The brighter side

Since May there has hardly fallen any rain here. The plants are struggling, and so are we with the high temperatures in their 30’s making manual labour during the day a sweaty chore. I have found myself moaning a lot about the weather lately, so I decided to list some of the things that have turned out well due to this hot weather.

Ripe tomatoes

Tomatoes have ripende even though they are not in the greenhouse. We don’t have a greenhouse at the moment. We bought a new one last year, a beautiful one from Gabriel Ash, but unfortunately we have not found the time to put it up yet. So the tomatoes have had to live outside, and they have really liked it in this hot weather.

We might get ripe sweet corn

I grow sweet corn every year, but four out of five years we never get a crop because the season isn’t long enough. This year we have hope that it will actually ripen so we can enjoy delicious sweet corn harvested straight from the garden.

Drought tolerant plants are thriving

Aeoniums, Agaves, Salvia argentea and other drought tolerant plants are really thriving in a sunny position. Everything in pots do actually get watered, unlike the garden itself which is never watered. The dark leaved Aeonium have never been as dark as they are this year though.

Clematis are flowering their socks off

Granted, the Clematis performs well every year, but even this year, when there has been so little rain, they look really smashing. We grow mainly group 3 Clematis, the varieties that should be cut back every spring as most Clematis usually freeze to the ground anyway in our climate.