Burgeoning

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Isn’t that a lovely word, “burgeoning”? It is the present participle of the verb “to burgeon”, which means to begin to grow or increase rapidly; to flourish.

After rain last week (while we were away on holiday in Portugal, tee-hee!), followed by several warm sunny days, my garden is definitely burgeoning, as I shall demonstrate…

The first of my Broad Beans will be ready for harvesting in just a couple more days:

And lots of pods are setting on the second row too.

The apples are swelling. These are “Laxton’s Superb”.

Although far from ripe, the fruits on the Blueberry bushes are recognizably Blueberry-shaped now.

My little row of 15 Leeks is looking promising – at least they are growing.

And this definitely looks like my first courgette forming:

The foliage on all my potatoes has “turned” now – gone yellow(ish) and droopy. In other plants this might be worrying, but in potatoes it is to be welcomed since it means that harvesting-time is close.

Here’s a batch of “Juliette” spuds I harvested a few days ago. I planted 2 x seed-tubers (costing me a mere 17p each) in one 30cm container. They produced for me 52 useable tubers, weighing 1.28kgs. I consider that to be a good return!

About half of my chilli plants have now set fruit.

Several of the tomato plants (especially “Maskotka” and “Losetto”) have set fruit too, though the big beefsteak varieties are some way behind.

Even some of the onions are beginning to bulb-up:

Unfortunately several of the red ones (“Red Baron”), grown from sets, have formed flower heads. I have picked off the flower-stalks, but I expect those particular onions will not be very good. The “Sturon” ones, also grown from sets, appear to be less affected, as do the “Long Red Florence” which I have grown from seed. Maybe the red ones were not heat-treated? (This supposedly prevents / discourages bolting).

On the Flowers front we also have good progress. The Hydrangea has lots of blooms, and the first couple are showing colour now:

And the biggest of my six dwarf sunflowers has a bud. It’s a weird twisty thing!

I still have some nice Aquilegias:

Some Calendulas too. They are self-seeded ones from the “Flighty’s Favourites” selection gifted to me a couple of years ago by Mike Rogers of “Flighty’s plot”. I particularly like the rather muted “biscuit-coloured” ones. I think they are more attractive than the plain orange and yellow varieties.

OK then folks, have I convinced you that my garden is burgeoning?

To be honest, there is not a lot of work for me to do in the garden at present. I spent some time earlier in the week clearing up fallen leaves and twigs, a consequence of the aforementioned storms, and I have done a bit of tying-in of tomato plants. Oh, and transplanted my PSB and sown a few more lettuce seeds, but it’s hardly been a busy week. It’s nice to be able to just enjoy watching things grow.

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