My gardening diary
MONDAY Deadheading roses is common sense. When flowers remain on any plant after they’ve faded, they both spoil the look of the plant and hold back its ability to make more flowers. We’re removing spent flowers individually and where a whole group are over, chopping back the whole stem to two buds from the main stem.
TUESDAY At the front of our terrace is our cercis tree, which we’ve grown from seed. It’s nearly 40 years old and easily 3m (10ft) both high and wide. My mum picked up the pods from the pavement in Portugal. This year, it has flowered very well in the heat and the pods are ripening promisingly.
WEDNESDAY We’ve been luckier than some this spring as their apple blossom coincided with a cool, wet period and a shortage of pollinating insects. We now have an abundance of tiny apples which we’re thinning out.
THURSDAY Picking off spent hemerocallis flowers has now become a daily task in the sunny Brick Garden. They go limp and shrivelled the day after they open, which is why they are called daylilies. Deadheading ensures new flowers have their day in the sun.
FRIDAY Up by the house we’ve a set of beds for fruit bushes. Closest to an enormous ash tree and almost all day in its shade are green and purple gooseberry bushes. They seem to thrive there with another bumper crop just beginning to sweeten and a ract the a ention of our resident blackbirds. Time to put nets over the bushes!
SATURDAY This run of hot weather has seen many geraniums go leggy and fall over. Around the garden there seem to be explosions from the base of prone pink stems, all knuckles and knees. Shearing them back to ground level with sharp shears will give them a chance to come again. We’ve done the same with geraniums in pots in the tunnel.
SUNDAY Sowing carrots has taken a back seat this year. The first sowing was sparse because the seed was a bit iffy – it must be fresh, viable and properly stored. We typically sow seed straight onto compost in a deep, wide pot, which we can keep in an elevated position to avoid carrot fly, which usually can only stay airborne up to 45cm (1½ft) from the ground. Have we missed the boat?