Sweet (pea) aroma.

Well, looking at the last picture of the sweet peas, posted on June 11th (ok, so it was, strictly speaking, a picture of the rose, and the sweet peas just happened to be hanging around in the background...) I thought I should perhaps update you on their progress:

I'm going to be bold and perhaps a little unhumble and say that I'm sure they actually look better in real life.  And the smell of them is such a large part of their appeal that a blog post could never do them justice.
Other things that have happened in the garden lately:
Loads of people came for drinks and nibbles in the garden.
The raspberries have been netted.
The cherry tree has been netted (partly in response to the text I received last week from the friend down South we gave an identical cherry tree too, saying she was enjoying her first bowl of cherries of the year - ours are still somewhat green)
Courgettes and squashes have been planted in the orchard beds.  (Maybe I said that already)
Beans have been planted in a new orchard bed.  (Maybe I said that too...)  And one replaced following its predecessor's consumption by unknown aggressor.
Red cabbages have been planted in the orchard, then attacked by the birds, and are now in the process of being netted and, while they wait, are covered in fleecey stuff.
On the flowers front, some of the zinnias have been spaced out a bit more evenly.
Most of the gazanias and rudbeckias that were heretofore in pots are now in the ground. 
The pansies are flourishing in their modules, and should really be dealt with ASAP.

Update (yeah, boring title again)

Well, the last few days have involved some harvest (as mentioned, this has included inventions for the orchard...)
Here's some other stuff we've brought in...
We've had a little bowl of tomatoes. (A little bowl of little tomatoes, in fact). We've had boxes and boxes and boxes of apples (thus the crumble mixture that's being stockpiled in our freezer). I've taken off the last (sizable) squash things (we had a frost on Saturday night, which gave me a pumpkin and squash scare...) Ironically, there are now about 6-8 butternut squashes on the plants outside, no more than 3-4 inches long, and therefore not really big enough to pick. I've left them on, but don't envisage they'll grow much more before being killed off by the weather...
Plant them sooner next year!!!
I would also have pictures of the courgettes (the last of the season), but we ate them on Saturday night...
Tonight we ate some spuds from the garden (sadly, some of them died because I'd stupidly put them in a box rather than in a bag/sack.
I've ordered some onion, garlic and shallot sets last week, that will hopefully come in time to be planted in the holidays!

Time in the garden has also included a fair amount of clearance over the course of the last few days. The Sweet Pea and Tomato boxes have been cleared out. In fact, in the clearance process, I came across something that I thought was very cool indeed:
It's a tomato that had fallen off the plant and ended up buried in the bed. All its seeds have started to sprout! Very impressive piece of design there. It does worry me slightly about how many windfall tomato plants we'll end up with!
The rose bed has been weeded, cleared (the pumpkins in there didn't come to anything) and compost has been added. I've also taken a couple of rose cuttings to plant, with the hope they'll root and grow next year. I've done them in pair to double the chances, and if both of a pair root, I'll just pull one up anyway. It was a 20 minute job, so if it works, I figure I've saved some more cash!
I'll blog again soon about what's been going into all these beautifully cleared spaces :)

Many Marigolds.

I finished planting them at long last:


112 marigolds, from seed, all along the driveway. It took three separate stabs to get the job done, but now it is. And they'll hopefully be blooming soon.

Meanwhile, the pumpkins are growing, the red cabbages are being ravaged by darn caterpillars, the tomatoes are struggling to life, the courgettes still producing. The spring onion and lettuces are just beginning to show themselves, and yesterday saw the sowing of two rows of carrots where the last lot was dug up (is it a problem, planting them in the same place? Hope not!) The lavender's ok, a couple of ropey looking ones perhaps. The sweet peas have decided to offer up a few more flowers, and the spuds should be dug soon (though we had a batch from Wales, which was lovely!)

The 252 miniplug plants (primula, pansy and viola) have arrived and the viola is now 'potted on' into the trays (40plugs per tray)

We have harvest!

Very exciting day today. Got back from a two week holiday and had a look at the garden. Here's some photographic evidence:
Raspberries (sadly, this photo shows ALL the raspberries currently on our 12 canes...)
Pumpkins - Table Queen, if you're wondering. Not quite sure how to tell if they're ready to pick, but I'll look it up :)








Pumpkins (or maybe these ones are squash, come to think of it) Turks Turban. So named, because they end up looking like a turban. Although this one looks a bit flat, so I'm not sure if it actually will...





This is sort of the pumpkin/squash patch generally, which has come a fair way since the last photo. Also, the rhubarb in the middle is doing a whole load better than it was a little while ago. I think it's mainly recovered from it's long wait to be planted out.





These are the tomatoes. They're most (if not all) beef tomatoes, so we're going to have to consume a fair amount of tomato, basil and mozzarella salad... Sadly, the basil seeds I've sown inside have taken exception to not being watered for a fortnight...




Here are the potatoes. You can hardly see the bins now, which is slightly ridiculous. Again (as with most things...) I don't actually know when I'm supposed to be digging them up. Man, there's a whole lot more reading to be done.







Red cabbage. They're doing ok. Thankfully, the ones that were sown at the wrong time (i.e., when we were going to be heading south before they were ready to be planted out) have also survived, so will be planted out in due course. Note the nibbling that's happened on the far end. Not sure if that's slugs or caterpillars, haven't investigated properly. Note also the vast number of weeds that have flourished in our two weeks away.





I thought this was quite exciting. This is the carrots and parsnip bed (as you'll recognise from previous posts!) They're pretty immense. I also saw (though the camera phone wasn't up to the shot) a real carrot-looking thing at the bottom of the vegetation. Ok, so perhaps this isn't a big surprise, but it's EXCITING!







Here's the intercropping (pumpkins in rose bed) I mentioned before. They seem to be doing ok. Not sure that there'll be much pumpkin action in time for October, but hey. It's all a learning curve. Thankfully, there has actually been some rain up here while we've been away. This has help avoid a mass die-off in the garden. However, not everything has fared quite so well...


The tomatoes in the boxes, and the sweet peas with which they are planted, have not done quite so swimmingly. They don't really get much in the way of rain. They are outside, but probably get a bit of shelter from the patio roof, which means that the boxes can get pretty dry. Next year, I might have to line them with plastic, so that they keep the water in. The problem then, of course, will be waterlogging! There are, however, some tomatoes (they're cherry ones) on these plants.


And finally, the thing that actually came in from the garden today. It's tempting to make this a massive photo, but I'll resist. Unfortunately, these have actually grown a little too much. They're supposed to be courgettes, but have rather outgrown the tubs and are more marrowish. There were two like this, so we've kept one and given the other away. There's also a more normal size one, which we'll have at the weekend... Will also probably get some carrots up and maybe spuds and parsnips... Who knows!

In other news (roundup). Beans are doing much (well, it's in the singular, not plural!). PSB sown earlier is ok, but nothing impressive. Marigolds wilted in kitchen but not dead. Peppers in kitchen dead. Agapanthus growing. Pansies still going despite being uprooted (trying to find more seeds!) Haven't checked lavender. Plums beginning to redden slightly. (Still a way off though). Apples all doing well. Most roses over now. Loads of weeding to be done. Other rhubarb fine.
Will probably do a flower update tomorrow (or soon, anyway.)