As you are reading this I may be engaged in a high speed police chase, on the run following an illicit non-essential 15 mile round trip to collect a batch of fifty used 20 litre pots I’ve bought on eBay. In my defence yer ‘onor, they’re for the tulips and next summer’s tomatoes. Surely those are essential? Certainly they are in my garden, so there. Fear not, I shall be masked up, Zorro style, and the seller (a tree nursery) is going to pop them straight in the boot. Assuming I evade the fuzz, I will be able to make a dent in the tulip backlog this weekend. High stakes gardening.

In the meantime, let’s do Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything, you decide. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Lobelia ‘Mrs Clibran’. I think I used the last of my packet of seeds, I think the 3rd or even 4th year I’ve squeezed out of that one packet. They grew very slowly, I think due to poor compost, (I used New Horizon Peat Free, awful stuff, never again), but they are now a decent size and flowering profusely. One doesn’t expect to be discussing lobelia in mid November, but there it is.

2 – Parthenocissus henryana, virginia creeper. This time last year it had dropped all its leaves and was bearing fruit. This year all leaves are present and correct and for a little while yet I’d say. I bought this a few years ago with the intention of covering a poor patch of rendering, the aftermath of building works several years prior. It has required some coaxing to grow in the desired direction, but seems mostly to have got the hang of it. With the help of rose ‘Generous Gardener’ on the other side, I think this wall will get fully covered in the next year or two. During the summer, at any rate.

3 – Dahlia ‘Penhill Watermelon’. Not the best photo, I was holding the flopping stem with one hand and trying to adjust the focus, zoom and take the picture with the other. This is a plant I bought late in the season, only half expecting flowers. Once the frost gets its act together I will cut it back and stash in the greenhouse for the winter, hopefully it will be a worthwhile plant next year.

4 – Alliums, Shallots, Onions, Garlic. Just the odd few…

I normally just plant out the onions, shallots and garlic, but I have veg plot reorganisation plans which I haven’t yet executed. They’ll be fine in modules over the winter, I can plant out in February or March. The alliums I might have preferred to plant out this year but the borders are too full still. They can wait till the spring. The onions, shallots and garlic are well on their way already, no sign of the alliums just yet.

5 – Campanula persicifolia. I do most of my seed sowing in the late winter, spring time, but I do like to have a few on the go now. I’ll leave these to grow a bit more before pricking some out to grow on.

6 – Sweet peas, again. On the subject of seedlings, these had barely germinated a couple of weeks ago, they look very hale and hearty. Once they get a few more leaves I should pinch them out. I should also grow them a bit harder, they are currently in the heated bench. A shelf in the unheated main section of the greenhouse will be more than adequate.

Those are my Six, what are yours? If you’d like to join in, 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 you can read the brief guide.

Enjoy your weekend in the garden, don’t forget to pop back later as more links get added during the day.

Stay safe, I’ll be back next weekend with another #SixOnSaturday.