Hive Garden Journal - Where The Wild Things Grow

It's almost midsummer, after one of the wettest rainiest springs I can remember.

The upside is that all that water in the ground has made the plants grow. The downside is that all that water in the ground has made the plants grow. 😂

Because I've been crazy busy with work and other real life adulting things, the garden has been a bit neglected due to lack of time. The weeds haven't objected to this at all.

But lots of good things have been happening as well, down to a combination of my neglect and my wife working very hard to learn how to grow edible things.

Here's a climbing thing, no idea what it is, but it's really bloomed well this year. It's smaller than previously; it used to just climb other plants, but I pruned it heavily over the winter and gave it some wires to climb, and it seems to really like that !

Panning out a bit, you can see a trio of our raised beds. The nearest has Swiss Chard in, which is just starting to grow. The one at the back has onions, which should be ready to harvest in a couple of weeks. The one on the left is potatoes, which are growing like weeds ! I'm beginning to wonder if all the compost has been converted to potato !

The goal is to increase our self-sufficiency to the point where there are things we just don't need to buy from the shops any more. Last year, we grew enough tomatoes and potatoes (things we get through a lot of !) that we didn't buy any for three months. If we can get that to 4-6 months this year, we'll be happy.

We've got smaller quantities of of other new things that we haven't tried before - coriander, peppers, aubergines, chard and a couple of others. We're growing a little bit of each to see what works and what doesn't.

Oh, and on the right of the photo is the fig tree. It's doing really well, making lots of leaves and even a few figs, although they won't ripen unless we have a few weeks of really hot and dry weather.

At the back, the pond irises are flowering nicely. The bees love it, but it's drinking the water fast. I've set up half a dozen buckets on the patio, which I fill with water and then add to the pond once they've stood for a few days to let the fluoride evaporate off. Fluoride in water is okay for humans, but toxic to amphibians.

There's a corner of the lawn which I haven't mowed, mostly because the extension lead is too short to reach it. Out of nowhere, a single wild geranium popped up. The photo doesn't do it justice, in the right light it's a bright pinkish-magenta colour !

In the opposite corner of the garden beside the path, we've also got wild geraniums, but these ones are a different type and have produced lots of white flowers.

In another part of the lawn, we've got two daisies. I know what you're thinking... "so what, they're just daisies". But they're the first ones we've ever had in the lawn, we normally just get lots of dandelions.

We've also got a clump of Michaelmas daisies popped up behind one of the raised beds.

We've got more at the front under the rose bush which have just flowered. They're beautiful, but I'm going to have to make sure I dead-head them as soon as the flowers fade. Otherwise, they'll self-seed and before I know it the garden will be full of them !

The front rose bush is a bit of an oddity. What's actually going on is that a few years ago it made some side-shoots which reverted to wild roses. So on one bush, we've got white wild roses and pink cultivated ones. It's a bit wild and out of control, but I really like it.

Finally, here's the wildest part of the garden, beside the log cabin I use for an office. There's a lot going on here ! I've deliberately left it to see what would happen, and the good news is that it's almost entirely good self-seeded plants not weeds.

There's a foxglove (digitalis) in front of the cat flap. Yes, I really did fit my garden office with a cat flap... To the left of it is lemon balm, and in front of it is a plant that looks like stinging nettles but is actually catnip. It's getting leggy, but is about to flower so I'm hoping we can get some seeds and plant a new batch. At the front are self-seeded forget-me-nots, which I'm really happy to see. No idea where they came from, but I'm glad they've turned up, they're one of my favourite flowers.

So that's how my garden is doing; a bit neglected but very bee and cat friendly and interesting to potter around 😀