Plant progress

[igenlode]

My first towel-tomatoes have set, a good fortnight earlier than last year, and the first sweet peas are just coming out in a nice dark purple.
The first oriental poppy (also purple) has opened, this being the one that I permitted to grow in one of the strawberry pots rather then the remains of the ones I actually sowed, which despite having been cumulatively thinned down to four or so plants are still overcrowded and badly in need of repotting. (I am out of compost again.)
The possibly-white California poppy seedling died, as did the various other transplanted seedlings (but the parent white poppy plant is still producing large numbers of flowers); one of the catch-up tomato seedlings also died, probably because it germinated too close to the edge of the pot and suffered from the heat.

The blackfly problem is getting worse (as happened last year, the chives are unusable as a result, although they are flowering prettily!) Despite my plants being entirely 'organic' there is no sign of any predators moving in on the pests, so I am doing what I can to rub off the blackfly manually. They are currently making a move on the various nasturtiums :-(

After some thinning-out I now have five small but thriving chilli plants, some from all of the various attempts at sowing seed I made this year. Which is of course too many ;-)

Comments

[watervole]

They do tend to like nasturtiums, luckily, once nasturtiums really get going, they manage to win out.

[igenlode]

The main trouble with the nasturtiums is that due to the *shape* of the flower buds/stems, unlike with the poppies or chives or even the corn-marigolds it is pretty much physically impossible to scrape the blackfly off. The plants are just too convoluted.