This week was a game of two halves. A cold beginning and now a heatwave. I hope this will persuade a few more tomatoes to ripen. The courgettes keep springing surprises on me in the form of marrows and the french beans carry on being well behaved. The flower garden has seen a few rearrangements with more to come. The first of the six for this week is a welcome discovery.
One
A tiny spire of lirirope muscari ‘Big Blue’. Not quite living up to it’s name yet. It has been three years in development. Billed as a perennial forming dense clumps it has just managed a clump of 10cms. I think I have shocked it into doing something as a few weeks back I threw out two other sister plants on the grounds that they had done nothing at all. Somehow I overlooked this one or perhaps it looked the stronger. I’ll be watching it closely now.
Two
Also gaining a stay of execution is this unknown red rose. It was here in the garden when we arrived and I have planted around it but always thinking that one day it would be moved or given up. Every year it persuades me that it deserves to stay and it has twisted me round its little finger again.
Three
These were in the garden last weekend and have definitely gone now. But they will be making a comeback as apple juice. The apple trees all had a professional prune this year and look better for it. The apples on the oldest tree were smaller but seemed to be just as plentiful. I have 51 bottles of juice to collect.
Four
The passion flower (passiflora caerulea) has an incredible structure, fascinating to look at but it’s becoming too rampant. I plan to completely remove it from the arch it grows over and see if it can be dug out completely. I keep finding seedlings of it around the garden so I think I may be on the losing side.
Five
This blue scabious seems to have only just got into it’s stride, it was moved to a new location at the end of last summer so perhaps it took a while to really settle down. Great things are expected next year though.
Six
Time for an experiment. I have sown some green manure seeds for the first time. The onions came out and the seeds went in. I have to remember to dig the growth over in 40 – 90 days. I hope it does what it says on the packet.
That’s my six for the week. To see more go to The Prop’s site. His six and many more will be revealed.
n20gardener 
I had a passiflora caerulea a few years ago and I noticed they sprouted everywhere. Now I grow mine in pots ( Pots minimum 35 cm in diameter, otherwise they suffer from drought in summer; and I have to water them regularly …)
Beautiful and tasty apples! Here, they are too small this year and often perforated by pests (worms, earwigs ….)
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The passiflora is looking good this week and it is such a dilemma as to whether to cut it down or not. Maybe I can thin it out a bit. Apples were small here too this year and sadly we lost a number to brown rot.
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My passion flowers have been on the verge of flowering for weeks but not done it yet. Filled with anticipation. Good luck with the green manure.
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Just got back from a week away and the green manure has begun to sprout! I hope it doesn’t hold hidden horrors!
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I’m sure they wouldn’t sell things likely to spread and end up a menace otherwise it defeats part of the object of it.
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51 bottles of juice! Amazing, and delicious too, no doubt. Passion flowers are so dramatic…
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The apple juice is a winner and a great reminder of the summer just gone.
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Lovely liriope – I would like some of this in my shade bed – and wonderful Passion flower!
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The liriope has been so slow to get going and I have just seem some that was clearly in the right place and it looked wonderful. I may be tempted to buy some more for my shady front garden.
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51 bottles of juice! How well does it keep I’m curious to know. You’re experience with Liriope is familiar, I’ve had a couple for years and get almost no flower, not quite sure why I keep them.
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The juice keeps for 18 months but we always drink it up before then. The farm I take the apples to juices, pasteurises and bottles it for us. I was in France last week and spotted some Liriope in a garden there – growing as an edging plants in great clumps. Seeing it there made me want to persevere, some was in full sun – mostly gone over, those in the shade were still in flower and looked fab. Grrrh.
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How do you make applejouce. Does it store well… or is it the alcoholic kind 🙂
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I don’t do it, I take it off to a farm that has an apple press – small business scale – and they juice all the apples, pasteurise and bottle the juice. They will also make cider but we opt from the non alcoholic kind. It is a god send – I don’t know what I would do with all the apples otherwise.
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So jealous with the Apple harvest and 51 bottles of apple juice. I love fresh Apple juice.
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it is a real treat. We have just finished last year’s bottles so this is just in time.
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Passion flower is VERY rampant! Where it was grown for fruit production around Beverly Hills and the western Los Angeles area a very long time ago, it STILL sometimes comes back from the roots. Fortunately, it does not get ‘too’ big. (Of course, that is relative.) It would likely die if we pulled it up more regularly as it appeared, but because we neglect it, it keeps coming back like it has since the homes were build in the 1930s!
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