Week 7 of 52 - Amazing the rate of Growth

Week 7 of my 52 week project has now been uploaded, although it's only 7 pictures so far it's amazing to see the rate of change and growth in the garden.

In particular the various plants, I know one is a Clematis but not sure what the other two are (they're next on my list to identify!) growing up the fence on the left - in the first picture of the series it's practically a bare fence - now you can hardly see the fence.

Bellis Perennis - a Daisy by any other name

Another bargain buy from the discounted rack in B&Q, there have been some excellent bargains due to the bad spring - and just yards away people where buying plants that looked just the same for full price - always worth hunting out the discounted stock before buying anything else!

The label said it wouldn't expand to much and only grow to about 3-4 inch's high, needing partial to full sun, I planted it at the front of a raised bed that gets about 6-7 hours of sunlight a day in fairly well drained soil - it's done very well flowering constantly for the last couple of months.

On finally reading up about it I discovered that dead-heading is recommended to prolong the flowering, not something I've done to date although it's now starting to look a little past it's best so I'll try this and report back the results.

I've also discovered it's a Biennial - good to know as I intend to harvest as many seeds as possible this year and grow from Seed next year, In typical ignorant fashion I would have been wondering why it wasn't flowering!

The Bellis Perennis is a member of the Daisy Family (Latin: Asteraceae), it's leaves are apparently edible but bitter to the taste; it seems to be really an easy plant to grow and gives masses of flowers without invading the entire border - I may well try this in a pot in future years, I think this will make a good feature in my Patio Table!

Another visitor to the Garden

Appears we've had another type of visitor to the garden recently, whilst looking around the garden I noticed a number of area's where something had been digging, initially I thought it was a cat looking for a litter spot but then I came across an area between a fence & a raised bed where the digging was extensive and it had cleared all of the undergrowth - looking closer it seemed to have given up as I was just left with shallow dug out - I've never known a cat to do this, and I'm fairly certain a Fox would be to big for the gap.

After a couple of days I've also noticed that I haven't seen the mice recently who at one point were regular visitors, putting all the pieces together I'm guessing it might have been a Ferret or Weasel, an extensive check around the garden hasn't turned up the culprit so maybe they were just passing through?

Climbing Rose is Blooming

In the garden close to the back door I have a climbing rose which has been here from long before I moved in by the looks of it, it usually has quite a few flowers but by the end of last summer was looking very ragged and a bit sad so in my best ignorant style I decided to prune it back hard -  I probably removed about two thirds of the branch's leaving a couple of good new shoots that I tied into the fence in a bid to get it to provide a bit more fence cover.

In early spring I employed a little tip that I picked up somewhere (no idea where) and chopped up all available Banana skins and sprinkled them around the base of the plant, not sure why this works but it always seems to generate a lot more flowers than if left alone.

Once spring finally got under way the Rose came back to life with a vengeance, a profusion of new growth and more buds than I've seen before, the flowers are very delicate starting off with a pink tinge and then fading to white - unfortunately the delicate flowers are being decimated with the current heavy showers and gusty winds, with luck we may see a return to more traditional summer weather where we can enjoy the flowers for a little longer.

If anyone can help me identify this Rose I'd love to hear from you, at present all I know is it's a type of Rose!

Second Strawberry of the Season

My Second (nearly ripe) Strawberry of the Season, the first met an untimely end at the hands of my 3 year old daughter - after proudly showing her how it had turned red and was nearly ripe, I turned my back for two minutes, when I turned back around I was greeted with a beaming smile and a small trickle of Strawberry Juice running down her chin, oh well she assures me it was Gorgeous!

A second Strawberry, nearly ripe.