Watering is still our main job

We arrived at the garden this week just after a heavy shower, but we spent most of our efforts on watering once again. Happily, the padlock which allows access to the water tap is now easy to manage, after the generous application of WD40!

Looking around the garden this week, we noted that....

Sweetcorn is doing well

Courgettes do not hang around for long before being picked

Similarly, all the globe artickokes have been harvested.

The lemon balm is now in full flower.  A delicious tea can be made from the leaves of this plant, but the flowers are also very important for bees. Its binomial name, Melissa officinalis, comes from the greek word for honey bee, and it is a good source of nectar, blooming for 45 - 60 days, and continuously producing nectar throughout the day.

Lemon balm is a tough herb which seeds around easily

More rain needed!

Although we have had some rain recently, it has not been enough to soak into the ground, and we are still having to water beans, tomatoes, courgettes, etc.

Our self-seeded sunflowers are coming into their own now.

Sunflowers always make a good display.

 
Jerusalem artichokes, a relative of the sunflower, are  putting on some height too.

Jerusalem artichokes to the left of sunflowers

The Good King Henry is flowering. This is an ancient herb, the young shoots of which are said to taste like asparagus.  The leaves are a spinach substitute, and the flower buds can be eaten like broccoli. However, the plant can taste bitter, and the leaves apparently benefit from being soaked in salt water before cooking.

Good king Henry in front of marigolds.

Our creeping thyme has been covered in flowers, to the delight of bees and butterflies. This is not the usual thyme for culinary use, but it is still quite acceptable as a seasoning herb.

Creeping thyme at its best.

Promise of Harvest

Our dwarf beans (Purple Tepee) are flowering well now, and the climbing beans are also looking good.

Dwarf beans with pretty purple flowers

Climbing beans doing just that, among the marigolds.

Loganberries are beginning to turn colour and will soon be ripe. They are in a fairly shady position here, but they can cope with that.

Thornless loganberries doing well against a wall

The large shiny black seeds of Sweet Cicely are quite noticable. They will germinate readily all around the base of the plant, even in grass.

Sweet Cicely seeds

Ladybirds, blackfly and bees.....and bean poles.

Insect life was particularly noticeable this week in the garden.  Ladybirds feasted on blackfly, so helping our plants to survive.

Ladybird and blackfly on borage

More ladybirds on swiss chard

 Bees were everywhere, enjoying the echiums, borage and phacelia, and pollinating our veg as well.

Spot the bees on phacelia

Some of the phacelia has finished flowering, and is being removed to make room for sweetcorn.

Making a space for sweetcorn.

We have experienced some irritating vandalism since last week's efforts with the bean poles - one of the wigwams was pulled up and left lying near the plot. So we hope we have fixed them in even more firmly this time around.

We've been here before!

Bring on the watering cans!

At last it's time to plant out the tomatoes and courgettes.
However, some of the ground is so hard and dry that it needs watering before any planting holes can be dug!

Tomatoes need a lot of water after planting too.

We bought new hazel rods this year to make the bean wigwams.

Wigwam under construction

Here's one we made earlier

In our fruit area, the thornless loganberry is doing quite well. We have fixed some wires onto the wall behind it so that we can fasten it back tidily.

The loganberry needs support

We have a fine show of californian poppies at the moment. They don't mind the dry conditions at all.

Californian poppies with phacelia behind to set them off

Donations gratefully received!

While we were working in the Garden this week, Daniela & Ella, Cheltenham residents originally from Romania, very kindly gave us some seedlings for the Garden:

Daniela & Ella with capsicums, squashes & tomatoes for planting in the garden

We are always happy to receive plants for the garden, we like to keep the planting as diverse as possible.

The garden is looking very pretty at the moment, with many plants in flower ~ amongst the most spectacular are the rhubarb plants:

Rhubarb flowers in the foreground, with yellow mustard flowers behind & the silver leaves of a globe artichoke at the rear of the planting

Rhubarb doesn't really thrive here in the garden, as it's a plant that likes cool conditions & plenty of water (cultivated rhubarb is derived from species originating in Siberia) ~ the Annecy Gardens being iu the middle of town & surrounded by buildings are warm & dry & the rhubarb tends only to make skinny stalks. But the flowers are still beautiful.

We have planted some lettuces:

Red salad bowl lettuces

Lettuces are quite hardy & are unaffected by the cold nights we have experienced recently ~ we are waiting for the warmer weather before we plant out seedlings of tender crops such as runner beans, climbing french beans, squashes, courgettes, tomatoes & sweetcorn.

Last year some of the most striking plants in the garden were the Echiums by the main gates ~ these plants are monocarpic, meaning that they died once they had flowered. But there are plenty of seedlings now appearing in the beds. Slightly less showy than the Echium pininana x wildprettii we had last year is this:

Echium x scilloniense ~ I collected seeds of this plant in September 2013 from plants growing on waste ground on the island of Tresco; this is the only survivor, most of the other seedlings we planted of this died during the winter

We will be having a plant sale on this coming Saturday morning (23rd May 2015), between 10am & 1pm ~ please do come & say hello if you can ~ there'll be a range of vegetable plants available, as well as a wide variety of wildlife-friendly flowers for your garden.

Things grow fast at this time of year!

We didn't get a chance to harvest many rhubarb stalks before the plants rushed into flower very early - perhaps because of the warm dry weather in April. Never mind, the flowers are worth having too.

Rhubarb flowers are rather splendid

 

 

Late last summer we sowed miner's lettuce seed. It has certainly made itself at home! This little plant has many names - winter purslane, claytonia, spring beauty and the Latin montia perfoliata. It is a mild tasting cool weather salad plant, rich in vitamin C.

Miner's lettuce overwinters here with no difficulty

Houda and her Mum and baby sister joined us in the garden this week. With no garden of their own, they love spending time here.

Houda enjoyed helping us