Plants are growing so quickly!
W ith the recent warm, sunny weather everything in the garden is growing fast, including the weeds! In the cold greenhouse the red and the pink epiphyllums have flowered well. However, with the warm, sunny weather the flowers didn’t last as long as usual. The dahlias, planted out at the end of May, are growing quickly as well.
As fast as I’m removing the tendrils on the sweet peas, they need to be attached to the canes with split rings every few days. I removed the first few flowering stems to strengthen the plants until they produced stems carrying four flower buds.
The primroses have finished flowering so I divided them and planted the divisions in separate pots. The leaves are cut back to reduce transpiration and they’re placed outside, under the shade of a large tree.
The white Clematis montana
is now covered with hundreds of flowers. It’ll be cut back after the flowers fade. The lilac has flowered well after failing to flower last year. Perennials, such as foxgloves, aquilegia, poppies and lupins are in full flower and attracting lots of bees. A self-seeded annual poppy with pink flowers is beside a lupin with blue and white flowers and I find this accidental colour combination very attractive. My Iris germanica has grown into a clump now and has produced lots of blooming stems.
In the greenhouse the tomato plants are now
flowering on the third truss. I remove sideshoots as they appear and am watering with a tomato fertiliser weekly. The potatoes are growing fast after being earthed up. They’ll be sprayed for blight as the weather forecast predicts light rain before the end of the week. The broad beans are now in flower with their lovely black and white blooms. The lettuce growing in the windowbox is ready for using – I planted five ‘Little Gem’ and five loose-leaf lettuce in it. I’ve sown more seed to ensure a continuous supply.