Plant of the week - Oenothera (Evening Primrose)

There's still a lot going on in my garden at the end of September, but my choice for this week took me by surprise. The evening primrose has had a second wind and exploded in a flurry of large yellow flowers - it had already flowered in late summer, producing blooms at a fairly modest rate, but it looks like this is it's 'swan song'.

Evening Primrose - Oenethera

What's also unusual is that its flowers are open during the day, rather than opening during the late evening as it did during the summer (hence it's name). This means it's being visited by bees rather than moths as you can see on the right hand side of the shot above. It feels like this one was desperate to stock up for the winter months - visiting every flower several times to make sure none were overlooked.

It was hanging around long enough for me to capture some great shots of it, body and legs dripping in pollen, gorging itself inside one of the flowers.

Evening primrose & Buff-tailed bumblebee (queen)

Evening primrose & Buff-tailed bumblebee (queen)

I pinched some seeds that were growing wild by the road at the end of the street. That was last year, and I already have mature plants. I suspect these will be self-seeding and start to pop up everywhere but I really don't mind!

Garden Snapshot - August 2013

Better late than never - August and September were a busy months so I have been playing catch up with my blogs.

Here's the garden snapshot I took in mid-August.

Garden snapshot - August 19th 2013

August is a surprisingly poor month for colour in my garden. The roses have mostly finished, fuschias are on their way out - only the crocosmia and last of the hollyhocks provide a splash of colour. I'll aim to rectify that for next year somehow.

Plant of the week - Cyclamen hederifolium

The first cyclamen in our garden were donated by my Mum - spring flowering - one white and one-pink. I was fascinated by the size and shape of the bulb which didn't seem to correlate with the tiny delicate flowers and leaves of this ephemeral plant, which disappears without a trace after its flowering spell only to re-appear again each year as if by magic.

I immediately fell in love with their delicate tiny flowers, and their early-flowering nature added to their appeal. But buying the bulbs or plants is quite expensive (about £5 per plant or £1 per bulb) so I decide to have a go at growing my own.

Two years on and my hard work and patience has paid off - there are now several of these tiny plants established in secret corners of the garden. I only just spotted these a couple of days ago as I was trudging up the soaked lawn. I was amazed to discover that the flowers appear before the leaves (the leaf in this shot is a fallen hollyhock).

Cyclamen hederifolium

Germination was a bit of a drawn out affair - soaking the seeds, covering with vermiculite and keeping them warm in a sealed plastic bag - but several months later they sprouted, and two years later they are flowering. I'm hoping the carpet of tiny gems will get bigger year on year. This kind of gardening is all about patience! These ones are autumn flowering - so I get two cyclamen fixes each year.

Cyclamen hederifolium

Plant of the week - Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

A belated post from last week - 12th september

Strange to say that I was hard pushed to decide on the plant for this week. It may be mid-september but there's still lots going on and lots of little beauties popping up as autumn takes a grip.

What caught my eye this week was a clump of little nasturtiums tucked away in the strawberry patch and this especially bright specimen (not PhotoShop enhanced honestly!).

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

When there's not much colour in the garden that really jumps out at you, this is a little star. I remember chucking some nasturtium seeds in this spot sometime in June when I was having a clearout of old seeds. They are so resilient they don't need any care and will obviously just grow where you throw them.

They are humble plants and often overlooked, but there are some fantastic varieties about and they will self-seed year on year although I am not sure how true the colours are for second and third generation etc.

The best bit about nasturtiums is that you can eat the flowers! They have a slight peppery taste, but they look amazing in a green salad - just make sure they aren't covered in blackfly as mine usually are if they are blooming in mid-summer.

Plant of the week - Blackberry 'Loch Ness'

This weeks' plant is another edible - as there are plenty of sweet juicy fruit in the garden at the moment!

Everyone loves blackberries and we all have childhood (or even adult) memories of picking brambles and cramming them into our mouths, coming home with fingers stained in the deliciously tart purple juice. They are a key ingredient in many a fruit pie and one of the true edible wonders of the British countryside.

Brambles grow everywhere in my garden, I have tough job getting rid of them as they are so invasive. For a couple of years I let them get on with it in one or two remote parts of the garden so that I could gather the fruit for a crumble. But what I didn't like was the scratches and cuts from the thorns. So I invested in a cultivated variety...

Blackberry - Loch Ness

'Loch Ness' really does produce amazingly sweet and juicy fruit, the blackberries are a gorgeous rich velvety black (almost tar-like) colour, and the fruits appear in proliferation. It's thornless, so even little ones (or careless big ones) can pick the fruit without worry of a scratch, its just the spiders you have to watch for when you pop them in your mouth - better to rinse and be safe.

I got mine from Crocus, about 3 years ago, and this year it has really come into its own and produced a bumper crop - the first two years were a bit disappointing, but there are already promises of a good crop next year from the tall strong news stems that have appeared this year. It fruits on the previous year's growth, so once a stem has fruited it needs to be cut back to the ground - taking care not to remove the new stems that will produce fruit the following year.

It doesn't seem to mind the shade - as its growing on a north-east facing wall along with a loganberry. It makes good use of the shady fence that would otherwise be bare.

Bowl of blackberries - 'Loch Ness'

We've already had about 1kg of fruit from one plant - and there are more berries to come. And as if that's not enough, the maple-like leaves become a vibrant shade of orange in autumn before the leaves drop! You can't go wrong...

Plant of the week Blueberry 'Bluecrop'

If I had to recommend just one of the edible plants in my garden then there is no doubt that it would be the blueberry. Even if you have small garden or patio,  there's no excuse as they don't take up much space. Blueberries can be quite expensive in the shops but the plant itself requires very little care other than the acid soil it grows in so growing your own is cost-effective.

I've had mine for about 4 years now and like all fruit bushes, it produces more crop year on year. It's outside in full sun in a pot filled with ericaceous (acid) compost and I only ever water it with rain water (tap water is too alkaline I read somewhere). I do feed it just as its flowering with an ericaceous plant feed.

Blueberry 'Bluecrop' - in a pot filled with ericaceous compost

 I got this plant from Crocus - it came in a small pot - the plant was about a quarter the size it is now. I selected this variety for its heavy cropping and the fact that it self pollinates. I'd read that some blueberries need a partner to help them produce fruit but this has done well all by itself!

The wood pigeons love them - there are a pair of fat ones nearby who are always looking a bit pleased with themselves - probably responsible for eating the entire cherry crop too. But despite this we still managed to get a few bowls full of berries - probably about 1.5kg all in all.

A bowl of delicious blueberries!

Best of all they taste delicious - I only pick them when very ripe - so each one is full of flavour - unlike the supermarket packs which sometimes have 50% bland tasting berries - we have them in crumbles and best of all - with greek yogurt and honey.

Go on - try one at home - I promise you won't be disappointed!

Plant of the week - Crocosmia

There are two important things that I don't know about the crocosmia in my garden. First off, I don't know how they got there, and second, I don't know if I actually really like them. Let me explain...

Crocosmia

I didn't plant any crocosmia, and there weren't any in the garden when we first got here. But then suddenly I noticed them on their silent invasion, in a couple of spots in the garden, unobtrusive, but biding their time.

Then one year I noticed that I was having to pull a lot of the blade like shoots up from various places around the garden, I kept pulling them up - they kept re-appearing. It seemed like they were coming in under the neighbour's fence (or were they actually escaping from my garden into theirs). I'd been throwing them in the compost, but they were surviving and actually growing in the compost. Action was needed - an extermination program.

Aside from the two 'managed' clumps in the garden, I now treat crocosmia in the same way I treat bindweed - all traces of them go to the tip rather than the compost, but its still an ongoing job to keep them under control. The second clump in the garden started off as a couple of leaves which I left as it was in a good spot. A year later and its a huge swathe of leaves and fiery orange blooms.

Crocosmia

So why is such a troublesome specimen now 'plant of the week'? Well secretly I actually love it, its foliage is a great colour, the leaf shape contrasts well with the other plants around it, and it provides a bit of fiery colour at a time when other flowers in my garden are fading. I love its tenacity and hardiness - in the same way a naughty child might always be causing trouble and be under your feet but is still secretly your favourite.

I have a crazy fantasy about digging up a clump and dumping it by the side of the railway cutting by the station, and that in a few years time commuters will be confronted with the sight of a bank of flaming crocosmia on their way from Brighton to London. So if it ever happens - you know how it got there!

Well I don't know how it got into my garden, but I'm kind of glad that it did.

Don't buy the corms - I'll happily send out what I dig up!