We are now in the dog days of Summer; the heat is intense, plants are wilting, water bills are high and Cruella (my wife) is refusing to fit nappies (diapers for US readers) to her chickens. I know it is all a bit surreal, but you should try living here. Anyway on with the gardening.
20th August 2025. Things I have been doing lately:
- Selecting the best blooms for seed
- Cutting back Petunias
- Dealing with tree suckers
- Rescuing a common houseleek
- Petitioning for chicken nappies
Selecting the best blooms for seed. Now is the time to consider which blooms you are not going to deadhead, but instead save for next years seed. As you wander up and down your borders deadheading, look out for the best blooms and mark them for seed. To be honest I should have done this earlier in the summer but I have been just too busy.
The benefit of marking the best flowers for seed, is that you do not accidentally deadhead them. Just get some masking tape, select the blooms you want to save, and wrap a band of masking tape around the stem to remind you not to deadhead this particular flower. I do this because when the flowers shrivel and die they all look alike, but if I mark the best ones I will save them for my next years seed. The photos below show some of my marked blooms.
Cutting back Petunias. I have mentioned in recent post that I have been delighted with Petunias this year. They have flowered like crazy and given me much joy. As long as you deadhead them each day – by plucking off spent flowers – they will keep flowering. However, by now they are getting a bit leggy as you can see in the photo below.
To keep them flowering then you need to cut back the longer stems by a third to half. Don’t do all of them just select a few each week and prune them with secateurs. The photos below show me pruning to ensure flowering all the way to October hopefully.
Dealing with tree suckers. Tree suckers are those little bright green shoots that you see sprouting from the bottom of the trunk on your trees. It is important that you remove these as they are in effect sucking the goodness out of your tree before it reaches the leaves and fruit.
Tree suckers are particularly a problem on older trees, especially those suckers that are growing from below the soil as these may be root stock suckers that are no good to anyone. You need to remove suckers on a regular basis. The simplest way is to pull sharply downwards on the sucker and tear it away from the trunk, this method is far better than cutting with secateurs, as it seems to inhibit further growth.
The photos below show a sample of my trees before and after with a variety of types of suckers. Click on each photo for a larger view.
Rescuing a common house leek. I don’t have many succulents in pots, but a while ago I potted up some house leeks with a variety of other succulents and they looked rather nice. Well, they all started to die and rot and it was all my fault. It was simple really, my nice pot of succulents sat between two pots of petunias, and as I watered one pot of petunias and moved across to the next, I would just give the succulents a squirt of water. But never do this, or you will get what I got a pot of rot. See the photo below. Click on each photo for a larger view.
If you catch this in time, then the solution is simple, stop watering! Then you have to dig up the plants, clean them of dead foliage and rot and repot them in a nice free draining compost with added vermiculite. Once settled water them once a month if necessary The photos below show my little succulents being rescued and revived.
Petitioning for chicken nappies. I don’t know how to put this delicately, but Cruella’s chickens are poohing everywhere they shouldn’t. I expect them to pooh in the garden, in fact I welcome it. But lately they have been congregating on our Naya (veranda), covering it in Pooh and then sneaking into the house to torment Tango the lonely blind Labrador by poohing near him. He then rolls over to ease his many pains and ends up covered in chicken Pooh.
I approached Cruella (my wife) with the problem, but she flat out denied that it was her girls. She began to blush and exclaimed that her girls were too well brought up for such things and were well versed in “toilette”. Anyway I presented her with the photo evidence below. Click on each photo for a larger view.
At first she denied they were real photos and I must have photoshopped her girls in. When I insisted this was not the case she changed her story and said her girls were just popping in to see if Tango the lonely blind Labrador was ok!?
Anyway, she has refused my suggestion of chicken nappies and instead insisted that I should put up an old fly screen over the door. So far poor old Tango has got tangled in the screen and fallen out the door three times; the chickens just stand back and mock him in chickenese as he struggles to free himself. It is a bit like watching Samson being mocked in the temple of Dagon by the Philistines.
Spanish Garden 
Your garden is exquisite, I only wish I could have one as nice here in Hellish Texas. It’s been 100 plus lately, so I’m thrilled that anything survives. I’m also saving blooms for seeds, the ones that survive. Your Chickens are pretty cute and fluffy, and they’re also quite educated. We had BBQ Chicken a few nights ago, with fresh corn and Okra. So tasty. A typical summer Texas meal. I’ll send you some BBQ sauce if needed. I enjoy your posts and the information you share with other gardeners.
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Hi Phil,
That is hot! I am surprised you have any plants left, but just keep going, remember the Alamo. That is my only Texas joke.
The garden in Spain is in full bloom, but just going over slightly as the blooms become less and we tip towards Autumn. Cruella and I run our Church Kids Summer Club on every Thursday in August and it is exhausting. However, every year I manage to sneak a bit of gardening into the children. This year they are painting flower pots and then I give them an Aeonium cutting that they plant.
We are planting seeds in more ways than one.
God bless.
Read my gardening blog
http://www.spanish-garden.comhttp://www.spanish-garden.com/
How to develop a Spanish garden and care for it all year
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Hi, James. I went to your blog and will start following you. Your part of Spain is much like my part of Texas, except we are hotter. My soil is poor because a few inches deep we hit white rock, thus our home is on a rocky hill. Granbury is the beginning of the Texas Hill Country and we are lousy with them, elevations changes everywhere, and Juniper Trees. Many of my poor plants are suffering and expiring. This is the first summer my Vitex ( Chaste Trees ) have dropped leaves in August, no matter the water or amendments. Salvias are screaming, Canna’s are complaining and many of Momo’s seasonal flowers checked out in July, so gardening here is a tough business. Wonderful that you are mentoring the children in the ways of gardening, kids need more of nature instead of the tablet and phone. The young folks at our church seem to be technically captured, and they are constantly on their iPhone. As a child, I was befriended by a neighbor man two houses down from ours. Mr. Cohen and his wife were gardeners, and learned from their parents in the “old country” which he never explained what country that was he hailed from, but definitely Europe. He was in a Nazi concentration camp in WW2 and came to America after release, settled in Fort Worth Texas and had a nice business downtown. He took me under his guidance and mentored me in the ways of gardening. Planting, pruning, grafting, knowledge of soil and plant awareness. This went on for two or three years. He gifted me the love of plants and nature in general, and I passed it on to my two boys. I took a Master Gardner course through Texas A &M University three years ago, and during the six weeks of plant university, I realized I already knew these things, thanks to Mr. Cohen. I will send you the link to a story I wrote about him. Enjoy your writing and your education. Take care.
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