A late start to the month in the garden as we were away for the first week of the month of course. We gave everything plenty of water before we left and hoped for the best - and actually almost everything survived unscathed. Two of the troughs of strawberries were looking quite sorry for themselves when we got back, but a few good soakings and they soon sprang back. We also lost just a few seedlings but nothing we couldn’t re sow.
One thing that had happened while we were away was various things bursting into flower - the Alliums at the top are one of my absolute favourite plants in the garden, so ridiculously dramatic! Our Lidl bargain Clematis “Elizabeth” is also positively smothered in flower and another Lidl bargain - the little £2.99 rose I bought a couple of months ago is flowering again, not quite the bright yellow it was when I bought it, instead more of a vibrant orange.
In the front garden both Salvias are flowering and attracting plentiful bees and other pollinators- one of the reasons we wanted them. The rose we cut back fairly brutally at the end of the winter has grown back to pretty much the enormous size we cut it back from and is now flowering well with masses more buds - we may even get some cut flower from that this year - and it’s definitely going to need a scalping next winter!
Not many plant purchases this month - although there was a visit to our favourite local nursery and some more herbs found their way home with us - 2 Crimean Basils, I'd anticipated Greek, but these seem to be the same sort of more woody variety so I'm hoping they will attract the bees just as well, plus a gorgeous Tricolour Sage and a lovely sturdy little Tarragon - we both love tarragon! One of the Basils has already been tucked into a pot at the front, and the others will probably end up in pots for the time being at least as well - I'd love to see if I could nurture the tarragon through the winter, although that will take some effort I suspect! These were just £1.20 each - an absolute bargain for really good quality plants.
We got more seedlings on the go too - although the chilly weather at the start of the month combined with what once again seems to be some really quite disappointing compost means that things are generally seeming to struggle quite badly. Apparently we're not the only ones finding this to be a problem either - and even the RHS are advising feeding from far earlier than would be normal! The sudden burst of heat during the final week of May made a massive difference though - although of course it hit while we were away again just to complicate things! We got back to beans bursting through and an entire module set of peas - having finally given up trying to get them to any sort of sensible size in the ground this year (we suspect the birds are getting their own back from the RSPB instructions to take in seed feeders!) and those have been mostly transferred to a large pot, although there will be some more to go into the ground too. Two Tromboncino squashes and one courgette were finally deemed large enough to make it to the ground too, and MrEH set up the obelisk and got the runner beans in around that - less this year as we had far too many in 2025 and may be eating them for ever more! We've also got several troughs sown with salads of various sorts - I may well invest in some more troughs so we can keep successionally sowing things like that as well.
We've had our first small harvest of the year in the shape of the first of the strawberries - delicious they are too - although hopefully some of the salad is also not too far away from being edible sized now also. June will be a month with the weekends spent at home - so next month's post will catch up with where we're at in terms of the veg planting as a whole.
Robyn
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