Through the Garden Gate--August 2023

On Gardener's World last week Monty Don described his garden as 'chaos'. That's a good description of my garden at the moment. It's that time of year when many plants are now going over, others getting big and flopping over. 

If I go out to do some gardening I'm never sure where to start. Putting in plant supports earlier in the year is something I never get right, I forget which ones need the support and I often don't have enough of the right sized supports. As I've been working in the garden trying to tidy up I've been trying to decide which plants to cut back and which to leave over the winter for the wildlife.

The highlight of the garden over the last few weeks has been and still is the Hydrangea 'Limelight' with it's lovely creamy white conical flower heads. It's about four or five years since I planted it and each year more flowers have appeared. This year I've been able to cut some of them for the house without spoiling the display. 

Down in the shed border there's a tangled mess of white lysimachia and pink Japanese anemones. It does look to be out of control but I like it. The Hosta bed in the front garden is quite a dark area which doesn't get much sun and a couple of years ago I planted three white Japanese anemones to brighten it up.  These started flowering a couple of weeks ago and are looking good.

I always sow some annual flower seeds for the  allotment cutting bed and usually have enough left to fill a few gaps in the garden. I grew Lavatera for the first time this year and am quite pleased with how well they've done. They seem to be trying to climb up the arch with the Getrude Jekyll rose. They are almost the same colour too.

Now at the end of the month the weather seems to be improving a little. I'm hoping we might get a nice warm spell in September and perhaps the garden will perk up a bit.

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down By the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Rainy days and harvesting crops

 I've been picking blackberries recently from the lane outside our allotment gate. It looked like I was the first to get to them. Usually I'm late picking them and often miss out. But the lane has got very overgrown this year so I don't think many people are walking that way along the path.

We are unfortunate that our neighbours on either side of our plot as well as another next but one have not been maintaining their plots, so access to their end of the lane is full of nettles and brambles. This is where the fruit is.  I'm hoping we will get some new neighbours soon who will look after their plots as the council do an inspection at this time of year. It would be nice to have some neighbours who we can chat with and who will keep their plots looking reasonably tidy. Whoever takes them on will have a difficult job on as they have been allowed to get into a really bad state.

Picking blackberries always makes me think of autumn. It's the time of year coming up to late summer when we start to harvest a lot of our allotment crops and down on our plot we are getting some good harvests. Our jobs when we go to the plot are more about watering the greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers and picking fruit, vegetables and flowers. If we have any time to spare after that we try to catch up on weeding.

With all the rain we have had recently not much work has been done and we have been dodging the showers. But on better days we've been able to get back to doing important jobs. I have cut down the pea and broad bean plants and weeded the bed. I also pulled up all the onions and put them to dry out in the cold frames. There were an awful lot of weeds in that bed which also has leeks in it. So I spent some time last week weeding them all out.

When I planted up the brassica bed months ago, I noticed that there were some nasturtiums which had self seeded from last year, so I left them there thinking that they would make good companion plants for the cabbages. Unfortunately they seem to have become a bit over friendly and run riot, taking over the bed so much I could barely see the cabbages. So the nasturtiums had to come out. It seemed such a shame to get rid of them as they were so colourful, but I managed to cut a lot of the flowers off to take home. I know the nasturtiums will be back next year as they drop a lot of seeds. Once they were out of the way I could see that I had a few cabbages, some Cavalo Nero kale  and purple sprouting broccoli.  

In the other cabbage patch next to them the cabbages and kale I planted early in the year are doing really well and there were no nasturtiums in that bed.

We've had a lot of courgettes, but I did plant rather too many, so it's been courgettes with everything for our meals. Thankfully they are are now coming to an end and I'm just picking little ones which are quite nice. Now the climbing beans are starting to appear and I know there will be a lot, there always are. In the greenhouses the tomatoes and cucumbers are producing good crops. I have made tomato chutney and soup and we have had lots of salads with chunks of cucumbers. I have given lots of my surplus crops away to friends and neighbours who seemed very happy to receive them.

The blackberries have gone in the freezer and will be used to make apple and blackberry jam and maybe a crumble. My daughter has a Bramley apple tree in her garden and lets me me help myself to the apples. So the rain doesn't seem to have affected any of the vegetables we've grown, but I do wish we could have some better weather.