I am deadheading night and day, Cruella has a new broom and the chickens are disrespecting Tango

By now your garden should be at its peak, with flowers galore, soft fruits and figs etc coming out of your ears. And yes, I know it’s hot, but when the going gets tough, the tough get gardening. As if all this isn’t enough Cruella has upgraded her broom to a digital model, she says it is the equivalent of the Airfryer of brooms, but I don’t know what she is talking about. The photo below shows a delighted Cruella with her new broom.

Oh! and the chickens are trying to make Tango the lonely blind Labrador homeless and are disrespecting him. Anyway, on with the gardening.

5th August 2025. Things I have been doing lately:

• Deadheading
• Harvesting and preserving figs
• Dealing with the Chillis disaster
• The chickens are disrespecting Tango

Deadheading. You have done all the hard work, planting seeds, potting on, planting out etc. And now you can enjoy your lovely summer flowers. Even if you shamefully went out and bought your plants, I can forgive you, as long as you deadhead every day.

Every plant will attempt to flower only once and then put all its energy into setting seed. The plants whole purpose is to fulfill its life cycle by setting the next generation. However, if you let this happen then all you will mainly get is a quick flush of flower then borders full of brownish wilting plant stems.

If you want flowers all summer then you need to deadhead daily. At its simplest this means taking off the spent flowers heads to encourage the plant to continue to flower.

Most deadheading is very simple. Take your secateurs to just under the spent flowers head, but don’t cut there. Instead, slide your secateurs down the stem of the plant till you meet the next flush of leaves, cut here. In this way your cut will be at a growth node and you will not be leaving behind deadwood that could get infected. However, sometimes you have to deadhead certain plants differently so I have outlined some examples below.

Marigolds. Marigolds are stalwarts in my flower beds and are wonderful flowerers all summer. You deadhead Marigolds in the traditional way by moving your secateurs down the stem. See photos.

Petunias. I have planted Petunias from seed this year and they have been delightful. Once they get going they flower profusely with new flowers every day. To get the best out of Petunias I deadhead them every morning and sometimes twice a day.

You do not prune Petunias, instead you deftly pluck out the spent flowers. However, it is difficult at first to tell which is a new flower and which is a spent flower. So you have to train your eye to tell the difference. A new unopened flower will come straight out from the stem as a closed funnel (which to be honest can look dead).

A spent flower that has been left and not deadheaded soon enough looks exactly like a new flower with the only difference that it has a slight curl at the end, and if you feel it, it will feel a little bit crusty. The first photo below shows an emerging flower, whilst the second shows a spent flower.

Cruella just looked over my shoulder, read this and said “nobody cares about your bloody flowers”.

Roses. Most of my roses are single bloomers and in the main it is all over by late May with another little flush roundabout now. The one exception is an old standard rose that I planted in a hedge years ago. This thrives on neglect and flowers beautifully all summer. To prune roses, wait until most of the colour has gone out of the individual blooms and then deadhead by sliding your secateurs down the stem as outlined above. The photo below shows my lovely old rose flowering away and how to deadhead.

Rain Lily. By now all of my bulb plants have flowered, been deadheaded and are happily sleeping in the soil till next Spring. The one exception is a lovely little pot of Rain Lily (Zephranthes Carinata). This lovely little plant flowers like crazy, but like all bulbs you just take off the seed head and let the stems die back naturally. It will be cut back to the soil in the autumn, but now it is time to just enjoy. The photos below show the little wonder.

Harvesting and preserving figs. If you pruned your fig tree correctly, then by now you will be awash with figs. Luckily I love figs, but even I can’t keep up with the harvest. The photos below show my daily harvest from two trees.

Now there are lots of things you can make with figs, so just look it up on the internet. But, if you want to preserve that luscious juicy feeling through till the autumn then I recommend drying your figs in the sun and then freezing them for use later.

It is quite simple as long as you remember that your figs will be under attack from ants, flys and birds, so you have to protect them. All you need is a few mesh baking type trays, fly coverings which you can get from most “China” shops (sorry those of you in the US, it is a common term in Spain).

Cut your figs into halves and then space them out in rows on your mesh tray. Put this out into your garden on a table in full sun all day. You must place the legs of your table into pots of water to ensure that ants can’t climb up and destroy your figs. The easiest thing to do is just cut a plastic orange or milk bottle in two and fill the bottom with water.

Leave your figs in full sun all day, but take them indoors each night and keep them covered. It takes about two to three days to dry the figs. The first photo below shows my sun drying technique, whilst the second shows some figs ready to freeze. They can be used as a snack or used in cereals and porridge.

Dealing with the Chillis disaster. I have grown lots of Chilli plants from seed this year. I had so many that I kept 8 but have given lots away to friends. All was going well with plenty of flowers and nascent Chillis; that was until the chickens found them. I had placed them in pots at the rear of our house where the chickens seldom go, but I came out one morning to find the plants stripped of all flowers and the little Chillis and most of the leaves.

I was extremely distressed and complained to Cruella (my wife), but she just shrugged her shoulders and said “girls will be girls, you shouldn’t have left the stupid things there anyway”. In the end I put my plants up on tables out of the reach of the chickens, but then we had a terrible storm that blew all the plants off the table and removed all the new little Chillis. I have persevered and at last I have some Chillis. See the photos below for the hapless chilli plants and my little harvest.

The chickens are disrespecting Tango. Tango the lonely blind Labrador was for so many years top dog. Together with his late brother Nero he rampaged around the garden, guarded the house and was generally just lovely. However, lately age and ill health have forced him down the animal pecking order. Now 17, blind, deaf, only three good legs and a gigantic tumour he cuts a sad figure. To me he will always be a puppy, but Cruella and her chickens laugh at him, mock his infirmities and snigger when he can’t get up. He is a bit like Samuel chained to the pillars by the Philistines in the temple of Dagon.

Tango’s situation has been made worse by Cruella’s new broom. She has been distracted with test flights and the chickens and their friend the Dove have started picking on Tango. They turn their backs to him every time he walks past and just snigger. They try and stop him entering the house by blocking the doorway. However, the latest indignity is the worst; the Dove has started bathing in Tango’s drinking bowl.

Tango has started having stress nose bleeds, so we are pulling together a “class action” to prove cruelty to dogs and Chillis. We are still working on the paper work, I will let you know how we get on. The photos below show Cruella starting one of her test flights, followed by various acts of cruelty.