On Sunday we had the open day and I hadn’t been to the plot much the previous weekend and it’s looking magnificently over grown.
Jude and Tana are saving me right now with watering so planted things are still alive but the truth is the birds have had the blackcurrants and the blueberries because I didn’t net them which is annoying but also not because I probably don’t have time for processing them at the moment!
So I had a Sunday plan, go and sort out the front of the plot on Sunday morning. Go home and shower, spend the afternoon at the bar serving drinks, water and then collapse.
As you can see, it was rough! But I did it. I filled the weed bin up to do it but I’m much happier with it.
I weeded the entire area which left me with a tidier but also more barren looking front bed.
I did have plants for the occasion. The gaura and white scabious I bought at BBC Gardener’s World Live were destined for that bed. So in they went. This bed has no real design and I just dump things I like in there, and the tree makes life quite difficult as well. There are bulbs under and around the tree and last year I moved a stray rooted cola bottle plant (Artemisia abrotanum Cola) to the gap between the day lily and tree. It’s still alive and I know it’ll start getting bigger, (you put them in and they sit for a year or two then they are thugs) there is Erigeron around the edges but I need something that will tolerate shade and the tree roots. I don’t have anything that suits but I have 30 lavender (hidcote) plugs and some scaredy cat (Coleus canina) plugs. Now I know that both of those plants are full sun plants but I don’t currently have a place and I thought I’d take a chance. The lavender could make it and the scaredy cat plant won’t live past the frost (if we have one!) but it’s one I hope to over winter at home because cats and foxes detest it.
I may just end up putting a shed load of meadowsweet around the tree as that’s doing well by the blueberries. Anyway once that was done, things were watered and mulched with compost and maybe they’ll survive this weeks heatwave and maybe not.
I cut back the comfrey, weeded around the it and the rhubarb, mulched around the rhubarb (it’s not been a great rhubarb year. I’m really pleased with the way the lavender at the front is establishing and the woolly thyme underneath it. Naturally, I don’t have a decent picture of it but you can sort of see it at the back of the picture above.
I did pull up a lot of the californian poppies but most of them had gone to seed so they’ll be back!
Then it was bar duty. We were so busy, and I was on my feet for 3 and half hours. We were pretty much out of booze by 5pm and it was such a contrast to last year when it rained pretty much non stop!
Then I went to water and got distracted by the tomatoes.
This year I bought them all and most of them are planted in what is normally the squash bed. They have been fed exactly once but I did put a bag of manure and all the bokashi in this bed. There are chocolate cherry and sungold cherry tomatoes, two nagina plum tomatoes and two harbinger and two yellow beefsteak type, the name of which completely escapes me!
But we’ve gone from this back in May
To this, after I’ve spent an hour sorting them out.
And the harbinger lived up to its name with the earliest tomatoes I thing I’ve ever had.
There was also a teeny tiny cherry harvest
As well as some potatoes, cucumbers and garlic.
The polytunnel looks great too
Lots more work to do. I want to get everything from where I cleared on Sunday to the blueberries sorted this week and the two beds a behind it cleared and planted up. You can see the jungle that needs sorting behind the rhubarb! I also I have leeks and more tomatoes to go in (because of course I do!)
Nic Dempsey 