By now your garden should be in full bloom and this is probably as good as it gets in Spain. Although July has been hot we know that the heat of August will just knock the garden over the edge and begin the long slow roll into autumn. I know that sounds a bit depressing but it’s not. We gardeners love all seasons and a key part of gardening is constantly thinking and planning ahead for the next season and next year. Having said that don’t forget to enjoy the moment; stroll round your garden every day, talk to your plants, compliment them on how well they are looking and sympathise with the ones that are just losing their bloom.
Anyway, enough of this sentimentality, I think I am becoming the Emily Dickinson of gardening. There are lots of things to be busy with not least picking your best flowers for seed, trimming some key plants back and surprisingly netting the big fig. On with the show.
26th July 2023. Things I have been doing lately:
Judging the best flowers for next years seed. This is the time of year when you should be beginning to think of next years seed. I know a lot of you don’t garden from seed and instead prefer to go out and buy plants, which is fine, but growing from seed is so much more fulfilling as a gardener, and it’s free. Now that your garden is full of blooms, wander round and pick the loveliest with the best shape and the most vibrant colour as potential seed heads.
You now need to mark these blooms or you are in danger of just deadheading them when they die back. I wrap a piece of wide masking tape around my selected blooms which hopefully stops me deadheading them – though mistakes do happen. Later in the summer when the plants has fulfilled all of its potential I will then harvest these seed-heads for my next years crop. The first photo below shows my trusty masking tape ready to fulfil its role. The other photos show some of my chosen blooms in situ. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Propping up plants. Most annuals will need some propping up during their short but floriferous life. If you just let them flop over, then stems get broken, flowers get squashed and it all looks a bit messy. I tend to prop up plants in two stages. When they first begin to “lean”, then I will use canes to hold back individual plants. If you have closely packed your flower beds then usually one propped up plant will hold a number of others in place. Later, as they progressively need more propping I will tie them in bunches around a line of canes. But let’s not get ahead of our selves, at the moment just use canes to prop up plants. The photos below show my propping activity. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Making Dame de Noche flower again. Many of you will have Dame de Noche (night flowering Jasmine) as part of your summer garden. Although this plant is not what you would term good looking, its value is in its exotic night scent which would put to shame the best perfumeries of Paris. Located next to your summer dining out areas, the Dame de Noche will astound your friends with its heady, exotic scent that comes in pulsing waves throughout the evening. The reason for this exotic night scent is that it is pollinated by a tiny little moth.
However, your Dame de Noche will have finished flowering, so if you want that scent back for the rest of the Summer then you need to act now. To get the plant to flower again you need to cut it back by one third. The important thing is the one third bit. Cut back by one third, the plant (which is growing strongly) will know it has lost its seeds, but think it has time to flower and make more seeds this season. If you cut back by more than one third then the plant will know it doesn’t have enough time to make more seeds this season and instead will draw everything back to its roots.
Once cut back, the plant will come into flower again and quite profusely. This will give you that lovely night scent all the way from the end of August right through till October which is exactly when you want it. The photos below show my Dame de Noche before and after its little trim. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Netting the big fig. Regular readers of this blog will know that the last fruit plant I net each summer is my big fig (to be honest it’s not that big) but it needs a team of at least three or four to net it. Normally this has been an international event with previous years including teams from: Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, France and last years winners from “Wigan”. Anyway I had hoped that my idiot son and Cruella (my wife) would assist me but both refused claiming that as they were chicken royalty it was beneath them. I did try and net it myself, but I kept getting tangled up and falling over wrapped in net; much to the hilarity of the chickens.
Just at my moment of greatest despair my luck changed with a ring at my doorbell and there was my saviour, an itinerant Gypsy lady, Cathy Rose Lee who had camped locally and was now looking for casual work whilst her husband Ronnie was setting up his boxing booth. Cathy agreed to help me net the fig but first she insisted on telling my fortune in tea leaves. The photo below shows Cathy mid fortune telling; it turns out she predicted my drive needs tarmacing.
Once Cathy had read my fortune and I had crossed her palm with silver, it was straight to the fig netting. By this time Cruella had agreed to lend a hand as Cathy had convinced her that good fortune would follow for her and the chickens. If you have never netted a tree then there are five stages:
- Unrolling and halving the net
- Stretching the net
- Joining the two halves of the net
- Raising the net
- Tying down
We started very well with Gipsy Cathy and Cruella working in perfect harmony as a team. The first photo shows them both enjoying the net unrolling stage. The second photo shows that they broke into a little dance as they moved to the halving process. Click on each photo for a larger view.
By the time we got to the next stage of stretching the net they were both singing harmoniously an old net stretching work song; Cathy was singing in Romani whilst Cruella harmonised in Chickenese – it was strangely haunting whilst at the same time scary. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Joining the two halves of the net is always a tricky exercise even with an experienced team, so you can imagine I was a bit apprehensive about the next stage and envisaged lots of torn areas of net. However, surprisingly they did extremely well and injected lots of fun into the process and even indulged in some “twerking” dance moves as the first photo below shows. From the final photo you can see the air of satisfaction they both feel at a net well joined. Click on each photo for a larger view.
The next stage is raising the net and this normally requires a team of five; one in each corner of the net with me in the middle with the net raising stick. The importance of this stage cannot be over stated, one slip, and you have a tangled torn net stuck high up the tree. From the photos below you can see we started off rather badly and there was lots of shouting and swearing as both Cruella and Gipsy Cathy kept getting caught up in the net. But finally we raised the net with a mighty cheer. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Gipsy Cathy was so pleased with this stage that she insisted on having a series of triumphal photos that she promised to display beside her best Capodimonte collection in her caravan. Click on each photo for a larger view.
I am pleased to say that the tying down stage went off without any problems, which was a relief after all the drama of the raising the net. This stage merely involves pulling the net down tightly over the whole tree and then tying it down with string every yard or so to the lower branches. Although the whole tree isn’t covered right to the ground, it is usually enough to put off the birds.
From the photos below you can see that the mood is much more relaxed with Cruella prefering an upright stance for tying down whilst Gipsy Cathy preferred to sit on the ground. When I asked if she was ok down there she said “don’t mind me luv, I gave birth to all my kids under a tree at hop picking, so I’m used to it”. The final photo shows the triumph of a job well done. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Spanish Garden 
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