A good drenching
9 June 2026 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeEverything has benefited from the rain after days on end of unseasonable and unbearable heat -- even the Christmas-present amaryllis that was busy having a 'holiday' out of doors (most 'house-plants' don't actually like the conditions inside our homes; they simply tolerate them better than garden plants) and which didn't have any drainage holes in its fancy pot designed for standing on indoors furniture. By the time I realised what had happened it was flooded with standing water up to the brim, in the same way that the wildflower trough used to do after every downpour, and it spent most of the next three days in an inverted state while I tried to get the excess water out of the compost. However, instead of the bulb rotting, as I thought might happen, it is looking very healthy indeed. When it originally went out of doors it had only one long leaf after the bulb stalks had died down; now that leaf is gigantic and it has two more ;-)
The rudbeckias, marigolds and corn-marigolds all have flower buds on. Interestingly, one of the self-sown not-tomato seedlings has turned out not just to be a cornflower, but to be a pink cornflower -- presumably descended from the 'purple mix' of last year! I did save some of that seed, but haven't planted it myself as we seemed to have rather a lot of cornflowers already :-p
I have found two more self-sown mesembryanthemums growing in pots of other plants, even though my desultory attempt at sowing seed doesn't seem to have come to anything. I do, however, have a fresh crop of tiny seedlings in the pot where I emptied out the last dregs of the orange poppy seed, on what I think was my fourth attempt :-O I'm not convinced that they are orange long-headed poppies, since the seedlings don't have the typical 'poppy' (long thin seedleaves) look, but it is so long now since I sowed the original batch of seed that I can't remember what they are supposed to look like! At any rate these seedlings are clearly all the same as one another, which is hopeful.
The beetroot and kale are also trying to flower, and I should probably be thinking about sowing replacements. Unfortunately I really don't have room!
The replacement rocket seedlings are doing nicely, as is the replacement lettuce; I still have a few of the old lettuces left but have had to 'thin' the new ones by eating those as well. I have been stripping and eating the old rocket plants one by one in order to reclaim the pots, with the exception of the two that I have consciously permitted to set seed, where I am waiting for it to ripen. I have just about managed to keep the sorrel from flowering (this, too, is doing very much better since the rain); as usual, it really needs repotting :-(
The towel-tomatoes are producing plenty of little green fruits, and the one Roma tomato has put out its first flowers.
The dwarf peas have put on a fresh spurt of growth in response to the rain, so I can't decently pull them out in order to re-use the pots/make more space, as there is probably another crop coming. As seems to be normal for peas, the amount of edible pods that you *actually* get is not really worth the trouble of growing the plant; I really ought to harden my heart and just grow them for pea-shoots...
On the other hand I have just been removing the first pods from the sweet peas, which are now flowering beautifully. So far as I can tell all the plants, whether 'shop' or 'saved', are producing the same dark-red heavily scented flowers, so this variety apparently breeds true, and it is worth saving any pods that get away and fatten up at the end of the season. (There are always a couple that manage to hide in amongst the foliage...)
https://justseed.com/products/johnsons-sweet-pea-old-fashioned-mix-seeds "A mixture of grandiflora types dating back to the 1900’s. Includes bicolours and stripes and although smaller flowered they have a heady fragrance" -- I have to say that I haven't noticed any 'mix', as they are all deep red/purple, but that happens to be my favourite colour in sweet peas, and they are definitely heavily scented. And the flowers look a perfectly normal size to me, but that may be because I'm only accustomed to the 'old-fashioned' ones -- just as giant double calendulas look very weird to me :-p
The rudbeckias, marigolds and corn-marigolds all have flower buds on. Interestingly, one of the self-sown not-tomato seedlings has turned out not just to be a cornflower, but to be a pink cornflower -- presumably descended from the 'purple mix' of last year! I did save some of that seed, but haven't planted it myself as we seemed to have rather a lot of cornflowers already :-p
I have found two more self-sown mesembryanthemums growing in pots of other plants, even though my desultory attempt at sowing seed doesn't seem to have come to anything. I do, however, have a fresh crop of tiny seedlings in the pot where I emptied out the last dregs of the orange poppy seed, on what I think was my fourth attempt :-O I'm not convinced that they are orange long-headed poppies, since the seedlings don't have the typical 'poppy' (long thin seedleaves) look, but it is so long now since I sowed the original batch of seed that I can't remember what they are supposed to look like! At any rate these seedlings are clearly all the same as one another, which is hopeful.
The beetroot and kale are also trying to flower, and I should probably be thinking about sowing replacements. Unfortunately I really don't have room!
The replacement rocket seedlings are doing nicely, as is the replacement lettuce; I still have a few of the old lettuces left but have had to 'thin' the new ones by eating those as well. I have been stripping and eating the old rocket plants one by one in order to reclaim the pots, with the exception of the two that I have consciously permitted to set seed, where I am waiting for it to ripen. I have just about managed to keep the sorrel from flowering (this, too, is doing very much better since the rain); as usual, it really needs repotting :-(
The towel-tomatoes are producing plenty of little green fruits, and the one Roma tomato has put out its first flowers.
The dwarf peas have put on a fresh spurt of growth in response to the rain, so I can't decently pull them out in order to re-use the pots/make more space, as there is probably another crop coming. As seems to be normal for peas, the amount of edible pods that you *actually* get is not really worth the trouble of growing the plant; I really ought to harden my heart and just grow them for pea-shoots...
On the other hand I have just been removing the first pods from the sweet peas, which are now flowering beautifully. So far as I can tell all the plants, whether 'shop' or 'saved', are producing the same dark-red heavily scented flowers, so this variety apparently breeds true, and it is worth saving any pods that get away and fatten up at the end of the season. (There are always a couple that manage to hide in amongst the foliage...)
https://justseed.com/products/johnsons-sweet-pea-old-fashioned-mix-seeds "A mixture of grandiflora types dating back to the 1900’s. Includes bicolours and stripes and although smaller flowered they have a heady fragrance" -- I have to say that I haven't noticed any 'mix', as they are all deep red/purple, but that happens to be my favourite colour in sweet peas, and they are definitely heavily scented. And the flowers look a perfectly normal size to me, but that may be because I'm only accustomed to the 'old-fashioned' ones -- just as giant double calendulas look very weird to me :-p
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Date: 2026-06-10 01:11 am (UTC)https://share.google/omXXsWNKMyWb3Z2j9
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