#sunflower border

Then a good hack back of the insanely overgrown herbs. One of the oreganos looks like i needs extra love so may stick in a pot. Think the only herb that wasn’t massacred was the rosemary and the 3 plants new this year! Must remember to replace the blue hyssop if it was that that bought it, think it was the winter savoury though. Pink hyssop was looking outstanding. One of the bergamots was well bulked up, yay! Seedling off the red one so must try and grow that on. Transplanted a burnet seedling to where the big one had died off.

Sorted out all the canes in the Sunflower border and tied them up and tidied leaves in the Sunflower Square. Festooned places with slug pellets.

Think we can safely say I’ll never see the new red chianti sunflowers :( Stupid slugs. Still baffled about Kong’s poor showing this year versus others. one of the Sunflower Square sunflowers is probably going to be biggest I’ve grown here!

Threw out the cornflowers I never planted up. Pruned the catmint Kitkat so it can bush up in it’s pot and then put it where the old salvia tub was. Massive buddleja in there now. No idea what I’m going to do with that. Threw out prickly poppies and an echinacea that had vanished (latter not looking double or orange, nice one Fothergills. Sigh).

Took seedheads off foxgloves just to tidy up a bit. Mowed lawn and communal lawn.

Watered balcony - need to do a massive water tomorrow, lots of things just barely hanging on :( Then with a headtorch (no, really!) I deadheaded and stripped dead leaves from the calendula in the troughs. I let them go far too far :( Baskets I’m going to dump and refill tomorrow. No idea why those nasturtiums didn’t work.

On plus side, there are actually some flowers in the garden now! :) We’ll just ignore this crappy weather this year that means nothing is where it should be. At this rate, the sunflowers will come out in February, and they’ll be tiny. Can’t feed them, ground too damp. Meanwhile the sweet peas seem to have forgotten the concept of climbing. I don’t mean they’re racing along the ground. I mean they’re less than a foot from the ground and then some of them have decided to flower. Just so, so odd. And depressing. The two things I look forward to now, the sweet peas covering the fence, the sunflowers screening the wall, with tagetes bushing around them behind the herbs = fence, wall, large expanses of soil. Ugh. My beloved tall Kong sunflowers are TEENY.

Tango Bed is just Anthemis this year, should have sorted planting scheme sooner. Or maybe not, given the Yarrows I just took out for not staying orange for long enough are more orange than their replacements. These are sat in the pots being very certainly red. Arrrggghhh. Gonna have to search garden centres for a reliably orange Terracotta (just seen too many not truly orange and heck, it’s a cliche for yarrows). Of course the multi-colour mix of calendula at the back of the bricks have come up again wonderfully (yeah, stop rubbing it in).

Anyway, did some remedial stuff, tying sunflowers onto stakes (breathe and remember that sunflowers in Washgreen Sunflower Square are doing much better. Well except for Kong again). Slug pelleted the sunflower border, no point around Bishop Flowers as all gone. Watering, fertilising etc.

Think I probably need to start counting my losses and focus on next year. I put lots of things in waaay too late, so it’s not just the weather. Bright side is, it’s been so awful, a great show would have been pointless ‘cos you’d not sit out there to look at it. Or something like that ;) I have at least got the Washgreen sorted and so next year I’ll get on top of things sooner and get the Tango bed up to scratch. All the light I cleared to help the origanums bulk up was a waste of time, that fecking weed bush crap from next door is taking over again. So screw it, I’m jumping the fence* and digging up all the ones closest to the fence. Had ENOUGH of them! {:D

Soil is soo dry and friable that the blackbird appears to be going nuts and digging up EVERY plant label. Rather losing patience on that.