Six on Saturday - 23 July 2022

 What a week of fluctuating temperatures: they were well into the mid thirties during the earlier part and now they are back to early twenties..  The fields have turned a straw like colour and I shall probably have to cut back several of the perennials such as the Thalictrum.  I may well have to find out plants that will withstand this summer dry too, as I have neither the resources, aka watering systems,  or the time to water the whole garden. Tubs have been watered of course. I expect that Jon and most others will have a similar view, but I know it hasn't been the same for all gardeners, and you and I can read all about the week in our gardens by following the link:  https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2022/07/23/six-on-saturday-23-07-2022/

Let's get on with Six things from the garden this week, and a little from the kitchen and a special outing.

1. First pickings from two tumbling tomato plants: they growing together in a 30cm pot on the patio, which is not smooth with paving stones or such like, but a deep gravel area.

The skins are a little tough, but were delicious roasted with some marjoram, and  with a little olive oil salt and pepper. I used them make a topping with garlic butter made from garlic and parsley from the garden, for some flatbreads. The butter had oven roasted garlic as well as fresh garlic. Enough here for many servings.  I shall cut into slices and freeze, ready for taking individual slices out of the freezer.

2. When the morning temperature dipped I just had to get out to do a little 'soil play', and made up a new 'Alpine Bowl gardens'

Saxifraga 'Pink Melba', Hebe buchanania minor, Potentilla nitda rubra all came together in a small bonsai pan to form a miniature garden this week.  I pinched a piece of the Pink Melba from the bowl I made earlier this year. I also added the little Cyclamen purpurascens but having checked up on its needs, it will most probably have to come out again as it requires deep shade and the others sun! I'll let it settle in and watch it, and it if looks stressed I'll move it to another grouping.  Ha!  Now I need to make a mini garden for a shaded situation, and I thought I had no projects to move onto!

The other little miniature garden I made earlier this year  had one little plant die on me, because I think I had overwatered.  Since then I've added a few bits from existing clumps of plants in the garden, and for now I am very happy with it.

3. Some more soil play again, but one involving water and 'mud',  Just the way to keep cool. I have a succulent that needs potting up, and I had in mind a studio pot by Jacky Ardens that currently has a Pelargonium Ardens growing in it. The plant had been in since May 2019, and I thought it would have been ready for a repot and soil refresh.   I had never seen, with my own eyes in the flesh, the root system for this Pelargonium, and had not realised that the whole of the tuber occupied the pot. Sadly the trowel damaged the edges...

Last time I had a pot bound cyclamen I had to smash the pot. So when the pot is more valuable that the plant, it is a real tussle to remove the root when it is this big.  In the end I washed out most of the soil, then had to remove a few of the lobes to get the root out using a long bread knife.

I already have last years cuttings in bloom, and have taken cuttings from the top growth on this one. So I am discarding the root.  I have another pot which will be even trickier to empty as the shape turns inward. This link to a video shows propagating P. Ardens  very clearly.  I remember watching this some time ago, when I was wanting to take cuttings, but I stopped the video before the pot was emptied and root cuttings taken, so I hadn't clocked about the huge tuber.  

4. The Nasturtiums are doing very nicely in the heat.  Some I have already uprooted as I was clearing the area of 'fazzled' hardy geraniums. This nasturtium has different shaped leaves and flame shaped petals, which resemble the Phoenix Strains.  The seeds were collected from the floor at a favourite garden a little way from here, there is no variation in colour all are this orange,  I have a few other types of nasturtium growing around the garden, some dark, others pale with spotted leaves.  I love them all.

5. This poppy is also giving me much joy at present.  

I admired it in a friends garden, and was given a little plant. I've looked it up and it is probably Papaver rupifragum var. atlanticum.  No wonder it is thriving in the heat see the full description on Plant World Seeds. I particularly think we need more plants that can cope with the current conditions in our gardens.

"You can forget to water it for weeks and it will still bloom! This incredible perennial poppy comes from the hot, dry areas of Spain and Morocco."

6. Thinking about dry gravel gardens and the little plants I bought after visiting Beth Chatto's Garden last autumn, the diminutive Limonium bellidifolium is a current favourtie there. Very difficult to photograph, but for sheer elegance caught in the early morning, it is my current 'bestest' plant in that area. The colour is maybe a little bleached in the early morning light, but it is the form of both the flowering stems and the rosette  of leaves that I particularly liked. I've since observed that the flowers close at night and gradually open during as the sun hits it.

That spot of orange in the background come from those poppies just mentioned before.

Yesterday I visited THR's garden on a trip no pictures permitted, and they had guards with very sinister looking riffles (of course to protect the lovely garden), so no seeds were picked up there, but I came back with some ideas for a couple of pea varieties: a good Mangetout 'Norli' which was half the height or less of the ones I grew this year, and pea Rondo and with no label but checking on Claire Austin's shop, a good  bright achillea  'Paprika', or maybe it was 'Funcke'  again a very drought tolerant plant.These are extras I realise, but just as much as for showing and sharing this weekly post very much serves as a reminder to myself.