Category: August

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.