Author: spanishgarden

I am in England at the moment tending to our English garden, but due to the wonders of technology I can regale you with my activities in Spain. Because I have been so busy with the garden and other things I just haven’t had time to post any material on this site. I know you will be disappointed and thousands of you are currently standing in your gardens holding your trowel with vacant looks on your faces and waiting for my next instruction, but fear not here we go.

1st November: Things I have been doing lately

 😀 Planting bulbs. This is the time for planting bulbs in Spain. A lot of the heat will have gone from the soil and there will be a bit of rain around to help them on their way. I have decided to plant some flag irises that I saved from this year, and to place them in a bald corner of my lawn. The most natural way to plant bulbs is to scatter them and let them fall where they will. The temptation is to start to rearrange them because you don’t like where they have fallen, but this is a mistake and the plants when they grow will look too “staged”.

I did think I would make things easier for myself by using a bulb planter. But save your money, they just bend, especially if you are planting on hardish soil or in my case lawn. Just use your trowel, you don’t need to dig a hole, force your trowel into the soil then push hard one way to open up a gap in the soil and pop yourbulb in at the appropriate depth.

The photos below show my trug of bulbs that I cleaned and stored from last year, the bare corner of the lawn, and my scattered bulbs ready to be planted – but not by the useless bulb planter. Just click on each photo for a larger image.

🌿 Replanting seedlings. As we go into Autumn all of the plants in your border will have set seedlings by now. If you haven’t already taken cuttings or seeds, then this is your last chance to get plants for free. My favourite for this is Margeurites. This daisy which is ubiquitous in Spain has a long flowering season and loves full sun. Not only that you can cut them back after flowering and off they go again.

Now the problem with self set seedlings is that they are clustered around where the mother plant was, and not necessarily where you want them. This means you have to transplant them to where you wish them to be. To be successful in this endeavour there are a few rules:

– Prepare the soil where you intend to plant the seedlings by weeding, feeding and watering.

– Only transplant seedlings either early in the morning, late afternoon or on overcast days. Never attempt to do this in full sun as they will wither before their little roots start working.

– Wait till the seedlings are 7-10cm high before attempting to transplant. If they are too small there rootsystem will not be well enough developed.

The first photo below shows the seedlings where their mummy left them, and where I don’t want them. The second photo shows them transplanted where they will be happy. The canes crossed over the seedlings are to stop rampaging Labradors.

🕷 The answer to the Spiderwort Question. Keen followers of this blog will know that a while ago I engaged in cutting edge scientific experimentation, the results of which are being eagerly awaited by the scientific and gardening communities. The aim of the experiment was to decide what was the best process for propagating Trascedentia (Spiderwort). Was it by taking cuttings and planting them in pots? Was it by planting directly into the soil? Or was it by placing cuttings in a glass of water.

Well, (drum roll) the wait is over. My findings are as follows:

– the cuttings in pots grew the fastest and put on more leaf, but they were planted in compost.

– the cuttings in the soil all survived and are slowly growing.

– the cuttings in a glass of water quickly grew a profusion of spidery fine roots and where easily replanted in pots with just a quick dibber to make a hole.

In effect each method was successful. But my recommendation would be the method to be used should depend on where you intend to place the final plants. If you intend to plant in the soil and your soil is prepared then plant straight out directly. Again if you intend to plant directly in the soil, but you want to make sure of success, then plant first in pots before replanting in the soil. If however you just want to add some bulk to plants that are already in a pot, but which are getting a bit sparse, then you can’t beat the glass of water, it is quick and relatively easy. Make sure you use rainwater and change every week if possible.

I am exhausted after all that experimentation and my white coat needs laundering. My next experiment was going to be the “chicken and the egg”, but my wife won’t let me have a chicken.

The pictures below show the final outcomes of the experiment. Just click on each one for a larger image.

After all the excitement about the Church garden award in my last post, it is back to the everyday gardening stuff you should be doing this time of year.

22nd October: Things I have been doing lately

I lied about this post not being exciting as I am declaring it a “COMPOST SPECIAL”. My wife Cruella just rolled her eyes and left the room muttering about divorce lawyers; she has no soul. Anyway the compost bins are decorated with balloons lets get this party started.

🌿 Starting a compost heap: Anyone who takes gardening seriously should have a compost bin (or two). You don’t need anything grand, mine are purpose built, but you can just make a heap in a corner somewhere out of the way in your garden and cover it with an old carpet. I’ve told you before, but I’m going to tell you again, you need four things for good compost:

1. Green stuff (nitrogen): vegetables from the kitchen, garden cuttings, grass etc. Nothing cooked and no oil or fat, otherwise you will attract rats.

2. Brown stuff (carbon): twigs, egg cartons, newspapers, boxes and cartons (not greaseproofed ones), egg shells. Not leaves (I will explain why later)

3. Water: you need to keep your compost moist but not wet. Too wet and the compost can become slimy and smelly (coincidentally the name of the two people I sat next to at school).

4. Air: I know this sounds obvious but you need to occasionally stir or turn your copmpost to let air in. Once a month should do it.

Once you have your compost heap going, try to add things in alternate layers; nitrogen then carbon. You can also add an accelerator which is a powder you sprinkle over the heap to aid the composting process.

🗑 Emptying your compost bin: Depending on how your compost has developed it usually takes 6-9 months to get good compost, but that depends on lots of variables. Once you have a bin or a heap full leave it for this amount of time, turning occasionally. At the end of this period the magic will have happened; all that garden waste and rubbish will have turned into lovely rich, dark, and beautifully smelling compost ready for you to use in your garden or for potting. The first photo below shows the compost bin that I am emptying. The second photo shows a barrowload of lovely compost; I don’t like to boast, but each of my compost bins will give round about 20 barrowloads of compost.

🌱 Using leaves in compost: I told you I would get round to leaves eventually, I was just trying to keep the tension building before the Maggots. Anyway, you can’t compost leaves in the normal way, don’t ask me why it is just the way God made it. Leaves require an anerobic process, where as normal composting is aerobic. At its simplest it’s all about air. To compost leaves, gather them when they are dry, stuff them into black sacks, lightly tie the top and then slash holes in the sides. Leave the sacks somewhere out of the way for about a year, then you can use the resulting leaf mold. I leave the sacks for about nine months then I add the part composted leaves to the top of a full compost bin that I am just about to leave for 6 months. The photo below shows a full compost bin with 9 month old leaves added.

🐛Finally, as it is a Compost Special, and it’s Halloween, here come the maggots: Every year when I empty my compost bins I discover giant maggots lurking in the compost; there are hundreds of them. These are curious creatures, when you pick them up they instantly ooze blood from their head, it is quite disconcerting. Unfortunately, they cannot be left in the compost as they will destroy plants in the garden. I have tried leaving them out for the birds, but the birds are too scared to touch them. The only answer is to drown them, but after a day I recycle them back into the compost. The photo below shows a few of the giant blood oozing maggots. What a finale to this Compost Special, such fun. As they used to say on Crimewatch,  before the BBC axed it “sleep tight, don’t have nightmares”

I haven’t posted much lately, not because I haven’t been gardening – oh no, there has been lots of gardening of which I will post more later. However, something much more exciting has been taking place. I have been preparing for the Church of England’s Garden Oscars. What do you mean you haven’t heard of them, you must have “Green Church Awards 2017”. It is a really big event in worldwide Anglican Church circles.

Anyway, straight to the exciting stuff. Our little Church garden here in our village of Pinar de Campoverde had been nominated for the Green Church Awards. Now if you were cynical you may say so what! But that would be to misunderstand what we are talking about here. Our garden was created from a parcel of wasteland beside our Church, it was a derelict eyesore, unloved and uncared for by anyone. That is until our super congregation all 20 of us got stuck in. The garden was designed by a well known gardening blogger (alright it was me, now you ask), but that was the easy part, the hard part was raising the funds, getting the plants and then making the garden. The pictures below show me starting to layout the garden at the start of the project.

Everyone at the Church got stuck in, we started a plant donation and sponsor a plant scheme, we held fundraisers to pay for the hard landscaping, and then most importantly we enthused the whole village so that lots of people come along with their garden tools and wheelbarrows etc to help create the garden. The photos below show us developing the garden and then some of the team at the end of a long day. The final photo shows the garden in all its award winning glory.

Anyway, the end result was that myself and Cruella (my wife who is notorious for plant destruction in this blog) went to Lambeth Palace to the awards ceremony as representatives of our Church. Bear in mind our little Church in Spain was shortlisted from 117 entrants worldwide; and that everyone we were up against had full time workers and most had Lottery funding. Anyway after a week of practising our disappointed Oscar face, and Cruella debating whether when she was asked “who she was wearing” would Primark be a good answer, we turned up at Lambeth Palace.

The outcome was that we were awarded a “highly commended” certificate; for us gardeners that is the equivalent of a “silver gilt” at the Chelsea Flower Show. Disappointing but still very acceptable. Especially when the Church who won had three full time workers and National Lottery funding. We were very proud to accept our certificate from the Bishop of Salisbury on behalf of everyone in our village.

The award ceremony was given added tension and spice when Cruella (ever the attention seeker) suddenly announced that in solidarity with all the other women she too had been propositioned by Albert Einstein at an audition. When it was pointed out that the father of Physics had nothing to do with show business she changed her story and claimed it was Leonard Bernstein. It was further pointed out to her that the famous Conductor was now over 70. Eventually she claimed it was actually Arnold Weinstein and she met him when he was playing the part of the “Terminator”.

The photos below show me and Cruella at the ceremony and with the Bishop of Salisbury. We both brush up rather well I think, but the Bishop looks as if he is about to go to sleep, it must have been my gardening stories.

Morrisey and the Smiths May have sung “girlfriend in a coma”, but can they say they have suffered the trauma of a Hibiscus in a coma for two years. Yup, that’s what we are talking about here, real drama, real life, gardening on the edge, the sort of thing that makes you wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking it’s all been a dream only for you to sink back realising the nightmare goes on. Oh I tried everything, I sat by the bed and played her favourite music, I talked to her as if everything was normal and she was still part of the garden community. I even had Alan Titchmarsh send her a recorded “get well” message. Well, no longer, the torture is over, today I turned off the machine and let her go peacefully.

8th October: Things I have been doing lately.

🚑 Saying goodbye to a Hibiscus. In the immortal words of Michael Caine, not a lot of people know this, but Hibiscus have a habit of falling into a coma. They just stop growing, shed all their leaves, and to all intent and purposes look dead. Now I have quite a few old Hibiscus bushes that form a hedge along the wall at the front of our garden. They must be 20/30 years old but most are in good health. However, three years ago one went into a coma, and after researching this – and the fact that they can just come out of it – I just left it alone. Sure enough after a year or so it started thriving and flowering again. This miracle I put down to fervent praying, but it seems that divine intervention isn’t always needed, it is just one of those things, when Hibiscus are old sometimes they just need a rest – a bit like me really.

When the latest one went into a coma I was calm about the whole thing, but after a year I started to panic and went into recovery mode, hence all the special coma care described above. But all to no avail. Now if your Hibiscus goes into a coma, and I hope it doesn’t – I wouldn’t like to wish that worry on to anyone. But let’s just say it does. If it is a young plant only a couple of years old and under50cm high, then let it go and start again. However, if like me your plant is big and will take you 20 years to get one the same size then try the following:

– feed it with a high Potash feed

– water thoroughly then mulch around the base

– after three months scrape the bark of the branch with your fingernail and check whether it is green underneath

As long as there is green under the bark then there is hope. You can leave it for up to 2 years to see if it recovers. But, sadly once you start to find brown consistently, then it is all over and you have to say goodbye. Now in my case with this particular plant we were doing well; although it was in a coma, it was really just “locked in syndrome”. When I explained that to my wife Cruella, her retort was “it’s only a plant you idiot get rid of it”,  mind you she does drown kittens for fun. The picture below shows my poor dead Hibiscus.

Anyway the moral of this tale is that all is not lost, even with a dead Hibiscus life can go on. The strong branch framework of your late Hibiscus will provide you with a useful support framework for growing climbers up and thereby retaining the integrity of your hedge without the necessity of trying to dig out the substantial root ball of the Hibiscus. The picture below shows another old dead Hibiscus that I have used as a growing framework for Pink Trumpet Vine, Plumbago and even Pomegranates. Now that looks much better than a big gap with a small plant stuck in the middle waiting years for it to grow the same size as surrounding plants.

✂️ Taking Jasmine cuttings to grow up the Hibiscus. My plan is to take cuttings from some fast growing Jasmine and then to grow these up the Hibiscus. This will give me rapid evergreen cover that will close the gap in the hedge whilst at the same time giving me lovely flowers and scent – what’s not to like.

Anyway, I’ve said before, and I am sure you were listening, never take cuttings from tendril plants like Jasmine by using secateurs as you will only crush the stems. Use a sharp knife to cut a long stem that has no flowers or buds showing. Cut just below a leaf node and take a number of cuttings. As you cut each stem place it into a plastic bag to keep it moist and away from the wind. Once back at your potting bench (or wherever), cut the stem higher up to give a nice fresh cut, but leave enough stem to plant. Take off all the leaves up the stem apart from 2/4 at thetop. If you have it use hormone growth powder (but don’t worry if you don’t). Place the cuttings around the edge of a four inch pot – four to each pot. Keep it moist but not soaking. If it works, great if not just keep popping cuttings in there, they will take eventually. When this is ready I will plant the whole pot under the dead Hibiscus. The photos below show the cuttings being prepared and in their pot.

This post was going to be full of Zen like calm as we ran through the things that need tidying up as we end summer. That was before I discovered this tiny white fly and the bugger is eating my Ficus (weeping fig). I had to resort to international detective work to find out what it is, and it turns out if I’ve got it, then it is coming to bush near you very soon.

We will deal with the Zen stuff at the end of this post, but let’s get on with this fly emergency; I wish I had a pole to slide down, or at least a siren.

27th September, Things I have been doing lately:

🥊 Dealing with the fig whitefly: Yup that is what it is. After searching through the internet and talking to gardeners in the US, I have identified it as the fig whitefly (Singhiella simplex) which comes from the Order Hemiptera which also includes Aphids. Evidently it is relatively new to the US where it is destroying weeping figs just for fun and leaving large parts of Florida gardens completely bereft of their ficus hedges.

I discovered the little blighter purely by chance. I have two Ficus weeping figs, one is a smallish bush and the other is more tree like. Anyway, the small one started shedding its leaves quite dramatically and at first I thought it was an irrigation problem; but as they don’t need much water I was perplexed. Then I thought it might have been accidently hit by some wind borne weed killer as I had been spraying gravel near it. To help it recover from what I thought was weedkiller I was just applying a watering can full of feed and pushing back the leaves to get to the roots I was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of very small flies. It was only then that I twigged (plant pun) what was wrong. The clever little sod hides on variegated weeping figs, but because of its colour it sticks to the white part so you can never see it.

The fig whitefly has up to three egg laying periods in a season and the immature stage sits under the leaves not moving and sucking the life out of the leaves. Although there are some natural predators, not enough to deal with its astounding birth rate, so if you want to stop it you have to spray or drench the roots. If you want my advice go out and shake your Ficus now and I bet the little blighters are there – this could be a new dance craze, called doing the Ficus shake. See the picture below of my poor Ficus, you have been warned.

🍇 Trim back grape vines. Although it is not time for the big grape vine cut back, you can make the plant healthier by cutting back any lower sucker type growth close    to the ground. This has the benefit of not only making the plant look tidier, but also it ensures that its energy is going into the vines that will fruit next year. The first picture below shows one of our small vines that needed tidying, the second picture shows it showing off its legs like some hussy.

🌳 Trim suckers off the trunk of Californian false peppers. The False pepper is a lovely tree and we have lots of them in my area of Spain. But I have mentioned in previous posts that to keep it tidy you need to do a big cutback every 2 or three years and take off more or less all the branches and just leave the trunk. This then encourages the weeping willow effect that is so lovely. The drawback in this is that once you cut off the branches, then twice a year you need to cut off the suckers that swarm from the trunk. This is very easy as they are soft and pliable and can easily be removed quickly by a hedge trimmer. The first picture below shows the tree before trimming whilst the second shows it with what looks like designer stubble.

🍊 Trim suckers off the trunk of citrus trees. Talking of suckers, you should never give them an even break; I have used this rather lame joke in previous posts, but I believe in recycling. Anyway, at this time of year your orange and lemon trees will start to sucker like crazy. You will see bright green little shoots starting out all over the trunk of your trees. You need to take these off as they will take away the energy that you need to get your fruit ripe. Wearing gardening gloves, just pull the sucker down against the trunk and it will come away in your hand. If you have left it there too long and it has gone a darker green, then you will need to use secateurs to remove it. The picture below shows me in action removing a sucker.

👃 How is your Dame de Noche. If you have followed my advice in previous posts about when to prune your plant for best flowering; and I am sure you have, then you should have a magnificent flush of flowers that scent late summer barbecues. If you didn’t follow my advice then you are currently looking at a very uninspiring green lump of bush, and it’s your own fault. See the picture below of my Dame de Noche in late flower’ I am encouraging “petal envy”.

I have always been an admirer of mad scientists, the likes of Dr Frankenstein, Dr Moreau, Dr Emmet Brown and of course Dr Sheldon Cooper are all long time heroes of mine. It’s the idea of experimenting that I like, not the mad bit. But anyway, the whole point of this is that I decided to conduct my own experiment with plants. I have started with Spiderwort because that sounds the sort of name mad science experiments would have. It’s right up there with “Quaitermass and the pit” or “the Andromeda Project”. ‘The Spiderwort Question” is my chosen title, pretty cool eh!

24th September: Things I have been doing lately.

🕷 The Spiderwort Question. I might have bigged this up too much, for as most of you know Spiderwort or Trascedentia is a lovely Naya or terrace plant that is quite common here in Spain and in other warm climes, see the first picture below. Spiderwort can be grown in pots or can act as ground cover. It needs partial shade otherwise it will not thrive and will also lose the distinctive stripe on its leaves. The main problem I have found with Spiderwort over the years is that it can sometimes die back in the winter to such an extent that you can lose it. Therefore my strategy to date has been to take cuttings so that I am ready with replacements.

Now for the experimental bit; this year I am going to try three different ways of growing these cuttings on. I have bought a white coat from Amazon and I did try to get a stethoscope but my wife found out and stopped me. The white coat looks very fetching by the way and it appears that gardening’s great gain was a sad loss to mad scientistry. Anyway, back to the experiment. To take cuttings from Spiderwort you need a very sharp knife (secateurs will crush the stem); cut just below a side shoot on a long trailing stem. Then peel off all the leaves apart from a couple at the top, you are then ready to plant your cutting, see picture two below.

I know the excitements building, but here is my new three step trial that will eventually answer “The Spiderwort Question” – I am thinking of commissioning special music to go with me saying that. The first lot of cuttings I have planted as normal with four around the side of a 4 inch pot, see picture three below. The second ones I have just popped into a glass of rainwater that I have placed on a windowsill on my Naya, see picture four below. The third ones I have layered into little slits in the soil about 1 inch deep with the stem lying along the slit and the leaves coming out of the soil, see picture five below.

I shall be reporting back on progress in a few weeks; I will probably announce the results here, but it depends I may be called to the UN to report direct, we shall see, either way I will be wearing my white coat.

🍋 Watching fruit ripen: this time of year you have to keep an eye on any fruit that is on your trees to make sure you pick it at its optimum. You also have to make sure that nets etc are in place to ensure that birds don’t enjoy your fruit before you do.     At the moment I am watching Persimmon (kaka in Spain) and Pomegranates.

Persimmon will be ripe when it is fully bright yellow and slightly squashy to the feel. The colour of the fruit triggers the birds interest, so you have to net and go round every morning to squeeze the fruit for ripeness. See first picture below.

Pomagranates, of which I have a few (this lost verse to “My Way” never made it to the final Sinatra version). People some times think that as Pomegranates have such a tough skin there is no need to net them, but this is wrong, certain birds can soon strip a Pomegranate crop. As I only have a few, and they are well hidden in a hedge, I have not netted them. However, if I had a big tree with a good crop, I would definitely net. Anyway, to tell if Pomegranates are ripe they need to be going a lovely deep red russet colour and when you ping them with your finger they should give off a slightly metallic sound. See second photo below.

It is all very exciting round here at the moment, just as summer is winding down so we enter the season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness” as our old friend John Keats said; classic poetry and gardening – what’s not to like. Anyway, there is lots to be getting on with in the garden, not least harvesting fruit and taking late cuttings etc.

22nd September: Things I have been doing lately.

👶 Harvesting Sago Palm pups. As everyone knows Sago Palms are very expensive, but not if you can get them for free. Yup, all you have to do is watch out for when your Sago Palm starts to “pup”. The pup is a small mini Sago Palm that appears at the base of the plant, I don’t think daddy Palms are involved – at least I hope not, this is a wholesome family blog with a Christian message. Anyway, when this mini pup appears at the base of the plant – see first picture below – just dig around it carefully to expose what looks like a small coconut attached to the main trunk by a hard woody structure. Then taking a sharp spade cut down as close to the pup as you can. This takes a fair bit of force, but if you persevere you will succeed in loosening the pup from its mum. You will then have what looks like a mangled coconut with fronds sticking out the top, see second photo.

Cut off the fronds to leave you with a woody coconut with a scar on one side where you cut it from the Palm. Clean this up with a hard brush being careful not to do any more damage to the scarred area. You then need to leave the pup in a dry cool area out of the sun, for about two weeks till the scar heals over, see third photo. This stage is important so don’t be tempted to just plant the pup, as infection will get in, the pup will die, and I will phone the Spanish RSPCA equivalent and they will prosecute you.

After two weeks plant the pup in a tight fit pot, in a mixture of sand and compost. This needs to be free draining so 25% sand to 75% compost should be about right. I have made the mistake of making the mix 50/50 before with subsequent disaster. Water this lightly and keep it dry to the touch, too wet and it will rot. Keep an eye on it and hopefully in about six weeks you should see fronds growing from the top. See photo four for a happy pup in his bed.

I really wanted to concentrate in this Post on finishing off the lawn chores and in general tidying up around the garden, but events have overtaken me. I have to conclude today’s post with a tale of betrayal and cuckoldry (look it up).

13th September: Things I have been doing lately

🌿 Clearing leaves and debris off stones and lawns. As this summer has been exceptionally hot we have seen lots of trees dropping copious amounts of leaves. You already know that if the drop on lawns you must clean them up before they kill off the grass. But it is just as important to clean up if you have laid gravel. The danger with gravel is that if you do not clean up leaves and debris then it will eventually mulch down between your gravel and provide an excellent leaf humus for weeds and unwanted tree seedlings. If you look carefully at the first photo below you will see a gravelled area of our garden which has accumulated leaves. This needs to be cleared up whilst the leaves are still whole and before they break down into leaf humus.

The best thing to do with this is wait for a very dry day when there is no strong winds, then using a leaf blower or leaf rake if you are a technophobe. In my case I use my leaf blower to blow all the leaves onto the lawn. Once I have successfully chased the leaves around for an hour or so, I then use my mower set on a high setting to hoover them up. This has three benefits. Firstly, it means you don’t have to bag all the leaves up as the mower does this. Secondly, you can use the shredded leaves in your compost. Thirdly, and probably most importantly the lawn mower shredding action will deposit a very fine leaf mold directly to the roots of your grass. What’s not to like! The second picture below shows the leaves successfully blown onto the lawn. I know I won’t win a Pulitzer Prize for photography, but I just wanted you to see how hard I was working.

🥔 Clearing up after Butternut Squash and Melons. By now most of your Butternut Squash and Melons should be harvested. I just have two plants at the far end of our small orchard that have three fruits on them. But the rest have been harvested and I needed to clean up the area as we have a Church event in our garden this weekend. Just pull the Squash and Melon vegetation directly out of the ground by holding the main stem close to the soil and easing it out. All of this lovely vegetation should then be put on your compost heap.

Melons as I have mentioned before have been a disaster this year because of them pesky ants. However, I shall have my wife take my annual photograph with the Squash and you will see it soon – I know you can’t wait. The photo below shows a nicely cleared orchard; if you look closely you will see the two Squash plants awaiting harvest at the far end.

🐥 Paternity tests for plants! As the heading to this post so dramatically says, it has come to my attention that I am raising another man’s plant; actually it’s “woman” but that doesn’t sound so dramatic. Anyway, to get on with the story. You will remember I told you a few months back that whilst I was In England for three weeks. I left the garden to be looked after by my friend Karl in conjunction with my wife. I left explicit and detailed instructions for all aspects of garden care, but they still managed to destroy my tomato plants – which I may have mentioned in the past. However, just when I thought it was all behind me and there was no other ways they could hurt me (in a gardening sense of course) it has all come flooding back.

This is how the story unfolds. I had been given a cutting of a lovely Solanum with a nice blue flower and I had duly potted it on. As with all cuttings they do not look very distinctive in this early stage so I always place them in a certain order so I know who is who. These events took place early to mid summer when I usually have cuttings and seedlings all over the place. Included in my cuttings was a Dame de Noche which I was hoping to grow for my friend Daphne. Anyway, to cut a long story short Karl and my wife switched the plants around and then, I believe deliberately, but I could not prove it in a court of law, killed all the seedlings and cuttings through neglect. When they told me of this outcome, I was of course disappointed but when I enquired after the blue Solanum they both assured me that it was the sole survivor.

Since that fateful day I have cosseted the Solanum as the sole survivor of the Killing Fields of 2017, as I like to call this summers massacre. I have potted it on and eventually planted it out ready to start climbing up trellis. You may remember that a few Posts back I featured it as a survivor of Chlorosis; which I sat up all night nursing it through. Although things seemed fine I first started to harbour suspicions that all was not what it seemed. The first signs were the leaves seemed a bit large, but to be honest I didn’t want to admit to myself that something was wrong. I talked to my wife about it but she assured me that it was all in my imagination. Though I did notice she phoned Karl directly after this conversation.

Anyway, the flowers started to form and my excitement rose. However, again I became suspicious as they were the wrong shape, and the plant itself was trying to form a bush rather than climb. Although it has not flowered yet, I decided that it was time to confront my wife. Oh, she cried and denied it, but eventually she cracked and confessed. She promises me that it was only once, it didn’t mean anything, and it would never happen again. But once you lose trust in a gardening sense there is not much point in going on. We are now going to counselling and I have promised to raise the plant as my own. Daphne will have to wait till next year for her Dame de Noche and I have challenged Karl to a duel. The picture below shows the Dame de Noche, the good things is people think it looks like me!

It all started so well, I was going to tell you a bit about late summer planting and how to get the best from your borders, when suddenly It went from Gardeners World to Demolition Squad in the space of one minute. Here’s what happened…

6th September: Things I have been doing lately.

To get this bit into context I have to give you a bit of a preamble and go back a little bit in time. So you have to imagine your screen going all wavy and that back in time music; you know “do dah do do, do dah do do”. Anyway, we are back at the end of summer last year and I had decided to completely redo the borders either side of our drive. I was going to take out all the plants including bulbs and perennials and strip away and replace the top six inches of soil. I successfully undertook this, replanted the bulbs and sowed my usual annuals in Spring. So far so good, but because I had removed all my perennials this meant that when we returned to the present “do dah do do, do dah do do” there was no late summer flowering perennials.

The whole idea of a successful flower bed is that you have continuous flowering through “succession planting”. As one plant dies down so the next comes into flower. In Spain succession planting would look like this: Marguerite Daisies, Carnations, various bulbs (flag Iris etc), Marigolds. But holding it all together would be the perennials which dotted around the border give continuity amidst change. My plant of choice for this role are Lantanas (commonly known as Spanish Flag because of their colouring). Anyway, I didn’t have any as I had dug them all up last year, so I decided to buy some. I know, I know, we gardeners are supposed to grow things not buy them, but I didn’t have the time to grow from seed or cuttings as this would take about a year before I had the type of plants I required.

So I stole €100 from my wife’s purse, donned a disguise in case any fellow gardeners saw me and went to the garden centre. Half an hour later I was the proud possessor of 6 mature Lantana and my wife was lighter by €78 not bad at €13 a plant. I spent the rest of the hundred buying magic beans from a man I met in the garden centre; He wanted my cow as well, but I told him she was at home.

🌼 Planting Lantana. The secret to planting Lantana is to recognise they are going to be around for a long time so they will need good rich soil to get them going. Dig a good size hole for the root ball, at least a spade length deep. Fill this with water and leave to drain. Then fill the bottom of the hole with well rotted compost and add a handful of slow release food granules to the hole. Lay the Lantana pot on its side and roll it backwards and forwards whilst putting pressure on the sides. This should successfully loosen the plant and ensure it slides out of the pot into your hands. Once the plant is out of the post, holding it upright, place your fingers underneath and tease out the root ball to ensure the roots are ready to face out into the soil. Place the plant in the waiting hole, fill in with a mixture of the soil from the plant hole and more compost. Firm the plant in, water profusely and you are done.

That is what is supposed to happen, what actually happened was this. I was digging the planting hole for the second Lantana whilst the first hole was draining. As I dug down the required spade length I decided I needed to go a bit deeper as the second plant had a large root ball. Given the spade was getting nowhere, I decided to use my fork. As I dug the extra couple of inches I came up against a tree root. I duly dug harder and pulled at the root ramming my fork into it. In a sudden flash of clarity I thought “there are no trees near this spot”. That is when the water main went sending a jet of freezing cold water straight up the leg of my shorts. In my panic to get away I tried to clear the area by loading everything into wheel barrow and pushing it across the drive. This was when I hit the drive border wall smashing all the plaster off a big chunk of it.

I won’t bore you with telling you how I had to repair it all, or the cost. Needless to say this has confirmed my wife’s view that I am an idiot. The first photo below shows the planting hole of the first Lantana, I took this just before the great deluge. The second photo shows the damaged drive border wall.

🌱 Reviving the lawn. Those of you who follow this blog will know that now is the time to repair and revive your lawn. In my last blog I dealt with repairs to bare patches and reseeding. This time I want to deal with seasonal maintenance. If you have a lawn you only have two good months of the year when you can do serious work. In Spain the months of March and September are your two windows of opportunity. After March the lawn is growing and the sun is too hot. After September, the grass is going dormant and you are too late to seed.

September is the month for reviving work when you need to scarify and give your last feed of the summer. The process of scarifying involves using a lawn/leaf rake to scrape across the lawn and remove the thatch of dead grass that has built up over the summer. You can use a motorised de-thatcher (I had one in England, but unfortunately not here). If you don’t remove the thatch then it will gradually impede the growth of new grass and leave your lawn looking dry and patchy.

If you have a large lawn like ours then it will be too much to try and de-thatch it all. Instead you should pick out the worse areas to tackle. The system I use is to find a bad area and stand in the middle of it then work around it in a circle with me at the centre. This maximises your effort and minimises your need to move. The thatch once removed can be put on your compost heap, or if you wish keep it in a black sack then use it to line your hanging baskets just as you would with moss.

Once you have de-thatched the areas of the lawn that you can manage, then you need to give it its final feed of the year. This final feed will give the lawn a nice boost to see it through winter. I use a granulated feed high in Nitrogen and Potassium. Now you can distribute this by hand if you want by walking up and down the lawn and scattering it as you go. The danger of this approach is that you will unevenly distribute the feed leaving some areas badly covered where the grass won’t get fed and it will look sickly next year; and other areas with a double dose of feed that will scorch the lawn and leave you with bald patches next year; (the lawn not you).

The best way to distribute lawn feed is by using a wheeled dispenser. These are very cheap these days and most have a dial that you can set to different sizes that allow you to control the rate of distribution. Walking up and down with the dispenser it throws out the feed in a circle around your path of direction. Just make sure that you do not overlap the stripes as you walk up and down the lawn, otherwise you will get scorching (again, the lawn not you).

The two photos below were taken by my wife and are meant to be action photos. In the first I am de-thatching and in the second manfully feeding the lawn. At first she demanded that we brought in a body double for these pictures, but I refused citing my artistic integrity and desire for gardening authenticity. I wouldn’t mind really but I have just passed her computer and she has used photoshop and it now appears that George Clooney has been de-thatching and feeding our lawn. That wouldn’t be so bad but she now has it as a screensaver.

I am sorry if this heading gives false hope to all middle aged men who are balding prematurely and mistakenly may think I have discovered a new Japanese cure. I am talking about Kikuyu the very tough gama type grass seed which I have decided to deploy against the scratching of my Labradors on the lawn; which if you think about it could have been a Pink Floyd album! At this time of the year all lawns start to suffer from wear and tear and none more so than the lawn where we sit and take our morning tea. It’s not that the dogs dig, they would never dare do that, no, they stretch in ostentatious ways as if they were in the Mr Labrador stretching competition. This involves lying sideways together and then stretching their back and front legs as far out as possible then drawing them back in whilst scratching the lawn. They know it annoys me but they exist under the protection of my wife who says their only stretching and it’s just grass anyway!

The outcome is that I have to repair this particular part of the lawn every year. So if you have over indulged dogs, or, rowdy children who insist on running on your lawn, this is how you repair it.

28th August: Things I have been doing lately. Repairing the lawn.

Stage 1: The first stage in repairing your lawn is to assess the type of damage and the position of the damage. In my case it is simple wear and tear through Labradoragedon. The photos below shows both the damagers and the damage. If you look closely at these photos you will see a metal mesh showing through the grass. This could either mean my grass is a cyborg terminator, or, it could be down to the fact that I developed the technique of adding mesh to reseeds. More about this later.

Stage 2: If you have holes or very deep scratches then these will need to be filled. To do this I use top soil that I have saved in a sack from various planting holes during the year. I sieve this directly into my wheelbarrow and also add some shop bought compost, also sieved, to give it a bit of a boost. It is important that you sieve as grass seed does not thrive in stoney or rubbish littered soil. The photo below shows the equipment you need. Notice the trug beside the wheel barrow, this is to pour the sieved stones etc into for later disposal.

Stage 3: In this stage you need to spread the soil over the area to be patched. This is an important stage so take your time. Spread the soil by spade then rake over carefully with a leaf rake. Once you are happy with your work, roller the whole area. The rollering will quickly reveal the various humps and bumps. You then need to re-spread more soil and rake again. Repeat this process until you are happy that it is more or less level. Whilst in my case I am obviously not trying for a perfect lawn, but just one that does not look like something out of Jurassic Park after the dinosaurs have rampaged across. The photo below shows my efforts at rollering. By way of special pleading I should point out that my roller has a large dent in it, which means “it’s rollering Jim but not as we know it”.

Stage 4: This stage involves spreading your chosen grass seed. There are hundreds of different grass seeds suitable for areas whether they are shady, dry, wet or sunny – you just have to choose the right one. In this case I have chosen to use Kikuyu. This is an extremely tough Grass from East Africa in an area that is the home of the Gikuyu tribe (I am not making this up). Anyway, I chose Kikuyu because it has lots of virtues: it is hard wearing, drought resistant, regenerates itself and is deadly to Labradors; alright the last bit I made up but don’t tell Nero and Tango. The only real draw back with Kikuyu is that it is very expensive, costing about €26 for a very small packet. This means that unless you are a millionaire you could not seed a large lawn with Kikuyu. A pleasing aspect of Kikuyu that you can see from the photo below is that it looks like “hundreds and thousands”. One last thing, you must roller again once you have spread the grass seed. I know that there is disagreement about raking in or rollering spread grass seed, but with Kikuyu you must roller. If you don’t have a roller, don’t worry just tread it in.

Stage 5:  The last stage is to protect the new grass seed so that at least has a chance to grow. As I said earlier I have adopted a technique over a number of Labrador plagued years of placing strips of mesh over reseeded areas. This has two main benefits it stops the soil being eroded by foot traffic or dog scratching, and it disappears once the grass has grown. The first photo below shows the prepared and seeded soil with its mesh overlay. The second photo shows the area covered by garden fleece. Both the mesh and the fleece are secured in place by the type of large garden staples normally used to hold down artificial grass. The overall benefit of the fleece is that it stops you feeding the neighbourhood bird population, whilst at the same time letting light and water through to the seed.

Finally, if you are going to repair grass and reseed then you have a window of opportunity now that lasts roughly till the end of September, after this you will have to wait till next March. I of course couldn’t wait as the dogs would have dug trenches by next March.

I have a love and passion for figs that verges on the compulsive. I have two fig trees and this summer the crop has been astounding as I have been feeding the Butternut Squash below the trees and thereby benefiting the tree, hence lots of figs. Regular followers of this blog know that I netted all the fruit trees a couple of months ago to keep out birds etc. I am happy to report that this has been very successful and we have been gorging on figs for at least two months even to the extent that I have given some away. However, and this is the sad bit. I harvested the figs each morning until the fateful day yesterday, when I was down to the last fig of Summer. I duly photographed this to share with you – the photo not the fig, don’t be stupid what do you think I am some sort of Socialist. Anyway, next morning I went out to enjoy my last mouthful of home grown fig – I had actually dreamt about the moment during the night. When to my horror I was met with a half eaten horror of a semi destroyed fig. At first, I must confess I accused my wife Cruella, as her teeth pattern matched those on the fig. But I let her off when I looked more closely and discovered beak marks; though to be honest she does have a prominent nose.

The first photo below shows the last fig of Summer in all its juicy splendour. The second photo reveals the horror of my unrequited tastebuds.

26th August: Things I have been doing lately.

🍉 Harvesting fruit: Although the great fig disappointment is now behind me I am now looking forward to a bumper olive harvest. The process of feeding Butternut Squash beneath the trees has again benefitted the olives. I only have two trees but the larger is  positively weighted down with olives which I shall be harvesting in a few weeks. You can of course harvest your olives when they are green, but I prefer leaving them till they are black then you can be absolutely sure they are ripe. I will tell you all about the processing system in a few weeks.

The Butternut Squash are also almost ready for harvesting. Where these are concerned you leave the fruit on the plant until the stems and leaves fully die back, then you cut off each Squash leaving at least an inch or more of stem attached to stop rotting’ but I will talk about this more in a few weeks.

The great disappointment of the summer have been the Melons. You will have seen my recent photos of the ants feasting happily on my Melons (no innuendo intended). Anyway, they are all gone apart from one. The ants have triumphed and the photo below shows the last Melon standing (or more accurately lying). This of course has made me melancholy (couldn’t resist it). I may not grow Melons next year, but we shall see time is a great healer and my friend Daphne is working on an ant resistant mat in her secret laboratory so we will see. In case you are interested the photos below show a nice healthy Butternut Squash and the last Melon.

✂️ Cutting the lawn: I hope everyone is assiduously cutting their lawn. I know it is hot but that is no excuse for an untidy lawn. Keep cutting on a medium height and water at night. Next month you will need to do the last feed of summer and begin lawn repairs; especially where stupid Labradors scuff it up and blame each other. The photos below show our main lawn looking lovely after a summer mowing. Whilst the second photo shows one of our smaller lawns looking like the Somme with Nero and Tango blaming each other.

This is probably the saddest time of the year in gardening terms because you have to empty the orphanage. The orphanage of course is the potting bench where I have raised young cuttings and seedlings from way back late last year up until March. At one time the orphanage (potting bench to those with hard hearts) was full of hundreds of little plants waiting to be chosen and go out into the garden of life. Of course all the pretty and strong ones were chosen first. The less pretty, awkward, slightly less abled and downright ugly ones were left. I used to try and keep their spirits up by telling them they were unconventionally good looking and what counted was character, but that only worked for a few days before they were all depressed again. At one point I blamed the EU and its regulations for them not being chosen – consequently all my orphans are Brexiteers.

When Campoverde Open Garden Day came along and my garden was open to hundreds of visitors, I prepared all the orphans specially, everyone was watered fed and with new top dressing. Whilst business was brisk on the plant sale stall, at the end of the day there was a great deal of wilted leaves and sad fronds. I reminded them of our motto “no plant left behind” which I had stolen from the US Marines but they weren’t to know.

Oh, but don’t think we didn’t have good times. To cheer everybody up I would go down in the evening and sit up on the potting bench beside them all and tell them about famous orphans who had done well; Harry Potter, Snow White and Superman were just some of our favourites. But everyone’s absolute favourite was Orphan Annie. Sometimes, on Saturday nights when no one else was around I would take my IPad down to the orphanage sit on the bench and we would all watch Annie the movie. I would beat out the time to the music on the potting bench while we all sang along to “the sun will come out tomorrow”. At the end of the evening we would all sing a rousing rendition of “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” with me doing all the actions. They of course didn’t sing “knees and toes” that would be stupid, they sang “leaves and fronds”.

Anyway, the point of all this is that everything has come to a head. My wife, whom most of you know as Cruella has gone to England to visit our son. Before she left she gave me an ultimatum along the lines of “if those plants aren’t gone by the time I get back I am throwing them out”. Luckily the orphans didn’t hear this. To be honest if she had said ” it’s those plants or me”, it would have been a close run thing but I  suppose the Church would miss her.

So I have had to spring into action and make room for the orphans by clearing a space for every orphan even in inappropriate places – remember our motto “no plant left behind”. The photo below shows the orphanage before we began “operation Annie”.

16th August: Things I have been doing lately.

🛏 Tidy up your beds. To make room for new plants you need to create space by tidying up and clearing out some of your flowering annuals; especially if you have harvested the seed. In my case that is mainly Marigolds, Margeurites and Carnations. If you have been assiduously deadheading all summer as I have told you, then you will have enjoyed a succession of blooms on all your plants. But, even this has to come to an end, once you have more than 50/60% dead flowers on your plant then you are into the law of diminishing returns and the plant may need to come out. The first photo below shows a bed of Marigolds where it is all over. The second photo shows a bed where daily deadheading will give you at least a further two weeks of blooms. The first lot came out to make room for the orphans. The third photo shows the Marigolds happily saying goodbye from the compost bin.

Margeurites are different, they are not really annuals and they don’t get that end of summer dead look of annuals. Instead they get very leggy and look quite messy. You have two options here. Firstly, you can cut them back quite severely to about 20cm; as long as they are shooting from the base then they should come back for late Summer early Spring. Secondly, you can just take them out, especially as you have the seeds anyway (I hope). The first photo below shows an overgrown border of Margeurites that look messy. The second photo shows the same border with all the Margeurites cut back severely and making room for orphans.

And finally a photo of some of the orphans planted out. I know this is the wrong place for them, but you should have seen their little faces when I told them they were going to be planted and that their long wait was over; everyone burst into a spontaneous chorus of “the sun will come out tomorrow”. The potting bench is a lonely place now, but it was the right thing to do.

My wife has just pointed out to me that the above heading could be misconstrued as having  “adult content”; I replied “Honi soit qui mal y pense”. She then accused me of swearing at her in French. When I told her it was the motto of the Order of the Garter she told me not to be disgusting.

Anyway, now is the time to harvest seed from your various flowers and then you can have free plants next year. I will tell you about the Melon later, but I’m fuming.

10th August: Things I have been doing lately

🥝  Harvest seed. You will of course remember that I told you all a few months ago to mark the best flower blooms with a piece of tape so that when you came to deadheading you would not cut these off. You have to do this with the pick of the first blooms as they are the biggest and best; the tendency is that as you deadhead the blooms get smaller and smaller. Anyway, hands up those who did? the rest of you have just lost lots of free plants unless of course you have a time machine and can go back a few months and mark the flowers with tape. As far as I know Dr Who doesn’t read this blog. Those of you who did mark your best flowers take a house point, those of you who didn’t stop mumbling about how busy you have been.

Today I have been harvesting seeds from Marigolds, Pink Trumpet and Marguerites. Each of these have slightly different techniques. But there is something that is common to all seed gathering that you must adhere to or the seed will fail. Make sure your chosen blooms have fully completed their seed cycle: they must be brown and completely dry.

Marigolds. Those of you who follow this blog will know that I love Marigolds as they are easy to propagate, love sun and love Spain. There are four stages to harvesting Marigold seeds.

1. Cut off the blooms that you have previously marked with tape; all of you idiots who failed to mark your best blooms, just pick the best of the rest (see first photo below).

2. Clean the flower head up by removing the stem and gently peeling away what is left of the dried petals around the top (see second photo below).

3. Pick up the now cleaned seed head and gently roll it between your thumb and forefinger. As you roll press gently on the seed head and gradually the seeds will spill out to be captured in your waiting hand. (see third photo below).

4. Place the seeds in a clean new envelope and mark it “Marigolds 2017”. The year is important as you should always use your freshest seed first. (see fourth photo below).

Pink Trumpet. This is a lovely fast growing climber that is very popular in Spain. Again you follow a four stage process to harvest the seeds.

1. First identify seed pods that are ripe. Pink trumpet seeds are developed in long pod cases that hang from the plant. These can vary in length from 20cm to over 50cm and make a very pretty addition to the plant at this time of year. The first photo below shows a ripe seed pod hanging on the plant. Again, like the Marigolds, they need to be brown and completely dry.

2. Cut off the pods and carefully inspect them to ensure there are no splits in case the seed has already gone. (see second photo below).

3. Carefully split the pods open and ease out the seeds and let them fall into your other hand. Be careful if it is a windy day as each seed has a little wing to enable it to be blown along in the wind; you may end up splitting the pod and they all take off. (See third photo below).

4. Place the seeds in a clean new envelope and again mark it with the year  and the plant. (See fourth photo below).

Margeurites. A lovely daisy plant that is not only a Spring stalwart, but if cut back will have successful further flushes of flower. There are two ways to propagate Margeurites, you can leave the seed heads on the plant and it will self seed with lots of little seedlings in the late Autumn. Or, you can take the seeds and propagate them yourself. I use both methods. However, if you want to grow them yourself, again it is a four stage process:

1. First identify seed pods that are ripe. This is a bit more difficult than with the other two we have looked at so far. Marguerite seed pods are small and can look as if they have seeds, when in fact they have already gone. A tell tale sign of no seeds is if the seed head looks like a flat star. This means the pod has flung itself open and scattered its seeds. So in effect you need to do the opposite of all those television programmes with would be entertainers – “Don’t search for a star”. Having found nice dry seed heads cut them off, but be careful as the seeds are small and they can easily fall off as you move them. See first photo below.

2. Now, in a different way to the other two seeds we have looked at, you need to pinch the bunch of seeds out from the pod as a single lump. See second photo below.

3. Then in a similar way to the other seeds, roll the seeds between your thumb and forefinger and catch them as they fall into your other hand. In this case you are not separating the seeds from the seed pod as you have already taken them out, but because the seeds are so small you will get certain amounts of plant debris coming with them. The best way to separate the seeds from the rubbish is to drop the seeds from palm to palm and hopefully the wind will blow away the rubbish and leave you with the seeds; or possibly nothing if it’s too windy. See third photo below).

4. The final stage like the others is to place the seeds in a clean new envelope and mark it with the year and the plant. See fourth photo below.

🐜  The bloody ants have eaten my melons. I know they are all God’s creatures and as a Christian I should be forgiving. But they have literally spoiled all my Melons, I only have four left that have not been overrun. I wouldn’t mind if when I came out each morning to inspect the Melons all I found was a Melon core surrounded by big fat bellied ants burping and so fat they could not run away. Instead, they find the smallest possible crack in the Melon skin, then pour into about the depth of a centimetre and eat the tiniest bit of Melon but manage to spoil the rest. I have been speaking to someone in Tennessee on the internet about this. Tennessee is big on cantaloupe as they say. My new friend Hank or Tex or something like that, reckons cut the melons off just before they are fully mature and before the stem starts to separate. Then place them in a brown paper bag with a banana which will help them mature. I will try this and let you know what happens. It will probably just be a take-away lunch for ants with added banana. See photo below of the ant Melon party.

As all of you know the big cut back and garden tidy up is done in January here in Spain. However, there are some exceptions and it’s ok to tidy some things up to make them neater.

1st August, Things I have been doing lately:

🌴 Cutting back some Palms. Different Palms need different approaches. Washingtonia (the big one that is all over the place with large fans at the end of branches) can be tidied up now with no problems as can Sago, Mediterranean Fan Palm etc. However, I would not recommend cutting back Phoenix Palms (the ones with dates and long serrated leaves) at this time of the year as the dreaded Red Palm Weevil is flying about and any wounds in the Palm gives them an opening.

Sago Palms: Large specimens of Sago Palm are very expensive and even small ones under a metre can cost over €200. So you have to be careful when trimming them back. The first photo below shows my Sago needing a trim back to make it tidy and look showy (it’s a Palm thing). The Palm fronds grow out from the stem in concentric rings, cutting from the bottom ring with extendible cutters, cut all the way up till two rings of palm fronds are left. The two ring thing is important, you could cut back to one ring but then if something happened to that ring you lose the whole plant (and that would make you look stupid). The second picture below shows the Sago cut back, looking neat and very handsome.

Fan Palms: I have a number of these grouped in a bed and they self seed like crazy. With this Palm you just need to cut back again until you have at least three rings of fronds from the top. The three is important as the plant has very thin stems  and it would look stupid with just two like the Sago (Palms are very sensitive and do not like to be mocked). The photo below shows my Fan Palm duly trimmed back; I forgot to take a before photo and I am not sticking Palms back on just for you, so you can forget that.

Washingtonia: This is probably the most common Palm in Spain, especially since the Palm Weevil has been allowed to destroy the more handsome Phoenix Palm in lots of areas of Spain. Anyway, the Washingtonia can be cut back at various times depending on your preference. Some people like to cut them back in May before they flower  as it can be messy. They throw out long flowering branches which produce firstly a small white flower and then small round black seeds. These seeds are expert at getting into gravelled areas and promptly trying to grow new Palms. We let Washingtonia flower as we have lights trained up into trees and this gives a lovely firework effect and also our Labradors eat the seeds (what’s wrong with that have you seen the price of dog food – I am trying to convince them that they are vegetarians). The photo below shows one of our large 20 metre Washingtonia in flower and seed. We have these cut back by experts in January; however, I am trying to convince my wife to go up a ladder and cut the fronds whilst I hold the ladder. She won’t do it she knows I am still smouldering with vengeance for what she did to the tomatoes.

Once last but important thing on Washingtonia. You must cut the branches whilst they are still above the horizontal and before they go too brown. If you don’t then they take on the consistency of iron and will easily blunt your saw – you have been warned. The picture below shows one of our smaller Washingtonia ready for pruning.

🌰 Pick and eat Figs. By now your fig trees should be bursting with fruit. That is if you took my advice and netted them. If not by now you should have lots of fat birds in your garden and no figs. Assuming that you have figs, then you need to go around your tree every morning and gently squeeze each of the figs that you think look ready for harvesting. Ideally they should just be slightly squashy (not too soft) And they should come away in your hand with a slight tug. Place your mornings pickings in a caulander and wash under cold water, leave to dry and stick them in the fridge. The photo below shows my morning pickings (I have to confess that some don’t make it indoors as I scoff them outside). Finally, make sure you keep each days crop seperate so that you can eat them in “Date” order; a little soft fruit joke to send you away with a smile.

It has been a very busy time in the garden lately and with the sun at its hottest I have turned a rather fetching shade of burnished teak, or as my wife says old Ronseal. Anyway, let’s get right down to it and discuss the terrible things that have happened to my tomatoes and other exciting things in the Spanish garden.

30th July: Things I have been doing lately.

🍎 Disposing of my tortured tomatoes. Keen followers of this blog (and I know you are legion), will remember that I planted some tomatoes earlier this year. I am not really a fan of vegetable gardening (or is it a fruit)  but I thought, why not, have fun, live a little – I am that sort of gardener. Anyway, I planted them carefully in the right soil, right feed and a correct watering pattern. They were set fair to provide a huge number of salads throughout the summer. That was the future I had mapped out for them. Unfortunately, that was not to be, I had to go to England for three weeks and left the young “healthy” tomatoes in the charge of my friend Karl and my wife (known in this blog as Cruella – I am thinking of changing this to Kruella for alliteration purposes).

Upon my return I rushed round to see my little friends (as I had taken to calling them) only to find something that looked as if it had been left in the care of Islington Social Services. In place of the healthy little tomatoes I had left, were cruelly tortured and twisted creatures barely surviving, (see photo below). Oh, I tried my best, over the next two weeks I staked them, netted them, fed the best food tomatoes could have, I even sat out in the evening and read them stories; when I had to go in late at night I would say little tomatoes jokes like “ketchup with you tomorrow”. But all to no avail. Eventually, I had to take them one by one to the compost heap. As I took each one away, I told the others they were going to a farm. At the end as I closed the lid of the compost bin on the last little tomato I was left with nothing but silence; it was a bit like that film “silence of the lambs” only with tomatoes of course.

I want no revenge for all of this, as a Christian I have forgiven Karl and Kruella, but if they were to be trolled on the internet it would be no more than they deserved, I have tweeted Donald.

🌳 Reshape your standards. Most people have standard plants growing in their garden or in pots here in Spain. If you have then now is the time to reshape them for a last burst of flower. If you leave this too late then not only will you miss out on late summer flowering, but also you are in danger of the plant being top heavy when strong winds start in September and October. Just take your garden shears and reshape your plant into a smaller lollipop ball. Try not to cut too far into the brown wood and you will be rewarded with lovely late flowering. See the photos below of one of my standards before and after trimming.

🍃 Yellowing leaves. This time of year you can notice some of your plants are getting yellowing leaves. The normal culprit for this is that you are overwatering and you just need to cut back for the plant to return to full colour. But occasionally the yellowing is caused by Chlorosis a problem with the plant not being able to access chlorophyll because of a lack of iron. I noticed that a cutting of Solanum that I was growing on was yellowing so I dosed it with some iron and from the photo below you can see that the couple of inches of top growth are green from the point it was given iron. You can buy iron in granular form from any good Bricolage. All you need to do is mix it with water till it becomes the colour of Rose’ wine – not red wine that is too strong – and then just water the base of your plant. Once should be enough, but with mature plants once a month may be needed.

🎉 Hey la my grapevines back. To paraphrase that great hit from the US girl group the Angels. My grapevine has come back after it endured a similar fate to my tomatoes at the hands of that evil duo Karl and Kruella ( I believe they are touring in Panto together this Christmas). Anyway, you will remember that I had to cut it fully back to the stem as they had deliberately allowed it to get mildew. In the accompanying photos a few blogs ago I said that with luck it should come back this year. Well, guess what it has and with new fruit. I can’t promise that we will be inundated with grapes this year, but it just shows you sometimes you just have to be brave, see photo below.

To those of you who think that Canna is just a reluctant Scotsman saying no, or even worse an expat asking for a beer; I am happy to inform you that Canna are one of the best statement plants you can grow to add height and colour to your garden. They look especially stunning set in gravel – and here is how you do it.

18th July: Things I have been doing today.

🌿 Planting Canna in gravel. Those of you who are paying close attention to this blog will remember that after a titanic struggle involving fire, water and a mighty lever, I managed to remove two areas of Pampas Grass that I planted about five years ago. The Pampas had been planted as statement plants in gravel either side of the main pedestrian gate to my house. Having decided to take them out I needed to replace them with something just as stunning, but hopefully not as problematic as the Pampas. The solution was to plant Canna which grow into large colourful plants with good flowers and interesting leaves. The variety I chose was Russian Red which grows up to six feet tall with striking red flowers. I also wanted to to take the opportunity to introduce some coloured gravel as a feature of the planting area. The photo below shows the Canna ready to go into their planting area; the plants were kept in this spot three days before planting to ensure they were orientated to the sun.

Stage 1: The first stage involves digging a hole deep enough for the Canna. The plant should sit close to the surface and be planted about nine inches apart. Once the hole is dug then fill it with water right to the top. Canna love water and can even be grown in pond margins. Whilst the hole is draining go and have a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit if you like (fatso). See photo below.

Stage 2: Plant the Canna in the ground, in this case I am putting two plants in each hole and using compost from my compost bins – those without compost bins are probably now suffering from the common gardener’s complaint “compost bin envy”. At this stage you need to add some general purpose granulated food. Mix the food in as you plant and then put a thin layer on top covered over with a light covering of soil. The photo below shows the plants almost ready to have their gravel covering.

Stage 3: Once you are happy with the position of the plants then tread the soil firmly around them. You are now ready to add the top coat of gravel. This fulfills two purposes. First, it acts as a mulch to the plant locking in water away from the heat of the sun. Second, it adds decoration and will complement the plant and draw the eye to the area. In this case I have used a reddish volcanic gravel that will match the red of the flowers when they come. Notice from the photo below that I am using a circle of irrigation tubing to help form the circle this will then have spray irrigation pieces inserted in two areas to ensure the plants are well watered every night when the irrigation comes on. The other benefit of this approach is that it keeps the gravel neat.

Stage 4: It is a good idea to add large rocks around the Canna for a number of reasons. These will act as a focal point with the gravel when the plants die back each year. They will also stop my dogs charging through and decapitating the plants. And lastly they cover the spot where I buried my wife when she called me an idiot. The photo below shows the finished product. Don’t tell the police; I will only plead insanity.

✂️ It’s time to trim your Dame de Noche. I have waxed lyrical before about the benefits of Dame de Noche (lady of the night) and I don’t want to be boring; Oh, alright if you insist. This plant is not what you would call a “looker”, a plain leaf fast growing bush it produces very small insignificant flowers. But the real reason for growing it is it’s heavenly scent which it releases at night. Planted next to an outdoor eating area it is positively intoxicating.

The secret to ensuring that scent carries on till Christmas is to reduce the plant by one third at this time of the year. The plant will recover in about a month and should reward you with a new flush of lovely scenting flowers. The photos below show my Dame de Noche prior to her trim and afterwards; I think she looks rather fetching.

Just when I thought it was safe the Sawfly have returned with a vengeance and now they have eaten poor Alan Titchmarsh. No, of course I don’t mean the beloved best ever presenter of Gardener’s World, but Rosa Alan Titchmarsh a lovely pink English Rose.

8th July: Things I have been doing today.

🐛 Investigating the murder of Alan Titchmarsh. As regular readers of this blog will know my roses were invaded by Sawfly caterpillars earlier in the year. These pests are brought into the world by the female Sawfly doing exactly what it says on the Sawfly tin, and sawing into the stem of roses and laying a series of eggs into the cuts (see photo below). A short time later the young caterpillars hatch and proceed to rapidly chew through your roses from top to bottom denuding each stem of all their leaves (see photo below). At the bottom of the rose they lightly step off into the soil, thank you for dinner and promptly bury themselves in the soil and pop up next year ready to start again. The only way to extract revenge for the murderous attack on poor Alan, and stop this cycle of devastation (my wife says I am prone to exaggeration, but she is the worst person in the whole world); is to pick off each caterpillar and see if they can swim in a bucket of water. The photo below shows my granddaughter Florence who would only hold the bucket but did not want to become an accessory; she is thinking of becoming a lawyer!

🌻 Eugenics and Marigolds. When it comes to selective breeding of plants I am a regular Dr Frankenstein. I would, if I could, grow a “Triffid” and market it as salad with an extra bite. Or ideally I would be Seymour Krelborn the florist with Audrey II (look it up, high literature, films and gardening, what’s not to like). Now I am not proposing that you selectively breed your plants by feeding them human beings – though now I come to think of it there are a few people I would feed to Audrey II.

Anyway, I digress, back to plants. This time of year everything is in full flower, and if you would like to expand and better your garden for free, then now is the time to be keeping an eye out for good looking flowers to take seed from. The simplest and easiest way is to cast your eye over all your various flowers and then note those that have the best flowers, have been the most disease resistant and are tall and pretty. (It’s a bit like Miss World, though I don’t remember contestants being asked about disease resistance – I think I better stop this analogy as it is getting dangerous). Under each of the flowers you have designated wrap a piece of coloured water proof tape. The idea is these marked flowers are the ones you will collect your seed from. The coloured tape will hopefully remind you of this and stop you deadheading them; though my compost bins seem to have a lot of red tape in them each year! (The photo below shows some Marigolds bound up in red tape, the sooner we get Brexit the sooner we will be freed from all this). We will return to seed gathering later in the year.

🍉 When to harvest Melon and Butternut Squash. By now your melons etc should be ripening (I refuse to indulge in innuendoes). But There is still plenty of time for new fruits to come on and we really won’t be harvesting till next month and even later. I mention this now for those of you who are growing Squash and melons for the first time and may be tempted to harvest too soon. Yes, I mean you Daphne! You must wait and let each fruit fully ripen and each one will ripen at a different pace.

You will know when a Melon is ready as it will gradually change colour from green taking on a more yellowish hue and the skin will become smoother. But the clincher in ripeness is when the stem attached to the fruit begins to come loose and in most cases will seperate (see photo below). I will cover this phase when we harvest both melons and Squash at a later date. In the meantime if you pull a Melon too hard and it comes off of its vine – Daphne (this is turning into Carry on gardening), don’t despair, just leave it outside in a warm but not full sun area for 3 or 4 days, then pop it into the fridge for 2 days and it should be OK for eating.

Butternut Squash are different wait until the vine dies back, in Spain this is usually in the Autumn. By then the plants should be an even beige colour (the darker the better) with no green veins. Then you can harvest and store them. We will come back to this.

If I remember correctly I think it was my wife’s idea to plant Pampas Grass; she of course denies it. Especially since she found out from the Daily Telegraph that Pampas Grass was supposed to be a sign of a house with “Swingers”. She misinterpreted this saying “I don’t want anyone to think we are fans of big band music”. Anyway it had to go.

July 1: Things I have been doing today.

🐲 Fighting to the death with Pampas Grass. Pampas grass is a lovely show statement grass which is ideal in large gardens. It requires lots of water as do most grasses. The particular problem with this grass is that it grows in rings that extend out from the centre, so you have to get water into the centre at all times otherwise the centre dries out and dies leaving you with a grass that looks a bit like Friar Tucks hair style; (I make no apology for mentioning the great Tuck). I had placed a ring of irrigation around the plant spraying into the centre, but to no avail, four years later it was Tucked. The first picture below shows the problem.

So anyway, it had to go. Short of having your own JCB getting Pampas Grass out requires hard labour involving a four stage process.

Stage 1: take cuttings as you may want to propagate the grass elsewhere. Using a sharp spade cut down around the edges and try and remove clumps of individual grasses. This can be very difficult as you need to dig down to ensure you get as much root as possible. Once you have enough cuttings plant them in 3 litre pots with a normal potting compost, in about three weeks they should start showing signs of growth. The pictures below shows my cuttings beside the main plant and in their pots.

Stage 2: using hedge trimmers and/or a chainsaw, cut the plant down as far as you can. The centre can be very tough, but just keep cutting into it.

Stage 3: set it on fire! Now its not often you get to say that phrase in gardening. Pampas grass normally gets burnt down every so often in its natural environment, so really you are just making it feel at home. But do be careful when you set it alight it turns into Dante’s 6th Circle of Hell (look it up you heretics – high literature and gardening). I forgot to mention this stage to my neighbours and I had the odd complaint about houses filling with smoke.

Stage 4: this is the worst stage – you have to dig out the roots and they don’t want to come out. Using a series of spades working from the outside work your way round the root gradually digging further underneath. After two hours I gave up and borrowed an extremely large crowbar from my neighbour. This was excellent as it allowed me to jump up and down on the end of a large crowbar and prove Archimedes right (look it up). The picture below shows the space where the Pampas Grass was and my mighty crowbar.

I know it sounds like Game of Thrones, but it’s hell out there: hot, dusty and full of things that want to bite you, sting you, scratch you or remove some of your blood. Nobody said it was going to be easy when you signed up to a garden blog, so man up (oops person up) and let’s get on with this!

26-27 June: Things I have been doing today.

💀 “The horror, the horror” Great literature and gardening (look it up). Anway, let’s get the disease and pestilence bit out the way. When I left for my much needed rest in England I was the proud possessor of a healthy, soon to bear fruit grapevine. Left in my wife’s charge for a week I have been left with a wizened, mildewed raisin vine. The picture below shows the state of the vine upon my return. Now with mildew this bad there is nothing you can do; the leaves are already dead and spraying will only give you wet dead leaves. You need to chop everything back to the stem so just the main vine stem is left, everything will be all right next year and you will probably even get some growth this year. Make sure you dispose of the leaves separately, do not compost them and also sterilise your secateurs in bleach. See second photo for my poor butchered vine – I am sure she did it intentionally, every time I mention it she just gives one of those Cruella Deville smiles.

🦋 I have had it with geraniums. And this time I mean it. Every year hope springs eternal and I think why not give geraniums a go again. Avid followers of this blog (and I know who you both are), will remember that a couple of months ago I bought some geraniums with the intention of taking cuttings and starting a whole new geranium dynasty in my garden. But the bloody geranium moth got them again. Known as the geranium bronze, this small moth from Africa is gradually destroying the geraniums of Southern Spain. If you have geraniums you will see them fluttering around all the time; I even had a friend who in her ignorance thought they were lovely. The moth lays eggs on the stem of the plant, the caterpillars hatch and burrow into the stem and suck all the life out of the plant, they are a bit like mini Nosferatu (more horror and literary allusions). Anyway the upshot is that geraniums and I are finished; and I don’t care what anyone says I am not taking them back – it’s over. The first picture below show us at the start of our relationship when we were happy and had the whole world in front of us. The second picture is our final meeting by the compost bin. Before pushing her in I explained “it’s not me, it’s you, you’ve changed”.

🗡 To end on a happy note – Beheading. Not really, just deadheading, but I had to stick to the theme. You will remember, my seed trays of Marigold that I planted in January, grew on and then planted out. Well, eh whallah, look at the first picture below we are ending on a high today. They look lovely and I have bred them bigger, bushier and taller each year by careful seed collection; (but more about that later). But by now you need to be deadheading Marigolds on a daily basis. But don’t just chop their heads off willy nilly (I am not sure if that phrase is sexist). If you just chop them off under the flower you will end up with an ugly hollow stem that gradually turns brown and ruins the look of the flowers. Instead, as shown in the second picture below, go down the stem from the flower as close as you can to the leaves below and then cut there. The leaves will eventually close over the ends of the stem and leave it looking much prettier – unlike those bloody geraniums, they say time is a great healer, butI still hurt and it’s been a week now.

Well I am back in Spain and I have barely seen the inside of the house. I spend my days slaving in the garden, or as my wife calls it hiding from my responsibilities. The late spring rain together with the current extreme heat means that everything has grown like Topsy. The hidden clue in the previous sentences is Harriet Beecher Stowe. See I told you gardening and high literature.

19-20 June: Things I have been doing today.

🚿 Water till you can water no more. Everything is crying out for water in this extreme heat – including me. You should be watering all potted plants (apart from succulents) every day. Only water in the evening or early morning this ensures that the water will have time to penetrate the soil before evaporating. If you have to water in the sunshine make sure you water only the base of the plant never the foliage or the water will act as a magnifier on the leaves and burn them. Plants in the ground and lawns will need to be watered every second or third day. If you have Melons, Pumpkins or Butternut Squash then you need to flood them with water to ensure the fruit swells – I mean nobody wants puny pumpkins.

🍰 Feed your plants weekly. Just as you enjoy nice food, so do your plants. If you don’t feed them they will be stunted and weedy and nobody wants that! But, don’t just feed them any old rubbish, plants like people prefer certain types of food. The photo below shows the range of feed that I use on the different types of plants in my garden. They range from general purpose, tomato, citrus, fruiting, rose and erricaceous.

🥅 Net your fruits. You need to net all your fruits now as they are about to mature. If you don’t then you won’t have a garden, you will have a bird feeding station. I have been netting like a Roman Retiarius (look it up). I have covered fig trees and tomatoes as these are specially relished by all sorts of birds, see photo below, but ignore the state of the tomatoes as my wife was left to look after them for a week. You can use netting or fleece. I prefer netting as it is more robust. However, if you do use netting make sure it is small gauge otherwise there is a danger or birds getting caught. Birds will come and have a look but with bigger gauge nets they can get their head caught. Check your nets every day. See the photos below; as a Christian I have become a fisher of figs, I think this is mentioned somewhere in the Bible.

⚔️ Cut back overgrowing hedges. Normally I only cut back my hedges once a year in January. However, because of the excellent growing conditions this year is an exception. I have a large mixed hedges of Plumbago, Hibiscus, Bignonia, Roses, Pink Trumpet, Bougainville and a self seeded Pomegranate. I let all of them happily fight for space and they reward us with a beautiful show of flower all the summer. However, as the hedge borders a lawn there was the danger of overshadowing and killing some grass areas. Using my trusty hedge trimmer I just took off the leading edge of each plant this saves the grass and also ensures that the plants will continue to flower all summer. When cutting back this time of year make such you do not go into brown wood as you will lose flowering for this summer and may irreparably damage the plant. See the before and after photos below. From the after photo you can see damaged areas of lawn which may grow back, but more likely will require re-seeding in the Autumn.

🌵 Strim your lawn edges. It’s too hot to cut your lawn short as you will just end up with a scorched desert effect,  so leave the grass a little bit longer. If you want your lawn to look neat just strim the edges. The photo below shows an edge of my lawn before I strimmed it back. You should see it now, I have been approached by Wimbledon about hosting the men’s finals!