However, the poor weather had brought it's influence to bear and several clumps of lupins were laid flat as was the Splish Splash Geranium. The lupins were cut down to ground level but the Geranium was staked up as it has only just started to flower and there are plenty of other lupins in the borders,
One of my most enjoyable jobs on Tuesday was the cutting back of the Oriental Poppies which had mostly finished flowering although some still had petals but these flowers, being big and blousy really do not like wet and windy weather meaning those that were left were looking prety scruffy, so it was out with the secateurs and four barrowfuls later, they had all been despatched to the compost heap. The plants will soon throw out new foliage and we should get another flush in mid to late August.
The cordon sweet peas are beginning to look as if they now know what they are supposed to do and the majority are between 2ft and 3ft high and I continue to remove any tendrils and side shoots on each visit.
The sweet peas that are being grown up cane wigwams in the borders are also rocketing away so hopefully we'll have as good a display as we managed last year.
Sally has started croppping the mixed CCA salad leaves in the greenhouse and the tomatoes are still growing away steadily - with flowers starting to show on most of the plants now, so it'll soon be tiome to stat feeding them with a high potash feed.
I checked over the roses and a couple of the climbing roses were showing signs of mildew (!!!) and there were a few greenfly and whitefly about too, so these all got a spray of Rose Clear Ultra 3 in 1.
Having said that, the infestations on the roses were nothing like the one pictured below - this was on every stem of a pale pink lupin but not on any of the surrounding dark blue / purple lupins. I removed the plae pink lupin completely and sprayed the surrounding lupins with Provado as insurance - having checked every other plant in the borders, it seems that this was the only one infested - strange - maybe aphids like pink as well as yellow !
Anyway, spent the rest of the day weeding, planting out the perennial sunflowers and two more Astrantia, tying a second string round the campanulas against the wall and tying in the Hollyhocks, the tallest stem of which is easily over 7ft already. Anyway , for a change, I will finish with not only a photo of the borders from the potting shed but with some other views of the borders taken from various random points. Hope you like them
Byeee..................:)
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