Category: July

I know it is hot everwhere, and goodness knows here in Spain we should be used to it. But it is really hot and as such we gardeners are suffering far more than the general public. You just get tanned, buy ice cream and jump in the pool. Whilst we poor gardeners are running around and watering like crazy only to see plants that have been fine for years, just keel over and go to that great compost heap in the sky. Each morning I emerge with trepidation to see that everyone is ok, only to find out we lost another good plant in the night. It’s like a medieval siege, unless relief comes soon we are lost. I have even asked Cruella (my wife) if she could cast a rain spell, but she just laughs knowingly and says she doesn’t know what I mean; but she does.

30th July: Things I have been doing lately

🌞 Trying to save the lawns. My lawns have literally become deserts – or is it metaphorically – but that doesn’t matter the end result is large black bare patches where there should be grass. If you have grass in Spain you have to expect this, but this year is the worst ever. The cause is obviously the heat of the Sun which has been relentless for over two months. There is no rain on the way so we will probably be like this till late September or October. All you can do is mitigate the damage. I am watering deeply every second night with in lawn sprinklers. You must do this when the Sun has gone down and the heat is going out of the day. Don’t water every night as this shallow watering will only encourage the roots to come up seeking the water and they will duly get scorched the next day. The photo below shows an area of my poor lawn; I showed the photo to Cruella but she just smirked and asked me what I wanted her to do about it – but she knows!

Also as an aside to the watering issue, you need to check all your irrigation systems at least weekly. Our part of Spain is a holiday destination and the population can easily double during July and August. This means greater water usage and a concomitant drop in water pressure. Therefore irrigation nodules that where giving your plants plenty of water in the Spring will now not be sprinkling as widely and may not be reaching your plants.

🙏 Rehoming orphans. It’s true I have turned into Mr Bumble the Parish Beadle who treated Oliver Twist so badly. You will remember that I emptied some of the Orphanage (potting bench) a little while go. I mentioned at the time that as there was no room in the planting beds I was going to repot most things and wait for the beds to empty. Well in the main that is true, but foolishly I did plant out a few plants in areas that really weren’t suitable for them. In other words like Mr Bumble I rehomed them badly. I watched them struggle for a few weeks but in the end after sleepless nights worrying I have corrected my mistakes.

The first photo below shows a badly rehomed Lantana planted under a hedge of Jasmine and Bignonia supplemented by Ivy from my next door neighbour. What was I thinking of it would never survive there. I dug it up one night when the heat of the day had gone and rehomed it in a space I made in one of the beds. The second photo below shows the replanted and happier Lantana, it even has a little flower. I have now taken to calling myself Mr Brownlow (look it up – gardening and great literature).

🛌 Repotting Cordlyines. When I was going through my Mr Bumble phase I also made another mistake, but I want to confess everything now so that we can move on. As a Christian I believe in forgiveness and redemption. The problem here was that I was repotting some Cordylines but did not have large enough clay pots to put them in, so I foolishly cut corners and placed them in undersize plastic pots. Now the problem with doing this is two fold. First, because the pots where too small the plants would become pot bound quite quickly and this in turn would stunt overall growth. But the second and more serious mistake was to put them in plastic pots. Now plastic pots are fine and are useful for repotting in the winter. But if your plant is to stand in the sun then it needs to be in a clay pot. The clay pot will hinder evaporation and stop the roots getting too hot. A side benefit of a clay pot with a tall plant like Cordyline is that the extra weight will stop the plant being blown over on a windy day.

The first photo below shows the Cordylines looking at me reproachfully as they stand by their potential new homes. The second photo shows them happily rehomed. I prefer my Brownlow to my Bumble – that sounds a bit obscene but you know what I mean.

🐛 Fighting off the evil Weevil. In case you have forgotten the dreaded Palm Weevils will be circling your Phoenix Palms as you read this. The Palm Weevil loves this hot weather and will be trying to burrow into your Palm tree to lay its eggs which in turn will kill your tree. With small trees you can  just spray the crown with proprietary killer and they should be ok. But with large trees, and mine are all large, you need another solution. I have told you before, but I will tell you again, just in case you weren’t listening last time. Either pay a contractor to spray your trees or, if you have a head for heights and a profound deathwish do it yourself.

The alternative is to do what I have done. Drill into the trees, feed a perforated tube in then pour in Weevil killer and let the rising sap take it up to all the branches. This has the effect of turning your tree into a toxic Weevil assassinator. The photo below shows one of my trees mid treatment. All you need is the tube in place, a jug with the Weevil killer mixed with water and an old Fairy liquid bottle to squirt the poison down the tube and into the tree.

🐺 Letting sleeping dogs lie. Finally to cheer you all up and prove how hot it is, the photo below shows Tango dreaming of getting back into the pool. I swim with both dogs every day and am planning to offer holidays to the general public “swimming with Labradors” – Dolphins are old hat, and they smell of fish.

With all due respects to the late Freddie Mercury he really didn’t know what he was talking about; unless of course he meant gardening at the hight of Summer. Yes, it’s all happening now, things are sprouting like crazy, everything is crying out for water, the weak are dying and the strong are thriving. At this time of year I am not so much a gardener as a cross between Gunga Din, Florence Nightingale and Albert Pierrepoint – I am either watering, tending to, or unfortunately executing plants. See I told you stick with this blog: great literature and gardening, what’s not to like. Anyway on with the show.

19th July: Things I have been doing lately

✂️ Trimming seed pods from Trumpet Vine. If you have Trumpet Vine then you will know that once they have flowered they will then produce a lot of spectacular seed pods, some of which can be almost a metre long. Now this is fine and lovely at the end of the season, but we need flowers now and the seed pods must go. Using your secateurs or shears trim and tidy up the Vine making sure you take off all the seed pods. Once you have done this the plant will begin to flower again within a couple of weeks and you will have a whole new flush of flowers. You can probably do this twice over the flowering season, but make sure that eventually you leave the last lot of seed pods as they make a spectacular addition to the late summer garden.

The first photo below shows the Trumpet Vine with its seed pods. The next photo shows the plant tidied up and ready to flower again.

 

🚿 Spraying grape vine. At this time of year grape vines are liable to get mildew of one type or another. In Spain it is usually Powdery Mildew which is caused by a pathogen (whatever that is – I always worry about things with “patho” in them). Anyway, it is important that you spray your vines as soon as you see the first signs. This usually involves white powdery residue on the leaves which then start to curl and go brown. You can buy proprietary brands of mildew killer that do a good job. If you fail to spray then the leaves will all fall off and the fruit will rot – don’t say I didn’t tell you. The photo below shows one of my vines with the start of mildew.

💣 Spraying Roses for Rust. I have lots of Roses and I often mention how much time I spend trying to make them look nice, only to be repaid by them constantly skewering me on their thorns. My favourite Rose depends on the time of year, but one of my best is “Munstead Wood”. This is a beautiful deep red heavily cupped Rose which when it is in full bloom has a beautiful beguiling scent. However, Munstead Wood is a bit like an ageing Hollywood actress who is a complete hypochondriac and is always demanding attention. If there is a disease or pest anywhere around, then this Rose will get it. Throughout the year it manages to get: Greenfly, Whitefly, Blackfly, Mildew and Rust, sometimes all at the same time.

This year her early blooms where wonderful and I really thought she was pulling her self together. But unfortunately no. She has taken to languishing on her metaphorical couch all day with a cold compress over her eyes. She has Rust again and she looks absolutely terrible. The photo below shows one of my Munstead Woods looking very much the worse for wear. The solution is sitting beside her. A good dose of Ant Rust spray administered every second night for a week. We will soon have her back on her feet.

🌿 Planting a cutting from the lovely Solanum. Regular readers of this blog will know that my plant of the year which I have grown from a cutting is a lovely Solanum (Potato Vine). Planted out in February this is now over twenty foot high and has been flowering profusely for two months. I am so enamoured of this plant that I have left it something in my Will. But not only that, I have been giving cuttings to all and sundry. I have kept a few cuttings and am now beginning to plant out.

Now I know that you know how to plant things out, but just in case you don’t this is what you should do. First you need to get some rich compost from your compost heap, or, if you must go to a shop. When taking compost from your heap make sure that you leave your Trug lying on its side for half an hour as this let’s all the beneficial insects that you have scooped up sneak back into the heap. Cruella (my wife) laughed at me when I told her this was important, she even asked for some bugs for her spells. The first photo below shows the bugs, whilst the second shows their escape route back to the compost bin. Click on each photo.

 

Once you have dug the necessary hole for the plant and filled it with water at least twice, then you are ready to plant out your cutting. However, you can’t plant it into compost alone. If you do this you will cause the roots to circle round and around as they refuse to leave the lovely compost and make their way out into the real soil. You need to mix your compost with a 50/50 mixture of compost and the soil you dug from the planting hole. This mixture will give the right amount of reassurance to the plant without mollycoddling it, the end result is that it will make its way out into the soil.

The photo below shows three trugs: one holding compost from the heap, one with the soil and the third for mixing. The final photo shows the lovely Solanum planted ready to grow up wires and protected from marauding Labradors by rocks.

👩‍🎤 Pruning Dame de Noche. This is one of the great plants of Spain. Admittedly it’s not very good looking, but it smells wonderful. Anyway, if you’ve got it you will know what I mean. By now your plant should have finished its first flowering, if you want more then you need to act now. Cut your plant down by one third. Don’t do anymore, and don’t do any less. The temptation is to try and tidy the whole thing up, but don’t bother it’s like putting lip stick on a Pig, it won’t look any better and will still smell the same. If you do this now then you will have a whole new flush of flowers in about a month’s time and can enjoy that intoxicating scent in the late summer air.

The photos below shows the Dame de Noche before and after its prune. As I said not a looker, but does she smell.

 

No the above heading is not about the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, if it was it would be a stupid name for number four. How terrifying would a visitation from “rebirth” be! But it is another day in my garden where the battle between man and nature is fought afresh every day. Mind you it’s so hot I have had to sit in the shade and write this nonsense rather than continuing the battle. I will return to the affray  later after a cup of tea.

8th July: Things I have been doing lately

🥊 Dealing with Oleander Scale. Oleanders are lovely plants and they proliferate in our part of Spain. However, now that they are in full flower they are like a magnet to “scale insects”.  The Scale insect is actually a bug and it is important to remember the difference. Even though I have told you before, I know you will have forgotten – “bugs suck and insects bite” which is important to remember as they both cause different types of damage to your plants.

Scale is a very adaptable species and there are over 8,000 described species – one to suit all occasions. Whereas you will visibly see insect damage as they will eat the leaves and you will see chomp marks. Bugs suck at the vascular system of the plant and the first real sign you will see – unless you are looking for them – is that your plant will wilt and in the worst cases die. So it is important that you check your Oleander on a daily basis. Now Scale are so small that, if you are like me, you will need your glasses on. If you look carefully you will see what looks like a small orange rash up near the Oleander flowers. Look even more carefully, and what you thought was a lot of little orange dots, is in fact a plague of scale insects.

The photo below shows my Oleander sustaining a large proportion of the Spanish Scale population. Now the choice is yours, you can pluck them off individually, using tweezers and a magnifying glass, then set them free in the wild. Or, you can blast the little b******s with insecticide; I leave it up to you.

🥋 Dealing with Mealy Bugs. I tell you it doesn’t get any easier, just when the Scale is dealt with the Mealy bugs start attacking my Aeoinum Schwarzkopf. For those of you who think this is a some sort of musical instrument or even worse, an expensive shampoo, let me explain. The Aeonium is a fabulous plant that looks as if it is a left over from the Jurassic era. The Schwarzkopf variety is a chocolate, almost black colour and normally nothing attacks it. However, I had taken some cuttings about a year ago and planted them in pots on my veranda and they were perfectly happy until about two weeks ago when I started noticing a fluffy white coating forming near the top of each stem. At first I thought it might be powdery mildew, but on closer inspection it was Mealy Bugs.

Mealy bugs like Scale suck the vigour from your plant but do not have to be dealt with by such a chemical onslaught. Instead, take the plant somewhere away from other plants and blast it with a high powered jet of water and wash all the white woolly stuff off. You will have to do this for a couple of weeks every time the white woolly stuff comes back. Don’t forget to hold on to the plant pot or like me you wil be chasing the plant pot all over the garden. The photo below shows my Aeonium before the water cannon treatment.

 🧛‍♂️ Deadheading Roses. To keep your roses in bloom you need to dead head on a regular basis. In my case this means more or less every day and some times twice a day. No matter what I do this always ends up as a bloodbath as the Roses in their gratitude to me for keeping them blooming, proceed to stab me at every turn.  Because I take Aspirin this means that I bleed profusely for hours and look like a character from a Tim Burton movie. Sometimes at the end of the day I look like one of the “undead”. Cruella (my wife) says I look like this every day.

The photo below shows one of my arms after a bit of dead heading, I can’t show you the other arm as it will scare small children and cause fainting; it’s X rated. By the way don’t think I haven’t noticed those dogs circling every time I deadhead; I’m sure there is a lot of Wolf in Labradors.

✂️ Moving plants and taking cuttings. After all that disease pestilence and bloodshed it’s time for some rebirth and renewal. If this was a movie the music would suddenly change from all the dramatic stuff to some strings and harp tinkling. Anyway, as you wander round the garden at the moment you will notice little crisis taking place: plants will have fallen over, bits will fall off of others and some will just present you with a good opportunity for a nice little cutting. These are the opportunities you need to provide you with plants for free.

As I casually perambulated around the garden today (none of your strolling for me) I noticed some opportunities. For example I have lots of large dramatic Agave plants that look stunning in the right setting. One of them was growing parallel to the ground and was obviously in distress because it had started throwing new roots out from its stem. This is a sign that the plant has trouble with its main stem and needs to find a new route for water. Most plants would die within days if their main stem is damaged, but succulents have such a large store of water in their leaves and stems that they can buy themselves a month or so before they die, and in this period they fight furiously to reconnect with the ground.

But not to worry help was at hand donning my International Rescue outfit I got to work. First I went down into our Wild Garden area (I know I don’t talk about it much, but one day I will do a special Post on it; such fun). Anyway, in the Wild garden area I dug a new hole specially to receive the transplanted Agave. The first photo below shows the dying Agave (note the distress roots). The second photo shows the newly dug hole, don’t worry I’m showing you this so you can see the type of soil we have in the Wild garden. You can see it’s sandy, full of stones and very free draining hence I had to take this photo twice as the water kept disappearing. This is ideal Agave territory they do not need rich soil or much water.

I then cut the Agave with a saw making sure I cut below the new roots, as this would assist the plant to regrow. The final photo below shows the plant in its new setting. The new plant is the furthest away in the photo, the other Agave is one I did about three years ago.

In addition to the Agave I saw some nice little growth sticking out of another succulent. Don’t know what it’s called but it’s got furry bunny ears (why use binomial Latin names eh). The first photo shows the furry bunny ear plant. Anyway, I took some nice cuttings as you can see from the second photo, whilst the third photo shows the cuttings duly potted up and beginning their new life on the potting bench.

 

It’s hotting up here in Spain and there is lots to do in the garden. Cruella (my wife) is off to England to see our son, she flew the usual way (with the cat sitting on the back) and that means I can Garden 24 hours a day with short breaks to drink beer.

2nd July: Things I have been doing lately

👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 Emptying the orphanage. To those of you not familiar with a garden orphanage, it consists of those plants still left on the potting bench as Summer hots up. They obviously can’t stay there as it is getting too hot so they are usually planted out into your borders.

Now last year we had a Terrible time with the orphanage. I had sold most of the potting bench plants at our annual Campoverde Open Garden Day and all that was left were the ugly and unwanted. You may not remember, but I do, those nights of pain when I sat on the potting bench with the orphans singing excerpts from “Annie” and trying to keep up everybody’s spirit.

Anyway this year things are different the orphanage is packed with handsome self assured and upwardly mobile plants; its a bit like “Love Island” what ever that is, I was just trying to be cultural relevant. If there was Match.com for plants they would all be successfully dating by now. Look at the photo below, they’re a pretty handsome bunch.

But there is a problem, normally I would plant them out in my borders, but I can’t look at the photo below, the borders are packed, I can barely get water through to the roots, never mind more plants.

The only solution is potting on in gradually bigger pots throughout the summer until the beds start to become clear. So this is my strategy, the orphanage will eventually form the bedrock of late Summer early Spring planting. I’ve started with some little Carnation cuttings which I had started off in tiny pots. The first photo below shows them ready for re-potting. The second photo shows the reason for re-potting that they were getting a bit tight and their small feeder roots were starting to circle inside the pot. The third photo shows them happily re- potted. I have then gone on to the larger plants: the lovely Solanum, Pink Trumpet Vine and some little white trailing Lantana. The fourth photo below shows all the bigger plants in their new pots.  I shall continue this process for the other orphans as they reach the limits of their pot. In a few weeks I will probably have to shade them as the summer sun will just be too hot for plastic potted plants. (Click on each photo for an enlarged view).

⛱ Saving the best seed for next Summer. By now your bedding plants and annuals should be in their first and best flowering.  As you dead head throughout the Summer the blooms will get smaller and smaller. So, now is the time to mark out the best flowers to save seed from. You need to look for the biggest, best formed and all round handsomest flower heads. None of your equal opportunities stuff, be elitist pick only the best. Mark these flower heads now by placing  a piece of white tape directly under the best blooms. This will stop you deadheading them over the next few weeks. Don’t rely on your memory of which were the best blooms, they fade quickly and will look less than their best in a few days. We will come back to this topic at seed gathering time. In the meantime the photo below shows my Marigolds marked up for future glory.

🦅 Netting fruit. Now is the time to net up your fruit trees. I have Figs and Persimmon that need nets otherwise the local bird population become obese. Nets are cheap so splash out, but only buy the fine mesh ones otherwise you will spend every morning releasing fat birds who are hanging upside down in your nets and feeling sick. You may need to add some old CD’s hanging from the trees or some children’s windmills to stop the more adventurous birds having a go. The photos below show some expert netting courtesy of assistance by my friend David.

🚿 Checking irrigation. Now if Cruella was here she would mock me for this section as it is the gardening equivalent of train spotting. But, and I say this with pride, there are some things that we gardener’s need to talk about, and irrigation is one of them.

Now that Summer is in full swing, water is absolutely essential to all plants. You may say, that is not a problem as you have an irrigation system. But do you? You may have had an irrigation system, but you need to check it now. Once set up irrigation systems need checking and adjusting for a range of issues:

Changes in water pressure that require you to readjust settings, blocked up irrigation points that let no water out, and the worst of all broken and splitpipes that mean you are watering Spain as a whole rather than your garden. So now is the time to check your irrigation or you could just go on adding to the water company profits.

The photos below are a sample of the latest problems I have found with my own irrigation systems. The first one shows a blocked irrigation point that was letting no water out, this had to be cleared out with a bent paper clip. The second photo shows a damaged lawn sprinkler point that was watering the sky. The third and fourth photos show splits in pipes at joints. The fourth photo shows a big joint that needed tightening. The last photo is my favourite, a split pipe that must have been celebrated at the water companies AGM with Champagne all round. Click on each photo for spectacular and stunning close ups. And Cruella dares to say that this is not exciting; I have heart palpitations just writing it.

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.