Six on Saturday: The height of things

My parents are in town, along with my grandparents so there is not much time to complete large gardening projects. Luckily, all the planting and big jobs are finished within my back garden and the last of the planting at the allotment was completed the day before they arrived.

Here are a few pictures to show how things have grown since the start of the season, I don’t really have many to compare to but they have all started from seed at various months since the start of the year. (No sun in the back garden at the moment so photographs are a little dull.)

Tomatoes and a couple of sunflowers growing in the back raised bed are doing quite nicely – tiny sunflowers but a very thick tall trunk; lots of tomato flowers and fruit too. The sunflower is over six and a half feet (over 2 metres) and the tomatoes are a little shorter than that.

Cucumbers are now growing well; we had a few false starts as the first two plants died of wind exposure (I think) – these are third time lucky.  There is a peanut in the picture as well, last time I had one flower and have had one since but no pegs heading into the ground to form peanuts as far as I can tell.

The Jerusalem artichoke are making their way skyward (I have two containers but this is the tallest), soon they will make flowers that look very similar to sunflowers and I can cut them off to bring inside. This means they will put more energy in to grow in the tubers instead of seeds in the flowerheads. Also, ‘Lady Di’ beans are twirling around the trellis on top of the fence so I will get extra bean decorations on the fence.

This is Rocoto chilli has grown two stems (it had flowers before I could top it so I just left them) and a lot of flowers. The flowers are purple and the seeds will be black; it does not cross with other regular white flowered chilli plants so you can collect the seeds without cross pollination.

Purple chilli flowers

Speaking of purple – ‘Carruthers purple podded’ pea are growing tall despite the arch I make them grow over.

These are my tiny kiwi ‘Issai’ and passionfruit (Passiflora edulis) I was a little worried about these as the weather and postal delivery knocked them about alot but the kiwi is growing well and the passionfruit although slow is holding its own.

Now for some colour; my David Austin rose smells wonderful and the one very tall stem (it was in the complete shade during renovations so I think this is its solution) has produced more than six flowers so far.

The lily is a Lilium regale and about to open hopefully, I have warded off several lily beetles but the squirrels destroyed the rest of the flowers so far. I might have to stake it as it is a metre tall.

Lastly the peony I recently purchased as put out one flower; it is supposed to be very fragrant and grows taller than my red so will bring a little height to the garden although I don’t think I need it at the moment.

That is my six on Saturday (loosely counted) we are off to visit tower of London and hopefully come back with our heads intact. (I certainly don’t want to come back any shorter I am not as tall as my garden)

If you would like to see more six on Saturday head over to The propagator and catch up on sixes around the world.