Homeschooling has at last finished and it’s time to spend some more time in my garden and visiting gardens for some time out and inspiration, including a beautiful visit to RHS Wisley.
The weather the last month has been challenging in the garden, the constant breeze has been drying everything in the garden and it is suffering as a result. With the light sandy soil, the nutrients wash out so easily that my focus this month has been how to feed my plants and keep them going through the summer. They flower, but I notice growth isn’t as strong as in gardens with a heavier soil so now I have filled up the borders I need to focus on plant health and nutrition. Every 2 years I try to mulch the flowerbeds with well rotted manure and this year it didn’t happen for obvious reasons. I’ve enjoyed using the seaweed extract feed, but have noticed that my hydrangea Annabelle that is 3 years old hasn’t flowered so far this year and the leaves were yellowing. After doing some research it looks like the plant is iron deficient so I have purchased some Sulphate of iron and given them a feed, along with a mulch of manure. The leaves seem to be turning greener already so I’m hoping I might get some flowers at the end of the season. Fingers crossed. In an attempt to give the garden a boost chicken manure pellets have been spread amongst the borders and key plants have been mulched with manure after a good water. I’ll confess the garden is smelling rather ripe at the moment, and we are in desperate need of some rain to dilute that, or the neighbours might not enjoy sitting in their gardens during this heat wave.
Plans are underway to organise some garden tours of local gardens next year, and because of this I have started looking at plants in the garden and thinking about how to propagate or grow more plants from seed so that we can have a plant sale. Now is the perfect time to collect seed. Wait for a dry day and once the seeds are ripe, snip off the seed head and shake into a bowl or envelope. Paper containers are more efficient as they keep the seeds dry. So far I have collected what I assume to be in the millions of foxgloves seeds, some of these I will start off in seed trays shortly, and I have collected lupin and salvia seeds although Salvia are easy to propagate so I will be trying to organise some new plants for next year. A client also kindly shared some poppy seeds with me as well so I will be trying some of those in the garden and growing some seedlings. With needing to maximise use of my coldframe and mini greenhouse, I needed some more seed trays and Peat Free compost and the little seed envelopes come in handy for keeping track of what seeds are in there.
Of course its impossible to go to Longacres to buy manure, compost and seed trays and not come out with more plants, and after the success of the agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ in my pots, I bought 5 more really healthy looking plants to go as a clump in the flowerbed. I cleared the area, and took out some gaura that self seeded, dug over the soil, and added in some manure and I’m hoping in a few weeks I will have a beautiful display of agastache for the bees to enjoy.
Other than that at this time of year, it is about deadheading plants to get them to continue flowering, feeding and watering and don’t forget to take the time to sit back and enjoy all of your hard work. In this heat it is about making sure wildlife have access to water and enjoying the activity in the garden.
What a lovely read Sarah thank you.i have so much to learn
Lack of transport to a garden centre as been an issue this year as well as pandemic.but I ll keep doing what I can when I can