Well I think the sunflowers are well and truly finished. I should have written this a while ago when they looked more like this:
Tag Archives: sunflowers
The allotment
Through ways that are too convoluted to bother detailing, I’ve got access to part of an allotment at the moment. Have done for a couple of months, but didn’t get around to writing about it here. Needless to say, someone was struggling to keep their allotment up to the standards of the rest of the members (because a whole allotment plot is absolutely enormous), and had to do something about it – so they’ve kind-of sublet it.
This is good, because this year, I decided to plant far more than would actually fit into my garden. I had runner beans, sunflowers and sweetcorn growing in pots, with absolutely nowhere to put them. Then suddenly, I did. Continue reading The allotment
Bees and plants
We all know that bees are good for your garden. However, I’ve always been a bit scared of them. I once had one fly into my ear. I stupidly covered my ear, got a noisy buzz, removed my hand, and the bee flew out.
Incredibly, I’ve never been stung by one, yet I’ll still jump a mile if it flies right at me.
A few months back, at the Bristol Festival of Nature, I went along and saw Brigit Strawbridge (wife of the man with the tremendous moustache, and well-known green advocate) do a presentation about bees, their lives, why their numbers are dwindling, why necto..neonecto..nectoninnoids?..nectin….why pesticides are bad. From this presentation, I learnt that only one of the many types of bees has the ability to produce the right frequency and pollinate tomato plants (maybe I’m lacking that bee, and THAT’s the reason why my tomato plant failed! (A bad workman blames his bees)).
Especially after discovering that lots of species of bees don’t even have the ability to sting, I started looking forward to seeing them in my garden. I’ve noticed they tend to gravitate more towards some plants than others, and so I thought I’d document the top 6 bee-favourite ones, and show them here, in the order that they flowered this year.
Gardening Update
Ok – so this isn’t the most interesting thing I’ve ever posted, but if anyone wants to know how my garden is progressing, here’s some pictures.
I meant to do this last year and forgot, really.
This year, am trying to do things a bit more professionally. I’m following the RHS’ iPhone app as close as possible about when to plant indoors or out, when to transplant from one pot to another, etc. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, as it gives me regular reminders to do something (I tend to forget otherwise, and things can be a bit hit and miss as a result). Continue reading Gardening Update
The Sunflowers Are In
Actually, they went in last night. I did them after I took all the pictures and did the last post. Here’s what they look like right….NOW.
Currently keeping warm in a seed propagator. I’m hoping to top last year’s efforts, which looked *exactly* like sunflowers, but were only 4ft tall.
Bright sunflowers
On the 11th July, I planted some sunflowers. Here’s how they did.
Ok, so some have been eaten a bit, and the tallest one is only about 4ft tall. They’re not going to win any prizes.
But, considering all I did was stick a couple of seeds in a plastic waste paper bin I got from Ikea, the extreme winds we’ve had (they’ve fallen over many times), several periods of torrential rain, they’re not bad.
