I delve into the border lands and Tango gets picked in an identity parade

I hate to tell you this but summer is coming to an end and there is lots you need to do now to get the garden ready for next year. But, even though there is lots to do don’t forget to enjoy the garden through the late summer phase. Just to give you an overview, this post covers the following:

• thinning out your borders and beds
• collecting seeds for next year
• picking fruit
• Taking care of your roses
• Kerry’s olive tree is shaping up
• Tango the lonely blind Labrador gets framed

9th September 2023. Things I have been doing lately:

Thinning out your borders and beds. All of your borders and beds will now be getting past their best. But if you want your plants to keep blooming till the end, then you will need to do a bit of work.

Firstly, you need to keep deadheading every day. The deadheading process stops the plant concentrating on seed production and will ensure that it keeps on flowering. There will come a point where the plant can produce no more flowers, this is usually by the time it has more than 50% dead or dying stems. When this happens, you should let the plant die gracefully but leave it in place for a few weeks to feed the insects.

Secondly, you need to thin out your dead plants after leaving them in place for a few weeks. By eventually removing dead plants you are letting more air and sun get to those remaining. In addition you are exposing the soil so that those plants you want to self seed (in my case Osteospermums) can drop their seed and eventually give you hundred of Autumn seedlings. The photo below shows a typical trug of deadheads and dead plants.

Collecting seeds for next year. If you mark up your best blooms each year and then collect their seed, you begin to build up a range of large, strong super blooming plants that are resistant to disease. The photo below shows me with some of my Marigolds that I have selectively bred over more than 10 years. Note that instead of being 10 inches high, they are over a metre and bursting with flowers.

Collecting and storing seeds is easy, so there is no excuse for anyone not trying. I always start by harvesting those flowers that I had marked early in the summer as the best blooms that I may want seed from. The photo below shows some of the many that I marked up. You can see why I mark them when they are in bloom, because you can tell nothing from the dried seed head. The final photo below shows the range of seeds I was collecting. From left to right:

• Dutch Marigolds
• Ordinary Marigolds
• Pink Trumpet Vine
• Jasminium

The seed collecting process for Marigolds is very simple, you just have to remember to mark up the best blooms early in the summer. There are 5 simple stages shown in the photos below.

1. select the seed head and snap off the stem
2. gently rub off the fuzz on top of the seed head
3. roll the seed head between your finger and thumb whilst gently squeezing
4. let the seeds fall into your other hand whilst continuing to roll and squeeze
5. let the seeds fall gently between your hands whilst blowing to remove chaff

The process for Trumpet vine is different. Here the seed develop in long seed cases that can be over a metre long. To access these seeds you need to gently squeeze them till they split and expose the seeds lying in rows within the seed case. I find it is best to release these seeds over a waiting envelope or they inevitably will blow away (which is exactly what they are meant to do in nature). The technique is shown below. Click on each photo for a larger view.

With Jasminium I use a similar technique, but in this case you have to release the seeds directly into the envelope or they just go everywhere. Again the technique is shown below. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Once you have collected your seeds, place them into new white envelopes, label them with the species and year, then store them in a cool dark place till you need them.

Keep picking fruit. By now most of your fruits should be ripe or almost there. The trick to getting the most of your fruit is to beat the birds to it. Hopefully you will have netted most of your fruit, but if you haven’t, the birds will be blessing you. You need to check your fruit every day and pick off anything that is ripe. Don’t try and leave all your fruit on the tree thinking that you will pick it all together when ripe. The birds will beat you to it every time. Birds know exactly when fruit is ripe as they have amazing colour sight far better than human beings. Whilst we only have three colour detecting cones in our eyes, birds have four and can see in ultraviolet so they know exactly by the colour when your fruit is ripe. The photos below show an example of my daily fruit picking. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Taking care of your roses. Roses grow wonderfully well in Spain if they are looked after properly. This means plenty of water and feeding at least three a year. We are now about to see the late September second flowering of roses. For this to be successful you need to give your roses a deep watering (in addition to your normal regime) once a week. Also you need to give them the last feed of the year. If you do both these things now you will be well rewarded. The first photo shows an action packed deep watering in progress, whilst the second shows one type of rose feed you could use. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Kerry’s olive tree. Regular readers of this blog will remember that my friends Kerry and her husband Glynn had inherited a mature olive tree when they moved into their new house. They foolishly accepted my advice that it should be reshaped and cloud pruned to give their garden an interesting focal point. Under my technical direction Kerry and Glynn helped to reshape the tree into what at first looked like a tree blasted by lightning.

Despite Glynn’s threats and Kerry’s tears I assured them that all would be well. The photos below show how the tree is developing nicely and we will be able to reshape it in the next few months. I will keep you abreast of progress; I am just glad they have called off their lawyers. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Tango the lonely blind Labrador has been framed. What happened was this. I came out one morning and one of my large standards in a big pot had been smashed. I knew straight away it was the chickens as I found feathers all around the smashed pot. When I confronted Cruella (my wife), she denied everything and said her girls would never do something like that. But I knew it was just more intimidation as part of their Just Stop Watering (JSW) campaign. The photos below show the smashed pot and the damning feather evidence. Click on each photo for a larger view.

Anyway she insisted that under the UN Chicken Rights Legislation we must follow due process and have an identity parade and a trial. The whole thing was a set up and Tango didn’t stand a chance. The identity parade included Tango and a fat chicken called Bertha (who Cruella said had a protected characteristic and should not be body shamed). Tango was of course picked out.

The whole trial was then conducted in chickenese and Tango was refused legal aid and an interpreter; I tried to help but I only know chickenese for “get out of that bloody flower bed”. The end result was that poor old Tango was sentenced to a weeks solitary confinement in his kennel. When I told him the sentence he was very stoical and accepted his fate. His head did bow and a few tears fell from his translucent milky white eyes.

The first photos below show the judge and the jury, no wonder Tango was fitted up. The final photo shows Tango when I told him of his sentence: brave, stoical and accepting. The only good news is that I spent the week in there with him; I read him “Lassie” stories and we shouted anti chicken slogans till late in the night. We only stopped chanting when Cruella turned off the lights; I sprayed “Tango is innocent” on the chicken coop. Click on each photo for a larger view.