EOMV – July - blowing hot and cold

July 2015 has been a month of contrast in my garden in terms of the weather. From extreme hot weather in the beginning to seriously cold towards the end of the month. Well, it’s not as if we have had any snow, but it actually dipped just below 10 degrees C one night and that’s rather cold for July in London. Spare a thought for those further north though, who had temperatures down towards zero that night. Brrr! And a week ago we had 24 hours with rain. Yay!! That was really good for parched gardens around here, would have liked to have a few more days like that, but according to most forecasts there won’t be a drop of rain the next 10 days. I am back to watering every evening.

I am trying to divide my time between the house and the garden, there is so much to do both inside and outside, but I am slowly getting things done.

I have a lot of ideas of how the garden can look like, and a neighbour of mine has what’s called a glass veranda over the area where I have my seating area. I would LOVE to have the same. It is basically 4 pillars with a glass roof, but having looked online for prices I can see I will not be buying it ready made and installed, I have not got that deep pockets, the prices start at £6.000! There are DIY kits that start at £2.000, but even that are way more than I can afford. I will have to come up with a solution to cover the seating area that won’t break the bank....

Last month I showed you this area where I had taken out the plumtree in the middle and the choycia next to the backdoor. Since then the Photinia has gone too, the roots are still in the ground but I have cut it completely down. The next to go is the pyracantha in the right corner and then I am starting on the Parthenocissus on the wall. I have decided to remove half of it for now and keep the part from the shed up till the middle of the wall. It will be a big job to take it all out and a huge amount of bags for the council to collect for their green waste collection, but I think it will be worth it in the end. I have already planned what to grow up the wall once it is cleared :-)

The biggest change since last month is The Shade Garden. I have taken out the fence! I sat on my trusty old garden stool and sawed off the fence, piece by piece and then pulled up all the fence posts afterwards. Some of the posts came out quite easily, some of them had to be dug out using water, a lot of patience and just elbow grease.

Then I laid bark in all the beds and finally all my shade plants could get a better place to stay than out on the patio.

Nothing is planted yet as the ground is not ready for planting yet, besides, I am not sure where everything will go eventually, but the plants are much happier in their pots here anyway.

Just to remind you, this is what it looked like before I started on the shade garden....

My previous garden had a lot of shade and I have quite a lot of plants that can go here – that doesn’t mean I won’t be looking at getting a few more though, I am sure I can manage to squeeze in a few (many) more! In my previous garden I used to stack my plants and bulbs like sardines, side by side and on top of each other – I had a garden filled to the rafters most of the year. This garden is bigger and can take many more plants than I currently have. What a luxury problem. I need to buy more plants!

Unfortunately the soil here isn’t as nice as in my previous garden, I have finally managed to do a soil test, the one I took was in The Shade Garden and there the pH is above 7. Not so good news for all my acid loving plants, spreading the bark is first step in lowering the pH, but it will take many years to create such a nice soil as the one I made in my previous garden.

At this end of The Shade Garden it is actually quite sunny, it is the ceanothus and the apple tree that create the shade and on the side here I intend to remove the forsythia and up against the fence I am going to have a greenhouse – a 6x4 ft greenhouse, that’s all there is room for. I have never had a greenhouse before so that’s better than nothing, wish I could have a bigger one, but I just can’t find a suitable space for a bigger.

And here, on what’s a rather yellow, ugly lawn which will be removed, is where I am placing my raised beds for vegetables and strawberries. Behind the raised beds, up along the back fence I am planning to have a compost bin and a bin for leaf mold.

So that’s the plan so far – now I just need to put it all into action.

Do you remember from last post hat I was eagerly waiting for the first Hibiscus syriacus flowers to open? I have always wanted one, especially a double one, and I was pleasantly surprised when I moved in to find a large, mature Hibiscus in this garden.

And look at those flowers! I am quite sure this is Hibiscus syriacus 'Lady Stanley'.

My daylilies are coming to an end, only the late flowering are still going strong. And I think I have a new favourite among the daylilies – ‘Blackberries and cream’!

I wish I could send you scent via my blog, because once you step out in my front garden you are hit by the most amazing scent of lilies! Some people say they don’t like lilies in the house because they smell too much, but every lily I have smell different. Some are very sweet, some are fruitier.

I have 164 lilies from 34 varieties and they have been flowering since early June. Every time I have a delivery, the drivers – mostly men – comment on the nice scent of the lilies as they all walk past them to get to my front door!

I showed you some of my lilies last time, here are some more flowering right now.

I haven’t written much about my fuchsias lately, I must admit after all the problems with fuchsia gall mite I got a bit fed up with them. I have placed them all on the inside of my front garden and they get watered, but that’s it. I don’t tend to them at all.

Most of them flower and look fine, some are not fine at all. My plan is to just leave them to it, those that succumb to FGM will go in the bin in late autumn, those that still look fine will be allowed to stay. This is survival of the fittest in real life.

This week we had a ferocious windy weather, the apples started dropping from the tree and I realised that many of the apples were ready to pick. Being new to apple growing, I had done a bit of research, but although the apples came off the tree very easy, the pips are yellow and not black inside. According to what I have read it should mean they actually are not ripe after all.

The apples taste sharp, but sweet, and are quite hard - I would compare them to Granny Smith – but I am no apple connoisseur. I picked those that came off easy and left the rest on the tree. Some have a red blush on one side.

And some are green all the way round. I have no idea what kind of apples they are and if they are supposed to be green, yellow or red – but some of them are quite big. And from what I have read I think last week of July must be quite early for apples to be ready to harvest, but I can’t tell you how many apples that have fallen from the tree this week, probably a whole bucket full. So I assume they are ready to be picked if they fall off easy. I never knew picking apples were so difficult though....as soon as I pick one apple, 4 or 5 from the same branch fall to the ground! Trying to catch them before they fall is almost impossible, I am not a good juggler and in any case I have only one hand as the other one is on my crutch. I don’t know what to do with all the apples, I have given away bags of them already, and my fridge is full of apples!

I also have the first cherry tomatoes ready to eat, and the plums seems ripe too, although again – I don’t really know what they are supposed to look like, if they should be uniform red, or even darker than this or if it’s normal that they are plum coloured on one side and yellow on the other. They taste nice and are soft, so I have eaten them. Many!

There are still lots of apples left on the tree, many of the smaller fruit on the inside.

And the beautiful rose climbing in the apple tree is still producing new flowers.

Here is the plumtree, lots of plums still left, with various shades of green, yellow, plum and aubergine.

In my temporary vegetable garden I am attempting to grow sweet pepper for the first time. This is two plants in the same container, the one to the right is looking nice and healthy with lots of flowers and several small peppers on already. The plant to the left has black spotted, curly leaves and is still in buds. Not sure what’s happened to it, they have got the exact same environment and same treatment from me.

Do you remember the huge hydrangea I had in my previous garden, the one up against the fence next to my big camellia? I took a few cuttings of it before moving, I have never taken cuttings of hydrangeas before and have been surprised to see how easy it was – they are already having one flower each!

I just have to show you a few dahlias before I round up, they are starting to flower and there will be many more next month, but look at this one, ‘Nuit D’Ete’. I can’t get the colours right through my camera, it is much darker, absolutely lovely.

And this one is sure to be one of my favourite dahlias, ‘Edge of Joy’.

Final flowers, my Agapanthus 'Navy Blue' spent 2 weeks from first crack of bud to fully open flower. Well worth waiting for! And there are several more flowers to come.

Final photo, my cat has found a new favourite place to sleep, in my new house he can see through the window out into the garden if he lies on top of the sofa – so that’s where he sleeps now.

I got a movie for you this month too, I know you have seen a lot of my garden through the photos, but I am sure you will get a completely different experience watching the movie. Photos can only show so much – let me invite you for a short walk through my little garden. As always, my movies are best viewed in full screen, just remember to change to HD for best quality in the bottom right corner.

I am linking this post to Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog.

That was it for today, I am doing short updates via my Facebook page, if you want to keep track on what’s going on in my garden you are welcome to send me a friend request on facebook.com/helene.u.taylor

Until next time, take care.


EDIT:
If you are reading my post in a different language you are probably aware that Google sometimes throw up some hilarious translations. I often read through my post in Norwegian just to see what it will look like as I know I have Norwegian readers who use the Translate Function on the top of the page. This time Google have really done it....
When I wrote about my fuchsias I first wrote fuchsia gall mite – which Google translated fine. In the next paragraph I used the abbreviation FGM, which Google Translate didn’t just translate to the same – in Norwegian it wrote Female Genital Mutilation!!
It took a few seconds for me to understand how that word could have come into my text....but I can assure everyone, there is no mutilation going on in my fuchsia garden :-)