By Jane Scott
The rain has made
everything grow like mad and the organic compost mulch seems to be doing its
magic and keeping the weeds back, although never completely!
Last
week I was hosing every evening as things were beginning to wilt and the
vegetables were suffering but now everything has perked up with all this rain,
apart from the carrots which are really bad. They will be seriously expensive
carrots having made a special frame for them which now looks rather ridiculous.
We have just had our first picking of strawberries which have come on well
after fleecing them up earlier to bring them on. We have also picked some
artichokes that seem to thrive with a thick mulch of compost, however it is a
constant battle with snails who love the young succulent stems.
Last
year I asked the artist blacksmith, Nick Packham, to make some little metal
plates to put the metal legs of the old garden seat in, which is on the lawn.
These will be essential after all this rain, as last year I watched with dismay
as two people sat on the seat and it slowly sank into the ground and they were
left embarrassingly with their legs in the air! He has been doing some
artistic work on my copper and iron former bird bath, he will bring it back for
the weekend and I am looking forward to seeing what he has done when he is here
demonstrating in my garden. I am going to ask him to make an interesting grab
handle for the studio as it has a couple of steps up to it. Visitors may be
able to see him making it this weekend.
The
rain has driven me into the greenhouse and we replaced broken glass and had a
well overdue tidy up. The tomatoes and cucumbers are coming on and the earlier
yellowing cucumbers have recovered with a change of soil as I think it was
probably too rich and, maybe acidic, as I had made it myself. This year I have
planted directly into the greenhouse bed rather than using grow bags. I have
potted on seedlings of Cosmos and Verbena but other annual seeds did not
germinate at all.
All of the tubs have
been planted, some of the plants have survived from last year and so there
are some particularly big plants along with the new ones. The Tamarisk looked a
fantastic blaze of pink last week but will be over for Open Gardens which is a
shame. However, I took a photo of the owl sculpture with this lovely pink
backdrop. The owl too has a pinkish glow because there was a lovely sunset the
evening I took it. Just as I was focusing the shot, a Sparrow Hawk did a fly-by
just above my head, I wonder if it was checking out the owl? In fact the
sculptor told me this sometimes happens with real owls.
Today,
we have had a couple of steps repaired as they had suffered with frost and
water damage last winter. That’s the thing about Open Gardens coming up, it
focuses the mind on all those little jobs you never get around to doing and you
look at the garden with fresh eyes as if you were a visitor.
