It was raining steadily when I woke up early yesterday morning, and that continued until well after lunch. Thankfully the torrential downpours and thunderstorms never materialised so the rain soaked into the ground rather than mostly running off. It was the same this morning, and it looks like there’ll be more over the next couple of days. All most welcome.
I’ve not been to the plot since my last post and I’m not sure when it’ll be dry enough to go and have a look round.
When I was last there I weeded through the potatoes and lifted a few second early Charlottes, my favourite variety. As always they look good, and I’m sure will taste good as well
The second bud on the dwarf sunflower Big Smile, which is in a 5 in/12.5 cm black plastic pot on the windowsill, flowered on Friday. It’s only 2 in/5 cm across, half the size of the first flower.
Have a good week, and take care!
It’s nice to see the rose Pretty Lady flowering again.
The Pot Marigold Oopsy Daisy has now been flowering continously since the beginning of last month, and at the moment is showing five each flowers and buds. Most of the small pale-lemon yellow flowers have been less than 1 in/2.5 cm across, and shown no hint of any orange on the petal tips which I mentioned in the last On the windowsill post. It has also continued to grow taller and is almost 30 in/75 cm – the quoted height for this variety is just 8 in/20 cm. (Note that the other flower in the picture is the Sunflower Big Smile as detailed and shown below).
A few of the first potatoes Foremost I lifted were scabbed which didn’t surprise me given that it occurs in dry conditions. Thankfully since then they’ve all been okay, and there have been plenty of good sized ones for this first early variety. Here’s one on my years old Gardener’s World black plastic hand fork which I use to dig up potatoes as it doesn’t usually spear them.
Earlier in the year I had twelve runner bean seeds Moonlight and as I only wanted six plants sowed two per cane around the bamboo cane wigwam. Ony three seeds germinated and grew but thankfully they’re doing well, and I’ve got runners up each of the six canes most of which are already near the tops so I’ll pinch them out next time I’m there.
I’ve got six tomato plants growing, three each the red variety Outdoor Girl and the yellow one Yellow Perfection. They’re covered with flowers and there are a few small fruit already showing. Both are indeterminate varieties, which means that they’ll keep growing if I don’t pinch the tops out. I’ve not removed any side shoots so they’ll get rather bushy later on.
The onions Sturon are doing well with many well over golf ball size. Thankfully I’ve not lost any down the cracks which are all over this area, and some of which I can get my hand down, from finger tips to wrist.
I noticed several ripe looking blackberries but they need a few more days as the one I picked and ate wasn’t quite ready.
There are flowers showing on the dwarf French beans Tendergreen, and the nasturtiums Tom Thumb are flowering.
I have two Gazania Talent Yellow in 4.25 in/11 cm pots on the windowsill which I started from seed back at the beginning of May.
The dwarf 
The weather has got very warm over the past few days with the temperature expected to reach30 C/86 F today. That’s expected to last over the weekend before dropping to the low 20’s C/72 F from Monday.
Flighty's plot 