requires some serious thought first as i have an impending shed project that is going to take priority before the bad weather sets in.

Sweetcorn and drying onions and a few optimistic squash plants.

In my raised edible bed things have also gone a little awry, you see during the darkest winter months I hit on the bright idea of growing some onions purely for pickling, as I’m quite partial to a home pickled onion.

Now this involved me growing onions tightly packed together and harvesting  when they were no bigger than golf ball sized, seeds were sown early January from 3 packets of seeds as many onions were required, also timing was everything, as the same bit of raised bed was required beginning of June for sweet corn planting. Sweet Corn are my favorite crop.

However things started to go wrong almost immediately when almost all sowings of onions failed, so some emergency onions sets were purchased and potted up into cell trays to get ahead start on growth, but I was already behind in my growing schedule,  the onions were not ready for harvesting until end of June, and my Sweetcorn really needed to be planted, so I had to plant the sweet corn into random raised beds in a block style and hope that pollination will happen.

My Onions started to succumb to Onion White Rot so I started to pull them, then Allium Leaf Miner became prevalent, so I pulled all remaining onions and started to dry them.

It now remains to be seen if I have enough decent onions to pickle.

Project pickled onions drying.

Wish me luck.

Thanks go as ever to Helen, The Patient Gardener for originally hosting this meme.

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