Lost a whole page of notes just now. Not sure if I can re-channel my inner Monty Don and reproduce it.
I probably should take some more documentary photos, at least before cold weather sets in for good. There’s a cool but sunny day out there and things haven’t completely shut down for the long dark just yet.
I was mentioning how I was expecting to do more with trees next year. I have 8 or 9 avocados growing, a couple two or more years old now.
Eight of the ten avocados I have on the go.
I have a lemon tree on the go and several small but hardy apple trees in pots. Those are just the ones I grew myself, I still have the olive tree from last year and the Yucca is so big now I am seriously considering putting it in the ground next spring. Its too heavy to lift on my own.
This lemon tree is two years old but barely looks changed from last year.
The guava I bought grew and looks healthy but did not produce flowers or fruit. It looks fairly pest resistant so I have strong hopes for it next year. I will have to research and see if it needs a second guava to pollinate and produce fruit.
The guava didn’t seem to be tasty to the local bugs.
The olive and the two Pyracantha are doing well and I might put one of the Pyracantha in the ground next year as part of the border I want to make along the fence. The rose-bush is now long enough to begin training along the fence as well. I found some V-shaped anchors for a clouche that will stick into the fence with no need for nails. Its been amazing to see how much its grown from a 8 inch cutting to something in the 10 foot range just in the past year
six feet up and six feet over
The tomato bag on the fence did well so I will definitely do that again. The wintered apple seeds did not germinate and the ones that did so in the fridge did not thrive. I found some pots with nothing growing in them were actually peach pits I’d planted back in the spring. I am sure there were other things that did not come up at all like the tea seeds or the star anise. I need someplace warmer to propagate these seedlings before they go out into what is now a long cool English spring.
Never did find out what this was but the bugs sure liked it!
Shame it didn’t stop the snails from doing a number on whatever they could get their teeth into. The goose berries were chewed down to a nub twice but didn’t die off. They hung in there and might be tough enough to try again next year. And then there were the mysterious Inca Berries which I thought had germinated nicely but nothing ever came from it. OR maybe they were the mystery plant I thought was spinach or some form of lettuce. If they were like the parsley, the snails ate them as soon as they came up. Despite being on a wire shelving unit several feet up off the ground.
I seriously think they got into the pot from the rain water I was using. I even found one growing in the up-cycled soda bottles I had mounted on the fence. I’m not sure how determined he would be to climb all that rough wood surface just to get into a plastic bottle of mint plants. That worked well as a way to grow plants, as long as they were kept watered. My later design of using two bottles with one as the water reservoir worked best.
I have several colorul garden spiders making nightly webs between the fence , the swing and the conservatory. Too bad they don’t catch the slugs. On second thought I imagine any spider big enough to eat these slugs would be pretty scary for novice gardeners too!
I’ve got some buddleia seeds from JJ’s Black Knight variety and I’m going to get some from the side road near here that are yellow. I think those two colors would make a nice contrast to the miles and miles of lavender colored variety I see along the railway from here to London and back.