How Grows It? (August)

 

 

 

Arh, there you are.  Cushty - didn't want to start without you. 

 

A warm welcome back to G.H.Q. for this, another month’s shake down.  I say warm.  The last week of July was as cold and wet as a St Bernard’s nose and, can’t let that slide by without reminding you that we also had an entire month’s rainfall in just one day – and all the trimmings.  Well, we just had to hunker in, batten down the hatches and wait til they blew the ‘all clear’ on that one before venturing out to check on the Zinnias (our new BFFs).  Fear not following that fracas no irrevocable damage sustained.  Excepting for the odd droopy Dahlia and some recumbent cornflowers; nothing dislodged from its moorings.  Good enough. 

 

I know what you’re thinking. 

What about the carrots?  Right?  Well yes, precisely, what indeedy?  Nothing.  Nada.  No idea why that particular fixture was scratched but they just never bothered themselves with anything so prosaic as, like, growing.  Meanwhile the companion plants (lilies) to whom we sub-let the pot have shot up like Sputniks and produced the biggest, plumpest, ripest buds ever known.  Proving that heat, light and water sources were all abundantly available to anyone who cared to avail themselves of said amenities. 

 

Well those carrots can please themselves because, knowing as we do that there's more than one way to skin a cat; undeterred, we’ve started off another batch and will naturally keep you posted about their development.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carrots excepting, we are getting a mini harvest twice a week now.  See, here this charming spring onion.  Maybe only one but so packed with flavour.  Took me right back to Catweazle, Kerplunk and salads of yesteryear; simpler days when salads were salads and not something in a plastic bag, sanitised, sterilised, chlorinated and homogenised.

 

 

 

 

 

Like this, entirely home grown salad

 

This bed has been a’fizz for weeks tangy and zesty like a bag of sherbets and even though it's nowhere near going off the boil, so the season rolls on and new headline stars of the repertoire continue to emerge. 



Or in this case a few moody cosmos.  

These Cosmos we started off inside, just to be on the safe side.  Then latterly sowed a few outside to follow-on.  Well, if you want giant beefy great brutes of Cosmos (which we don't), then this is the way to go.  The last time we inadvertently grew giant ones they sprouted upwards; they went up four or five feet.  This time they're very much more round and billowy, of full habit, bulging in all directions and showing next to nothing in the way of bud. 

Not sure if this is down to the feed they've had, encouraging them to put on a lot of foliage at the expense of flowers.  Either way we were aiming for something much less substantial.  Not these rotund and frothy giant mounds, reminiscent of a mucky uncle on a family picnic.

Giant plant - one measly flower!!!

 

I was about to say that this entire bed is altogether a definite fail because it's not as was originally envisaged.  The object was to achieve something neat and tidy, compact.  Just some nice low growing ankle ticklers, serene and demure.

But of course it's not a failure because it's a teeming mazuma of life. 

Loving the Zinnias and these vibrant vampish Geraniums.   

So that's OK, this is only year one after all and any garden progressively devolves so hopefully we can learn from this and avoid over-cluttering next year.   

Meanwhile, brace yourself as there's more bad news to come.

 

Tragedy has struck.

 

Yes, it was like dawn of the aphids on the runners. 

We warned you about those tiny bugs that attack the flower at the tip so no bean can develop, but we didn't anticipate a plague of blackfly. 

One plant was completely smothered so you’d have to hack your way through, while the other remained relatively bug free.  Weird.  I’d always assumed that they swarmed in, but guess it's actually down to where the eggs are laid.  Hatch out.  Instant infestation.  Had to spray.  Sorry; I’m not an organic manic but like to keep chemical free as far as possible on home grown.  Which kind of chafes as you’ve don’t got a Scoobie on the squirting that the kit and kaboodle you’re hauling back from the supermarket has taken.  

 

 

ALIVE, ALIVE-Oh

DEADED

Anyway a few weeks on and the plants which were attacked have taken a direct hit , shrivelled and turned brown. 


Those guys must have sucked the guts right out. 

 

 

However, it is now believed that some plants may now be quietly staging something of a revival.

Either way, the beans we've had off the four plants in the undamaged pot are sublime.  Best meal of the year so far, a plate of runner beans dripping in melted butter - get yourself round that. 

 

So what have we learned this month? 

 

GET SOME ZINNIAS IN YOUR LIFE

is what. 

Whoa, these guys are the real deal and have really got the party kicking off.