Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Contemplation!

I sat and had my breakfast looking out at the garden through the French windows. The garden tends towards cottage garden which in my view means lots of plants, close together with no earth showing. Not for me the neat carefully tended single plants in acres of soil. However this approach of mine can lead to overcrowding if not carefully monitored and the resultant look is not so much ‘cottage’ as abandoned! I rather fear this is happening to my herb patch so I will need to cut a lot of them down, especially the sage and lemon balm which are threatening to take over. As well, giving them a short back and sides will stop them from becoming woody.

 DSCF1915 It was very pleasing to see out of the corner of my eye that the first hanging basket with Tumbler tomatoes actually had some ripe ones in it! DSCF1925

We have three hanging baskets with tomato plants at all stages in them. The first one has bought in plants and is the earliest to produce. Then the next two are home grown plants one earlier than the other. These plantings take us through until the end of September with tomatoes though last year was a very bad year for tomatoes and most of them were blight ridden.

Having decided on a plan for the workload for the next week I then sat and watched the birds in the birdhouse. DSCF1944 We have a lot of finches and blue tits but the tits prefer the hanging seed basket to the bird house.

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6 comments:

  1. Autumn Belle14 July 2009 at 21:26

    Valeri, the tomatoes are red and ripe. They look very inviting.

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  2. Rowena15 July 2009 at 08:53

    I love the cottage garden look (abandoned or not!), but need to keep things a little more open due to my two dogs. Both have a habit of hiding and/or burying things where I would prefer that they didn't. The day that I found my westie burying a freshly-killed rat under the huge rosemary bush was the day when I began to regularly inspect all hidden corners in the yard!

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  3. Tatyana@MySecretGarden15 July 2009 at 16:35

    Valeri, congratulations on your tomatoes! Do you remember how did the leaves of your tomato plants look when they had blight last year? I have a very bad feeling about my plants...

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  4. Jan15 July 2009 at 17:48

    You have a great tomato supply! Send some my way,please! Mine don't look like much right now-I am afraid I did not plant them deep enough in the soil and they are very leggy. I have only 2 plants in containers on our deck. I love the cottage look too. Mine is getting better all the time, but like you, it needs some thinning...some plants just like to take over! I also need to remove one and add a couple of others so the colors stand out better. Always something to do in the garden, right? I'm a birdwatcher too. In the winter I get the best variety and that's when I spend my time seriously watching and photographing them.

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  5. Catherine@AGardenerinProgress15 July 2009 at 18:18

    I also love the cottage look. Lush and full and no space for weeds, although they always seem to find somewhere to squeeze in. It's nice to have time to think about the garden and what we want to do.

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  6. Val16 July 2009 at 13:11

    Catherine I seem to spend more time standing and staring than I do actually gardening!:-)
    Jan it's only the tomatoes in the hanging baskets that are doing well. The one's in the garden are way behind!
    Tatyana last year the tomatoes themselves all had brown blotches on them and as far as I can remember the leaves were also blotchy but yellow blotchy and shrivelled.
    Rowena the rat would probably have been good fertiliser for the soil as it decomposed! :-)
    Autumn Belle the tomatoes tasted absolutely delicious!
    Val

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