The importance of growing sun-loving plants in the sun

Sunflowers: the clue's in the name. These are sun-loving plants. I accidentally conducted an experiment this year when I was overly hopeful about how much sun my north-east facing fence gets. I planted four sunflowers against the middle of the fence,  hoping that they would at least get enough sun to survive if not to thrive. Well, survive they have, but thrive they have not:

Here they are, barely bigger than when I took them out of the greenhouse because I needed the space for something else. 

And here are the sunflowers from the same batch of seeds that spent a mere week longer in the greenhouse (sown in a straight line) plus some that self-seeded themselves straight into the ground from last year's crop (the other sunflowers):

The tallest of these beauties are well over six feet (180 cm) tall. And they show strangely clearly where in that bed gets the most sun. Want to check where your garden's fullest sun is? Grow a single variety of sunflower all over it. Want to win a tallest sunflower competition? Pick the absolutely sunniest spot you have. Even within my line of a single variety of sunflowers, the nearer to the house they are, the taller they are.

The plant surrounding the sunflowers is borage. From a distance, it looks like it has fluff instead of flowers, but close up the flowers are tiny blue stars. And these also shot up in this sunny bed, crowding out the squashes I'm growing alongside them. But when they were much smaller, I transplanted a few to behind my shady pond, because I wanted to replace some weeds I'd dug up. They're still alive anda good size for that location, but they stayed tiny:

The lady's mantle, on the other hand, is delighted by the conditions there.

Garden obelisks for runner beans

This year, I put the now very tatty bamboo canes up for my runner beans and thought I had to be able to do better than that. I couldn't even find eight long ones all within a foot of each others' height, and that only got worse when some of them snapped when I was putting them into the soil. So, I took them down and decided to see if I could use garden obelisks instead.

So far, so good. We bought the cheap sort (less than £20 for two), which come in lots of hollow pieces and need to be screwed together. As far as I can tell, the more you pay, the fewer pieces your obelisk comes in and the more sturdy and solid those pieces are. So mine came in the maximum possible number of highly flimsy and lightweight pieces. They did, however, come accompanied by all the correct screws, and we put them together without difficulty. I have to admit, though, that the only reason they look quite as straight and sturdy as they do is because of how I positioned them in the soil. Nevertheless, they currently seem at least as sturdy as my weather-worn bamboo canes, and the main problem I'm experiencing with the beans is, as usual, snails. We are, however, having one of the hottest days of the year so far today (33 degrees), and I'm a little concerned that the one bean that has already wrapped itself around the obelisk may be frazzled to death. Time will tell.

Looking at my photos, the seasoned gardener or risk assessor might point out that I shouldn't be growing foxgloves right next to my vegetables, but in my defence, I haven’t poisoned myself yet, and they'll be gone long before the beans are ready to harvest.*

In other news, the plum tree (more of a plum twig really) that I planted last year has survived, so I now, with aspirations to grandeur, have started referring to the far end of the garden as my orchard and fernery. I've even bought a new fern, so we're now up to five of them.

The new fern is the little one at the front left.

In a bid to evade snails, I've been watering in the mornings rather than the evenings (a partial success), starting plants off in the safety of the greenhouse (another partial success) and growing lettuce in a large pot (going OK so far).

In other news, I thought the birds had got all the sunflower seeds from the sunflowers I grew last year, but they missed some, and sunflowers have come up in a vegetable bed. I love being able to recognise from the leaves what has seeded itself in my garden. I'm also expecting a huge amount of borage and a small amount of calendulas. A more dedicated vegetable grower would probably declare these weeds and pull them out, but I declare them important for the bees so am producing a poorer harvest than I might otherwise be. There will also be a couple of rows of sunflowers that I planted intentionally but probably without wide enough spacing. This is what happens when you garden tired and decide to wing it. The garden is usually very capable of dealing with the eccentricities and imperfections of its gardener.

* Update from June: the beans happily survived the temperatures the obelisks reached. What they did not survive was the onslaught by slugs and snails that hid in the foxgloves and other undergrowth I did not clear. Next year's lesson: my choice is between pretty flowers and food. The snails won't let me have both.

A cottage garden year in the garden

I didn’t have much time this year, so I largely let the plants that self-seeded have free rein. It wasn’t much work and was surprisingly beautiful. 

Protecting runner beans from slugs

Last year, slugs and snails devoured all but one of my runner bean plants. So this year I got smart: I started them off in pots in the greenhouse, so that by the time I planted them out they would have tougher full-grown leaves, which slugs and snails find less appealing than fresh young leaves. They've been in the ground for two days now, and so far it's working.

I've started off a second set of beans in the greenhouse, so the beans won't all be ready at once.

The only problem is that at this time of year, sparrows love to steal string, presumably for their nests. We have a small flock of sparrows (about 10 or 12 of them) who visit the garden regularly. I've already had to replace half the string I tied the bean poles together with. I've added some extra string to the poles in the hope the sparrows will take the non-structural string this time. We will see.

I'm pretty sure the sparrows have also eaten all the carrot seeds I planted, as I caught them pecking furiously in the area and not a single carrot has come up. Still, better to have sparrows than carrots or structurally sound bean poles.

In other news, the log I got for Christmas a couple of years back that was impregnated with oyster mushroom spawn has finally produced mushrooms. The only question is whether I should risk my life on eating them. What if they're not from the impregnated bits but instead an infiltrator? Sure, they look like they could be oyster mushrooms, but is it worth the risk?

Removing grass from a vegetable bed

One of my vegetable beds used to be primarily lawn. And it has made a few valiant attempts to return to lawn. When I first removed the grass, I simply turned some of it over and stacked other parts of the turf upside down. This time, I have attempted to put as much of it in the compost heap as I could. I'm keen for as little grass to grow here in the future as possible because of the difficulty of getting the soil out of its roots. This means it takes much longer to clear than a lot of weeds. I didn’t have the time or energy to finish it all this weekend, but I made a good start.

A visit from a fox

 There is a hole under the fence between our garden and next-door's, which we have long suspected to be a passageway created by foxes. Now we have the proof. A fox turned up in our garden in broad daylight, then, with only a little bit of extra digging, left via the hole under the fence.

Wildlife in the garden

 I was weeding today and I came across this little chap:

I think it might be a newt. I hope I didn't destroy its habitat in my fervent removal of green alkanet.