From Sunflowers to Potatoes…
A note to make for next year, plant flowers in groups. The Amaranthus I am really pleased with, giving something different in the garden now that it is coming the end of the gardening year, and espically this year when things that have not been ruined by the constant rain have been wrecked by the strong strong winds. In the middle of it all, there are small bits of red flowing down towards the ground.
I am really pleased with this Amaranthus stuff. It seems quite robust and during the time now when most plants are past their best, these are still going strong and putting a different focal point onto things.
I really don’t know what these plants are, and I forget how come I bought them and planted them. There is nothing wrong with them at all (although some websites suggest it is a weed), I just don’t know what to expect. Well, last week I just happened to see an Amaranthus plant in full flower at The Eden Project in the rainforest Biome and it reminded me that its other name is “Love Lies Bleeding” as it is a funny red flower that sort of “dribbles” out of the top and down the leaves of the plant.
Anyway, I noticed when we got back, our own Amaranthus plants now have their “blood” starting to show.
It really needed doing weeks and weeks ago, but I finally got round to planting these things out. I am still not too sure what to expect, they are green with strange little red bits that come out of the top. Well, we shall see. I have planted them in little clumps in various places over the garden.
I am sure that by now I should have had thinned and/or repotted these… but I haven’t yet.
So much going on and so little time to do things! I have added a whole load of extra things this week, so comments are with the photos. It has been sun sun sun, hot hot hot all week, which has meant lots of watering although only on the small things. Everything else has to take their chance, including the new grass seed in the front garden which is a bit of a pity. I have watered it a couple of times, but it will come up eventually and if it doesn’t then a top up on Autumn will do the job I am sure.
Beans - only planted them a couple of days ago so no show as yet:
Rhubarb - needs picking, we have made some pies from it already:
Tayberry - this is a new one this week. One of the fruit bushes that we got reduced from Woolworths and it seems to have taken and has new growth on it:
Wild Strawberries - some nice little flowers and some small green strawberries starting to show. That and the two plants are now multiplying like it is going out of business:
Blackcurrents - this is the third or fourth year (I forget) and this year the bush never got pruned and so it is really looked after itself. Mind you, a good growth of flowers appearing:
Sunflowers - the ones that started it all. These are no four weeks old and no more slug problems after using pellets. They are well on their way outside while a couple more are just starting to show inside (to replace the slug eaten ones) as well as two planted directly outside showing now too:
Potatoes - I managed to get a couple more off freecycle, so now we have four seed potatoes in the pot. The existing ones the growth was about an inch above the soil, so I have now topped it up with more soil. The next time I have to do this, it will be at the top:
Grass - don’t be fooled by the photo, it is actually quite patchy and the hot sunny weather has not helped at all. Mind you, it does look like it is meant to be there and from a distance is a nice carpet of green. It is meant to rain tomorrow:
Tomatoes: now repotted and outside:
Chillies - now repotted outside. The stones are to keep them upright:
Clematis is growing very well, about an inch or more per day. It will soon be up to the wire and off along the fence:
Amaranthus - I really need to read up on what to do with these:
Basil - growing nicely and time to repot them I think:
Cress - more luck this second time and half of it eaten, yum:
Mini Sunflowers - ready to plant outside:
Sweetpeas - every single seed seems to have done something which is fantastic:
Salad - still growing but very slowly, and little bits of it dieing too, not doing too well. I think we will put some seed outside at sometime:
We are certainly in business now. Sunflowers have been outside for a week and while we have lost three of them, the remaining ones are still going. We have planted a couple of new ones straight into the ground and are awaiting them to appear, we still need to plant one indoors and then we would have had replaced all the ones the slugs had. We are using slug pellets now.
Potatoes showed above the soil this week and have now been buried under a load of new compost on top. We will keep an eye on them and keep topping them up until the soil is at the top of the pot. A long way yet to go.
Grass in the front is doing really well, we have had some warm days with sun and rain. These last days it is been solid sunshine and so tonight has been my first evening of watering it, with a watering can(!) - it takes about four goes but gets the main bits drenched in a bit of water.
Sunflowers:
Potatoes:
Grass:
Salad is growing slowly. I think a bit of over watering at one time as killed one or two plants, but we are starting to have some nice looking baby salad leaves:
Sweet Peas are coming up!!! This is fantastic. The seeds are from sweet peas that we got off family from Cornwall last year and we saved some of the seeds:
Sunflowers:
Basil is doing fine. I think I need to repot them now, so I have that on my list to do:
Chillies. Our of four, two have really got going whereas a third one has yet to develop any leaves, I don’t know if it will now. The fourth…. it is still somewhere not yet appeared:
Cress is much more of a success second time around. Less watering and it is looking good - ready to eat infact:
Amaranthus is in need or repotting now I think!
Tomatoes certainly in need of repotting!!
I will have to look up info about these plants as today we saw the first shoots of the seeds we sowed just a couple of days ago! They are red, I remember that much.
I don’t really know much about these as a plant or flower, they are some of the seeds that I bought off Ebay. I beleive they have red flowers, we wait and see what happens. They are tiny seeds, so we scattered them between two pots.
I thought I would give it a try, I had a small list of plants that I would like to try in the garden and so had a quick search on Ebay. I found a seller who for 99p sold seeds and combined the postage too at just 85p for as many orders as you liked.
We have Red Amaranthus, Italian White Sunflowers, Poached Egg Plant, and Velvet Queen Sunflowers. The sunflowers are the ones I really wanted, these are both quite small ones and will give a white head, and a dark red head (hence their names).
Planting in seed trays sometime over the weekend.
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