I’ve had a busy few weeks at Flower Shows, Festivals and Camping Trips and now its back to normality with a bit of gardening at home.

Yesterday, I repotted a marsh marigold and placed it in its new home, the pond; here’s all the other jobs I’ve been up to this weekend.

Swell sweetcorn

We planted sweetcorn from seed in early May in pots; the variety is called, swift. Then I planted it into the raised bed at the beginning of June. The last picture is how it looks today and if all goes well it should be ready for harvesting in late summer/early autumn.

Variety is called swift

Seed

Compost

Push your finger in to make a hole

Push the seed in

After a few weeks it will look like this

Then replant in the raised beds

And here it is today!

Superb sunflowers

The sunflower is a giant variety off my Uncle Terry and Aunty Barbara, which they gave to us as seedlings; we’ve potted them on to protect them from the slugs and then planted them in the garden today.

We also grown some from seed ourselves and they’re called Giant Yellow. Sunflowers are great because they grow enormous and have incredible colours and intricate petals. Bees love them and then when the flower is dead their seeds are great for birds. They are great flowers to grow with us kids ‘cos they shoot up so fast and the seeds are big so they are easier to handle

Planting mid-May

Planting mid-May

Early June

End of June

Perfect peas – my favourite veg

Me and my Dad’s tried and tested way of growing peas has worked for us for years. We use toilet rolls as they are biodegradeable, which means you can put them straight into the ground without affecting the eco system. The roots are already established and growing straight, shooting out the bottom. They are now in their new home in the raised beds and looking good

Planting in toilet rolls

Me and my Dad

Pea shoots

Planting in the raised beds

Planting on

They are coming on great!

Fragrant flowers

The flowers are looking good in our garden and the insects seem to agree – the bees and butterflies have been in abundance feasting on the nectar

Bronze fennel with the red hot poker

Red hot poker

Verbenum

Geum

Chives and Geum

Osteospermum

Allium

Daisies and Lamb’s Tongue

Violas

Perfect plants

I’ve bought some new plants – a selection of alpines and succulents (these were from Tissington Nursery) and some pond plants

Alpines and succulents

Alpines and succulents

More alpines

Wonderful wildlife

With all this growth the wildlife has been going crazy in the garden. This jackdaw was making a right racket recently, we think that the neighbour’s cat may have taken a youngster that had semi-fledged, that ended up in the garden. They were dive bombing the cat, even going after it when the cat was inside and were flying at the window

We saw loads of great tits, which we think were fledglings – they were very active on the bird feeder

Potting on the prickly cacti

Here I am potting on my echinopsis, which I bought at RHS Chatsworth Flower Show

My perfect pond

Here’s a quick video where I talk about some new pond plants and oxygenators

Hope you had a great weekend in the garden folks – leave me a comment below and let me know how your garden grows!!!