Back to blooming Blighty

It’s good to be back from holiday and on home soil. My cottage garden bed was a sight for jet-lagged eyes on my return, the hollyhocks never failing to please alongside the striking red crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.
I can see it’s been pretty dry here over the past two weeks; my evenings now spent catching up on watering and deadheading.

These tasks can seem never ending but it’s important to direct energy into stronger growth and continued flowering.
I like to use it as my evening garden assessment, to check for pests and diseases and to see what needs tying up or cutting down.
Although fingers are fine for most deadheading, use secateurs for your roses, taking them back to a bud below the deadheads, then apply a general fertiliser to keep them in good condition into autumn.
For Rosa rugosa you can leave the dead heads to form into lovely large red hips the size of tomatoes in autumn.

It’s All Bean Happening

In the veg patch its beantastic! With broad beans continuing to crop, my runner beans trying to reach the sky, I’ll pinch them out or I will need a stepladder to pick the beans and I’ve got a lovely load of French beans.

If you’re flush with beans, also this recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is worth a try:

French beans with feta, walnuts and mint. Serves two to four

280g french beans, trimmed
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Small handful of mint leaves, tough stalks removed, and chopped
1 small handful dill, chopped,
Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
150g feta
50g walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and cook the beans until just tender, about three to six minutes, then drain and refresh in cold water. Dress the beans in the olive oil, lemon juice, mint, some of the dill, salt and pepper. Serve topped with crumbled feta cheese, walnuts and the remaining dill fronds scattered over the top.

My carrots are proving quite a challenge to peel having grown into some rather interesting shapes, I obviously didn’t put enough time into preparing the soil, removing stones and working the ground to a fine enough tilth. It's worth using a large container to grow them in if you have very clay, stony or chalky soil that doesn’t drain well. I think I may try that for my second sowing.