Oh wow, I‘m sorry for your loss! I have the mothers in separate pots and at least one wild one in the bed. That’s are beautiful plants and very attractive when they are flowering, I‘m shuffling them around the garden when their time comes. Flowering (eye) candy floss, flies all over it 🤭

🌱 This pot has all four of the mint plants I have collected in the past years in one. I hope they will grow well and then I plan on passing them on. Strawberry mint Orange mint Spear mint Moroccan mint

🌱 Repotting her was a good move. After soaking up the sun for a whole week, we’re back to another week of sunshine 👀

I spotted a huge hornet mimic fly (Volucella zonaria) in a shed near allotment gardens. This fly likes to hang out in other insect hives and helps keep things clean by taking care of detritus. Better leave now, I don’t want to meet its hosts! Photo taken today, northeast🇨🇭

For measurement purposes, I bought a large BIC lighter at the same shop as the plant.

🌱 Can I be proud? No filter, the morning glory is my witness

This is how large she was in May when I had first repotted her. She was about one foot tall!

🌱 My V-Tonic girl has not been growing well. She is rather scraggly and thin, I was hoping that she would begin flowing earlier but no dice. Her old pot was about 40cm diameter, the new one is substantially larger:

🌱 Next heatwave incoming. No rain for a while again. Dry wind, generally low rH. The Ipomoea purpurea (Tall Morning-glory) is creating its own microclimate along the bamboo poles.

🌱 The tomatoes have grown out of the greenhouse and are flowering far above me. Meanwhile, their first fruits are ripening 😃

🌱 Ipomoea an the bee

🌱 Morning and evening ritual in the greenhouse. The basil is helping attract more bees but I enjoy fumbling the buds 😊

🌱 These Ipomoea are growing so quickly this year! I’ve never seen leaves the size of my hand. Underneath their beautiful green vines are the 🍓 I planted two years ago. I’ll need to replace them next spring. For now, I’m just letting the Ipomoea grow wild and free in the raised bed.

🌱 Palomena prasina / green shield bug I’ve noticed their eggs scattered all over the garden. Those little green balls under the leaves? The cicadas are back too, they are more of a concern for the plant this bug is sitting on than others. No spider mites (yet?)!

🌱 Our Orangello (C. sativa, registered plant name) is coming along nicely this year. Her stem is nearly as thick as last year’s „Alpine Spirit“ plant I also bought in our local garden centre.

🌱 Summer Ipomoea has taken over the raised bed after spring strawberries. Sowed them a few years ago and they have been coming back since towards the end of June 😊 I love their lush foliage and flowers but I do have to take care so that she doesn’t spread further 😄

🌱 First budding poppies 😊

🌱 The surviving poppies. I now know that I need to build a real bed for them and sow them already in autumn. Soil mix seems to be okay, I have given them a drop of fertiliser last week. In spring, I had dozens of them. Poppies in pots are very delicate 😌

🌱 Dear fellow gardeners In the coming days we will have a limit imposed on watering the gardens, washing cars (at home) and filling up private pools. How do you manage with such conditions? Here is a Nigella, she will soon close her petals and become a seed pod 😊

Manchmal ist man dem Paradies näher. Nennt man das „Glück“?

🌱 To help my big girl, I’ve installed two small Gardena sprayers. Each has its own tap in the line around the bed, as they need a lot of pressure. The hay could have helped too, temps in shade are well above 35C. I’m pleased with how green the beds are with the irrigation system helping me out 😊

Yesterday. Three fire flies Today: two, so far.

Instead of fighting neophytes, I‘m looking for ways to starve them of water and nutrients. Silene coronaria is a very hardy plant, it can take very hot and dry weather without any water and her flowers are lovely. Small black wild bees pollinate them.

Installing & maintaining a watering sys needs time (& sunscreen), but it’s more accurate than using a hose. 1/2“ ring line (goes all around the patch) and a 4.6mm Gardena sprayer. I have connected it all the small hoses like a grid and feed water in from two sides of the garden. Satisfying!

Nigella are beautiful flowers, I have made it my side goal to greatly increase the density of these freaks in our fruit/herb patch 😍

🌱 Morning round. Present: - A dozen 🍅 flowers in need of fondling with a🖌️ - Outdoor CBD C. sativa showing first indications of heat stress (we are all stressed, I know) - More watermelon flowers 🤩 - Flowering mallow 😍 - Late Nigella (note: soil is rather dry on one side of the patch) 🤔

🌱 Morning round. We have a notable change regarding the watermelon: If its pot isn’t exposed to full sunlight all day, it will grow far better! Some plants like to have warm feet, but the temperatures in the past weeks have been punishing, to put it mildly. Five new flowers in a day!

🌱 Lunch round. Present: A white rose that we thought was gone has popped up again, hidden under a thick layer of weeds I let grow to shield the soil from the wind and sun.

🌱 Morning round. Present: - Water melon - Poppies and weed (greenhouse) - Weed (outdoor) - Borage If in need of bees, all you really need is borage 😊

This is what is coming for us: Sustained high temperatures and nearly zero rain 👊🏽