Not so great for me as I'm home at the moment but probably much better for my plants. The greenhouse was turning into a desert-like environment with leaves beginning to scorch in the sun. I must get some of that shade paint but haven't been able to find any as yet. I planted out four varieties of tomatoes in the greenhouse: San Marzano, Costoluto Fiorentino, Vanessa F1 and Beam's Yellow Pear plus two aubergines. I have since found out that the BYP is likely to take over my greenhouse (grows to 6' plus) and the rest are fairly sturdy growing cordons. Joy! I'm also going to try growing them all outside as well but in a grow bag as i don't want to infect them with last year's blight which may be in the ground just waiting to take out my toms!! The one remaining Gartenperle (the other died a very hot death in the GH) is now in a basket with trailing nasturtiums and Alyssum 'oriental nights'; this is a potential colour clash from hell but personally I love purple and orange together with a bit of red thrown in for good measure!
I have also built a fantastic squash and trailing courgette frame out of the ash branches from mum's garden; it does look pretty darn good even if I do say so myself. I'm really enjoying making structures out of natural materials as they look so much nicer than a stack load of bamboo shoots. It must be a more ecologically sound way to garden as opposed to buying bamboo from goodness knows where. However, I have had to use some bamboo for my first lot of climbing beans so I'm not a total tree hugger just yet....
The climbing beans have been an interesting experiment; I indvertently became a separate experiment all on my own when in a clear moment of delirium I decided my climbers were getting too leggy so I pinched them out ??!?!?!?!? I know, I know, it was a slightly alternative decision and one I thought I may regret but low and behold the little plants have decided to make a full come back and have grown new climbing shoots, in one plant there are two climbing shoots. I knew it would work and I'm bound to have stronger, tougher bean plants as a result. Hah!
Moving onto the other beans that are in my garden - broadies. They are now under attack from black fly. I'm slightly peeved as the summer savory I bought to ward off the blighters hasn't grown so now they are all quite happily sucking the sweet gooey stuff out of the beans and are closely followed behind by the ants who are harvesting them for the resulting sweet gooey stuff in the flies. War has been announced and I'm going to make up a washing-up liquid solution to blast them to kingdom come. I also may remove the tips and hopefully the beans will grow side shoots as they are only 18" tall at the mo - somewhat annoying but I do seem to grow black fly particularly well.
One thing I am particularly pleased about is that I have identifed my odd looking plants in pots; I thought they may have been the elusive cleomes but unfortunately not and after much hunting around they are in fact Nicandra Physaloides or the 'Shoo Fly Plant'. This is a good thing as they can be a good companion plant especially attractive to white fly which do love the kale I grow. I did read though that they are part of the Nightshade family so rather poisonous if ingested. must remember not to eat them in a moment of hunger induced madness!
There is so much now in the GH waiting to go out; I'm tempted to plant the squashes but thought the the little rain we had today will have washed some of the chicken poo into the ground so I don't plant direct into the smelly stuff. I'm going to fill some of the buckets we have lying around with compost and try growing some pea tips, some chantenay carrots, spring onions and possibly some more salad leaves. The salad leaves so far have been abismal and are quire weedy looking - so much so that I'm tempted to pull them up and use their space for something else. I also need to plant out some kohl rabi as I would like to give that a go. I do seem to have quite a lot of climbing veg this year, no bad thing but I would like to have a few lovely rows of some things. In fact I think I will prepare another gutter of beetroot as that worked quite well, unlike the carrots although I'm always game for another go..
Looking around the veggie patch everything else is ticking along nicely - the potatoes have now decided they want to grow and in particular the early Charlotte are steaming ahead nicely. Yum! It was sod's law that as soon as we paid £20 for three potato sacks and potatoes we started to see similar in all the garden centres for about half the price. Ho hum. I keep comforting myself with the knowledge that mine have velcro flaps from which I can open them up and gather the lovely potatoes; i am completely ignoring the fact that the compost is bound to all come rushing out so what's the point but STILL, they look lovely and are very gadgety!
And finally....I must be the owner of the slowest, less likely to take over, can't be bothered Jersalem Artichokes. TWO MONTHS after planting the red tubers into the rockery did they decide to bring free of the soil.. I was giving up and planning to fill that space with something different but at last the potential ten footers have arrived and now going great guns.
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