Awful weather - typical Brits talk

wort

Dusty I forgot to say , yes it’s Thumbergia , they had yellow and orange, my friend liked the orange, I would have liked pink 😁

London pride is a favourite of the lady I watch on insta, I hope it isn’t to provide the vine weevil with lunch 🥹

I may return to dd2 s after lunch ,as she’s bought some strawberries and put them in the greenhouse! I’ve told her to plant them out now but I can see crispy straw like strawberries in their future.

I’ve said I will get cuttings of the nepeta for dsil , and I want a cutting from niece’s honeysuckle.

twopenny

Have you got rain up your way Wort? No chance of cuttings here it's just dust or concrete. Even the Lemon Verbena (American South) or tomatoes (South America) are failing to thrive.

Lantana reminds me of Australia Dusty. So that should be a good bet.

Nothing like the cyclamen Farway. I used to have them all round the garden door. Bloom Spring and autumn with no care. Value plants 😃

Been cleaning windows and soffits. Now it's got hot. Now I have to rest but it's nice to have a clean house front for the moment Just trying to catch up with 3 months of not being able to do stuff. There's still nothing to do in the garden but water and feed till it's time time to cut back. I won't say it's pointless but it is sad with no fruit and struggling veg . Perhaps the next job should be sharpening things ready for cutting grass if we get some at the end of season.

Again big clouds all round but not here. Blue skies and sunshine. Nice for the holiday makers.

LessImpecunious

2P There's still nothing to do in the garden but water and feed till it's time time to cut back. I won't say it's pointless but it is sad with no fruit and struggling veg .

I usually comfort myself with the thought that if things go badly in the garden there's always next year… hmmm🤔

Some bits of this year going well though, recalcitrant tomatoes finally catching up, even if some are splitting, showing signs of rude deformities (though I think that's a natural part of tomato behaviour), or suffering from green shoulders. So was able to bet a pic with all varieties I'm growing this year present, if not correct, my contribution to the potpourri…

Many picked before peak of ripeness, to continue indoors and encourage those left to get a move on… Purple (more pink at the moment) Ukraine at top; Ex. Crimson Crush top right: Costoluto bottom right: Bloody Butcher on the left (all a bit small, have had bigger ones before today): Nagina the plums below the Purple Ukrainians; and Ex. Sungold from two different plants the little ones in the middle…

twopenny

Beautiful Less! What a variety. I envy those tomatoes especially 😍

Dustyevsky

What a fine collection of plumptiousness you've pictured there, Less! I love all the shapes. 😍 We've grown some of those, like Costoluto. These days, our choices are fairly conservative, though there's always something new in the mix. This year, we had Divinity and Jimmy Improved, the latter being swamped by Cherry Falls. Far from improving, it lost the will to live. 😥

So, your Sungolds came good, Farway. 🙂 OK, they split, but that's a character trait. If you remember, mine suffered what looked like weedkiller damage, and the sole remaining plant was stunted. It only produced a few early fruits. Meanwhile, I'd taken a cutting, which then replaced the original. It hasn't produced ripe toms yet, but we'll have a few of our favourites shortly. 😊

With Mrs Dusty having vertigo, and our lives being chaotic less organised, this year's tomato bed isn't a pretty sight. Somewhere, around the 7' to 8' mark, they've got out of control, and no one's going to fix it now. I'll probably cut the muddle down on a rainy day, and transport the million glasshouse whitefly to their doom! 😈

Yesterday, we took the children closer to 2p's territory to join DD2's family beside the river, or what remains of it.🤔 Like 2p, we found cloudless blue skies and wonderful visibility, but not enough American crayfish to make a meal! I managed to sneak away and complete a walk undertaken in summer last year, when the last stretch of footpath by the mill leat was out of bounds for repairs. It was less exciting than I'd imagined, but job done.🙂 Beside the leat was this wonderful stand of Rosebay Willowherb, seeding freely in the sunshine:

Nice to see but not if it's in your garden, or next door's! 😲

wort: Dusty I forgot to say , yes it’s Thumbergia , they had yellow and orange, my friend liked the orange, I would have liked pink 😁

I didn't know there's a pink. One of those plants I've never quite got around to.

GCs go home today. We wouldn't have had them so long, but their parents are moving south to the almost West Country, so they needed a child-free week to sort packing etc out. Now, we need a week to recover.

P.S. I almost forgot. Two guys on Saturday pay from Openreach turned up and sorted the underground fibre connection in a couple of hours. They spoke to us like intelligent people, and together, we worked-out the likely pinch point in the line tube. It was where a previous owner had driven in the gatepost we removed last year. 😣 An accuracy of a few centimetres was achieved with this intel. 😃 The previous contractor guys were over 1m out, and anyway, they'd no intention of doing any digging!

-taff

Morning…I am reading along but I just got very lazy about posting..Sitting on the sofa with the fan on mentally going 'Lah! It's so hot! was the extent of my actions for the most part lately..

I sypathise with your tomato jungle Dusty, I have one too, I did attempt a chop back yesterday and despite some taking care, managed ot remove several unripe ones by accident. Love yours Less, it's a feat to get them this year! Mine at the allotment developed a matte skin which I've never seen before, my fault for letting them do their thing, but spending money for veg/growing your own was a complete bust this year. I may still have some kale and beetrrot if I'm very very lucky. I spend 37 quid a year to watch plants die when I might as well just got to Morries for free…[some Morries not all…]

2p, try topcashback, the site to see if a renewal with rac is cheaper, I've gotten half back before now…or try other companies.. Good to hear of improvements in mobility..

Congrats on new ish car Farway, serendipitous, and if the reason was not, at least it kept the secondhand economy working..I will tell my sister about the scrappy, she has one to get rid of [ not like yours though, its been sitting for years due to her inaction] London Pride sounds [and looks] quite lovely, is it a substitue for Norway bound small pink daisies? [psst…there is a bunch of them in purple that are still alive in my garden so far! only a small bunch though]

wort, you can tell them but they won't listen :) happy cutting taking…

I don't suppose anyone knows if it's too late for geranium cuttings? I've got a roseanne that I would like more of, and I don't fancy paying the nearly ten quid at a gc…

-taff

I can hear someone doing a lot of strimming at the moment, what on earth is there to strim? and still no proper rain to speak of here…

Farway

Morning all, getting cooler now but still no real rain is forecast for week ahead, so watering will have to continue to eek out the ripening toms

What a grand display there Less, I like the look of the ribbed jobby, Costoluto? My Bloody Butchers failed this year, so even smaller than yours 😁

Dusty So, your Sungolds came good, Farway. 🙂 OK, they split, but that's a character trait. If you remember, mine suffered what looked like weedkiller damage, and the sole remaining plant was stunted. It only produced a few early fruits. Meanwhile, I'd taken a cutting, which then replaced the original. It hasn't produced ripe toms yet, but
we'll have a few of our favourites shortly. 😊

Mistaken identity Dusty, the red split ones pictured are the self seed toms that sprung up in the Poo trough. My Sungolds are a disaster, tall & straggly, sparse crop of small, sharp, toms. Nothing like they should be, and they were "proper" seeds from Mr F, not from one of my seed smears.

Taff, London Pride sounds [and looks] quite lovely, is it a substitue for Norway bound small pink daisies? [psst…there is a bunch of them in purple that are still alive in my garden so far! only a small bunch though] Not a sub, but one I've always liked. Hopefully it will grow in open ground and avoid my vine weevils mentioned by Wort I have a small & struggling bit of ery whatnames s from Morries last year, but still alive so perhaps one day? But even the mint is struggling this year so it's a long shot

Taff I can hear someone doing a lot of strimming at the moment, what on earth is there to strim? My beard?

Now it's cooler I hope to join Dusty in whitefly the whitefly clearances with some of the crispy leaved tomatoes in the conservatory, plus make a start on cutting back the buddleia, some flowers remain fro the butterflies but a lot of old stuff can go

Along with buddleia flowers I have second crop of foxgloves, just a few for a bit of colour

twopenny

There's bits of geranium I've knocked off taken cuttings from most of the seasons and they've rooted fine in water on the kitchen windowsill. Being down in the soft south the pots stay out all year, just sheltered.

In fact end August and autumn I was told was the perfect time to take cuttings. Roots grow in autumn, leaves in spring. That was a guy who'd been in the business all his life and it's done me well. Of course now with all sorts of chemical aids and shelters it's probably not vital.

Here's one from a cutting I did earlier.

And this. Grows outside. I saw a huge one growing by a store and thought why not. Now there's something that doesn't need mollycoddling 😉

Another sunny day but a lovely temperature. I've got another pot the same and a spare rooted cutting so that's on the agenda for today after the sorting out. Thanks Taff 🙂

Dustyevsky

Apologies for the mistaken tomato ID, Farway. My memory's not what it was. 😟 Maybe a skin-splitting gene from a long-ago Sungold is in the make-up of your wild poo border seeders?

Good to see you are still with us -taff. 🖐️ We have London Pride in a couple of places, and it seems very accommodating. I believe it's a hand-me-down from Mrs Dusty's Grandma, which makes it positively prehistoric! 🦕

And speaking of old-fashioned plants, is that a Money Tree you're featuring in Pic 2 2p? It's well-named, judging by the prices online! £20? 😮

We're back from delivering the GCs to a secret rendezvous near Junction 23 of the M5. 😁 That's as far as I'm prepared to go north on a weekend. The section around Weston Super Mud tends to become congested, or worse. 😬

On the return journey, we stopped off at Morries, and spotted a potential solution to the lezbean problem in their car park. There were dozens of long, smooth, beans, hanging temptingly, many at an ideal height for picking:

They do look good, don't they? 🤗 Sadly, looking is the wisest thing to do. According to AI: "The long pods have no food value and taste terrible, even if boiled or prepared." 🤢

So, a culinary blind alley. 😩

The search continues…..