Six on Saturday 03-11-2018

So it begins. With frost two or three nights this week, the tender stuff is done for. The dahlias are blackened, the tagetes are shrivelled and the zinnia have given up the ghost. That’s that then, flowers will be few and far between until the snowdrops and crocuses. Oh, and the nerines, of which more later. Sigh. Anyhow, time for Six on Saturday – six things in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything, a flower, a pest, a tool, an interesting leaf or plant, a harvest, a success or a failure – anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Rose hip. A flower I clearly missed with the dead-heading snips. This is one of my newer roses. It has been biding its time this year, I am hoping for better things from it next year.

2 – A fungi to be with. I’ve no idea what variety this is, whether it is toxic or delicious. I don’t really do mushrooms. Still, I was surprised to find this one, bold as brass, in a bit of bare ground on the other side of my front wall.

3 – Nerine bowdenii. Jim, of this parish, sent the bulbs to me early this year. I was afraid that having suffered the injury of the postal system added to the insult of being disinterred, they might not flower this year. While some have not, probably more owing to position than sulking, some have. The flowers are slightly chaotic in form, but I’ll take it just now.

4 – Zombie Zinnia. This is the undead remains of a Queen Red Lime that I grew from seed this year. I should pull them up and consign them to the compost array.

5 – Continuing the theme of gradual decay, these are the hops, so green and lush when featured only a matter of weeks ago. These are a fuggles type hop so in theory I could use them to brew beer, but I am currently in the mode of life being too short to brew my own. One day perhaps.

6 – Sweet Peas. On a more forward looking, positive note, these are next year’s sweet peas. I sowed them two or three weeks ago, five or six seeds per 1L pot. They came up a treat and no meeces so far. Last weekend they went into the cold frame where they shall stay until I plant them out in March. Your sweet pea, if sown in the autumn, needs treating mean. They not only tolerate a bit of cold, they need it. When the stems are a few inches high I shall pinch out the growing tips to encourage side shoots and eventually more flowers. This is my second year growing sweet peas. Last year I ended up with a slightly random selection based on whatever was available in the end-of-season seed sale. This year there has been an element of that too, but I have also bought some from a specialist sweet pea merchant. I have too many to grow on the veg plot, so I will be looking for space to grow them in the borders. What could possibly go wrong…

Those are my Six, what are yours? Do join in, this little community loves a nose around a new garden. Just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours, that would be fab. For more details and for other ways to take part, you can read the brief guide here.

Have a fabulous gardening weekend, don’t forget to check back in as more links get added during the day.

I’ll be back next week with another #SixOnSaturday.