Garden starting to bloom

With the hottest days so far this year the garden is now starting to bloom. The sweet peas are starting to flower on all of the plants which have now reached about 5 feet tall.


One iris bulb has just started to flower. There are more bulbs in the garden but the growth is very weak on all the others. This may be due to the bulbs needing to be split. This needs further investigation.


The Eschscholzia is also flowering. The flowers are such a wonderful yellow and develop from a strange spear shape. This plant has been in a pot for a year or so now, which is a mistake as it grows a long tap root. When I picked it up this weekend I snapped the root off which had grown though the gravel and into the ground. I shall re-plant the Eschscholzia in the front garden instead.

I must admit I have not made much of an effort with flowers this year, apart from the sweet peas, tulips, daffodils and violas. My only other flowers were going to be marigolds but only one out of a tray of thirty survived. That was a combination of over watering and slug destruction.


I have sown some more seed this weekend - marigold, corn flower, Eschscholzia and cabbage. It may be a little late in the year for the flowers but the cabbage should be all right for an autumn crop (if it germinates). All the seeds have been sown in peat free compost and placed in the green house. There is very little in the green house now as most plants have been put out into the garden to harden off.


One strange occurrence this weekend was the movement of some small pots. I few weeks ago when the weather was cold and wet I put some bird seed mixed with used cooking fat into a small pot for the birds. The birds loved it and it was empty within days. More recently I was potting on my seedlings and needed a pot, so I used this empty bird seed pot. This pot along with another six was placed on a tray, on the patio. This Saturday morning, the bird seed pot has been moved off the tray, to the middle of the patio with the soil and seedling spilt. I suspect that a magpie has smelt the remnants of the bird seed and fat and thought there was more beneath the soil. So the soil was brushed up and the pot put in the shed. Sunday morning the same thing happen to another pot on the tray. Thankfully this time the seedling was not spilt. It seems that the magpie was looking for that pot. I must admit that I did not clean the pot after it had the bird seed and fat, but it was empty when I re-potted the tomato.