Six on Saturday: Buds and Blooms

This week was spent doing not much as the majority of the garden is finished and it rained quite a bit; there was a long visit to the allotment to battle the weeds after all the rain. All in all, fairly uneventful but I guess not every six on Saturday can be a roller-coaster of emotions.

The most exciting thing to appear in the garden was a peanut flower – Fred is right, they are very small and blink and you will miss them. I only found it after it had wilted and I am not sure if it will even turn into a peanut -I will wait to see if it heads towards the ground.

Other things in bud, are the beans (orange flower ‘Lady Di’) and the sweet pea (purple flower ‘Old Spice’); the beans were very fast and the sweet pea quite slow but I am interested to see them both as I have not grown either before. The sweet pea are supposed to be highly fragrant and the beans stringless.

 

 

Things are growing fast; I think the combination of hot weather (the night temp has not dropped below 12 for more than a couple of weeks now) and the rain has ramped things up. I had to relocate (not sure if it will survive) the cauliflower to the allotment because it was too big and the peas grew too tall for the frame.

A couple of months ago I wondered outloud if the peas would create a lot of stems or just one stem for each seed. It turns out the people who said that I should sow more may have been slightly off the mark. The type of pea I have put out several shoots each and now are very tall and thick; blocking all the sun, shading all behind them.

 

 

Not sure if it is a good thing but I created an arbour out of peas now shading the rhubarb instead of the tomatoes – I ate the first pea and it was wonderful.

 

 

The other things that have grown (one unexpected, one gladly) are the kohlrabi and cucumber. The kohlrabi was a seed from a friend and I thought it would be small like a beetroot but a little bigger (I also have a ‘blauespeck’ which is supposed to be small so maybe they will fit better). These are growing like broccoli and have not even made a ‘root’ yet (I have no luck with things of the ground, roots or stem). The cucumber I am happy about as these are the third plants I put out; first to survive and I think I really need to wait for the weather to be superwarm before doing so. Tomatoes, corn and courgette don’t mind; melon and cucumbers definitely do.

 

 

Some flowers that appeared; my friend gave me a gerbera last year as a gift and when it finished flowering I put it outside to live the rest of its days in the fresh London air. However, every time I looked it hadn’t quite died even through the snow and the cold; turns out it is hardy and is now flowering again. Just goes to show you should never throw any plant away until truly dead.

Clematis; I like the dark purple colour – only problem is they are on the top of the vines so I can’t see them.

Lastly, exciting fruits developing; chillies and raspberries, I just saw my first nearly ripe raspberry on my red canes. I am definitely losing the chilli wars but I finally have three chillies growing from the seeds I got in a seed swap – they are called Sulawesi, although I think that is the place he got them from rather than the name of the variety.

 

 

That’s not all that is happened but a choice of six things, we finished the front garden (sort of) so I will post on that during the week. I hope you are all enjoying your weekends and for more six on Saturday head over to The Propagator.