My freesias make a surprise appearance
The prolonged, warm sunny weather has brought a spurt of growth to the garden, with late tulips giving more colour after the daffodils had finished and been deadheaded. A new tulip I bought from Holland, called ‘Sanne’, lasted longer than the others – the petals kept their goblet shape and they didn't open out in the sun.
The primroses have now nearly finished flowering and will be divided, repotted and kept in the shade of a tree at the bottom of the garden. Auriculas closely followed the primroses and when their flowers fade, they’ll be moved to a shady spot for the summer.
Aquilegias are now in flower and are enjoying the sunshine and the sweet peas, planted out a few weeks ago, are now growing away and are ready for starting their cordon training. The apple tree has had a magnificent early show of blossom this year and I’m hoping for a good crop as there seemed to be a lot of bumble bees moving through the flowers. My young ‘Victoria’ plum had its first few flowers this year. Even the gorse near the beach was completely covered in flowers!
My potatoes are showing above ground. I dismantled the compost heap and spread 12 barrowloads of compost between the potato drills. This will be used to earth them up in the next couple of weeks.
We were in Holland in March 2018 and I bought some freesia bulbs. They were planted that spring and flowered during the summer. When they died down the bulbs were saved and planted again in spring 2019. They failed to grow and were nearly forgotten about until leaves appeared in early autumn. They spent the winter in the tunnel and are now flowering well. One has large yellow flowers and the other is red. Unfortunately, the larger flowers are at the expense of the perfume I would expect from freesias.
I’m always amazed at how some plants cling to the desire to live. I had some
calceolaria that flowered well last summer. They were past their best by autumn and were consigned to the compost heap. In early spring, I found one had rolled off the compost heap and I noticed it had put on some healthy new growth. I potted it up in a 15cm (6in) pot with some fresh compost and it’s flourished and is currently covered in bright yellow flowers! It'll be treated to some TLC this autumn, and hopefully, it'll be divided to give an even better display next year.