The expected heat for this time of the year has arrived, and again, after a few days rain everything in the garden seems to have bloomed at once. Flowers, shrubs and trees are at their best, and it takes a lot of effort now to keep them at their peak and to prolong flowering. It is also necessary to look out for the 'nasties'!
Since returning from a week in Scotland – where we had Spanish type weather! – I found that slugs and snails were having a feast and ants, ants and yet more ants were everywhere. The climbing honeysuckle, clematis, passion lowers all needed tidying up after a bit of pruning, and the roses especially needed to be dead-headed.
Roses are blooming earlier this year according to my previous years diaries. One can't help but notice that the local council gardening departments are planting them everywhere these days and how rapidly they grow and produce such gorgeous blooms. Unfortunately, they don't seem to plant many perfumed varieties, and I wonder if they are fed routinely through their watering systems.
I spread teabags and banana skins around the roots of the roses and will try to feed them fortnightly now with high potash tomato type fertiliser to encourage more blooms. Most of my other plants are also treated regularly at this time of year. Another task is to keep the potted plants free from all dead and decaying leaves which encourage bugs to hide and multiply there.
With the increasing heat, I try to move the more vulnerable plants to a shadier position, especially the vegetables in pots which all need daily watering and feeding now. My spinach has bolted very quickly this year as well as some of the lettuce and salad leaves, which are flowering. This affects the taste, so the affected plants will have to be removed.
One should now be sowing more seeds at regular intervals to ensure a constant supply, but as we are – hopefully - moving house shortly I shall need to resort to buying fresh at the markets again.
One of the best and tastiest salad vegetables I have growing at present is a perennial spring onion. I intend to 'pot some up' to take with me when we move. They do very well in one of the shadier spots in the garden.
My daughter and I visited Ray and Nesta's garden on the way to Caravaca in Murcia some time ago and got a bunch from there. My daughter told me her onions are now being passed around at her allotment garden in Brighton – one of the great pleasures of gardening is swapping plants and memories.