Friday, August 01, 2014

Garden at the beginning of August 2014

Thanks to some cunning lawn mowing, and despite the heat, the lawn is still looking relatively green. We followed the advice in various places about raising the height of the cutting bar on the mower, and leaving it longer between cuts, so it stays green, rather than looking like a scalped hay field.


The late summer flowers are now well and truly here. The Eryngium is huge this year, I actually had to chop some of it back as it was hanging over into our neighbour's garden! Lots of the flowers have been really popular with the bees, the Eryngium is usually covered with them. This was a bargain £1.50 plant from the garden centre near Mum a couple of years ago, now sadly closed down.


The Echinacea is flowering well too, this is another popular one with insects. I grew this one from seed.


Some of the lilies have survived, after much picking off of lily beetles when we spotted them in time! I'd forgotten I'd planted these - they were a free offer in the newspaper a couple of years ago, but I don't think did as much last year. Think they must like the sun we have this year.


The Rudbeckia is beginning to flower. I divided this in the Spring, so it's quite small (but in three sections) and will probably take a while to build up again.


The Japanese Anenome is huge too, and another one that attracts the insects. I can't quite believe how big this one has got, I planted it three years ago after buying it with some garden gift vouchers I was given on leaving a job.


The Echinops is also huge and absolutely covered in bees most of the time. This is another one I've grown from seed.

The first ripe tomato! The cherry tomatoes are now ripening a few at a time each day, but no sign of the cordon tomatoes being ripe anytime soon!


The sweet peas I planted in a container have been covered in flowers for weeks now. It's quite hard to keep on top of the deadheading to keep the flowers coming. Here I've taken pre-emptive action and snipped off more flowers to have in a jar inside the house in the hope of not having to deadhead quite so soon again.

The raspberries are now ripening at full tilt. These are Autumn Bliss variety, and we're getting about double this quantity every week at the moment.


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