Fess up time

When I said dry in my last blog I did not mean this dry.It has meant that all the planting out has had to be followed up with plenty of watering a very time consuming occupation.
Earlier this year I bought a batch of potting compost from a chap who calls round every year. Normally this is excellent but this last load has been a disaster - nothing grows in it. I have not tested it ,something I will do in future but I suspect it is really acidic, nothing gets going once it has germinated. In future I will only use John Innes for this purpose. The result is that I have no sweet peas ,usually a feature of the garden not only in the vegetable plot but scrambling up through shrubs to give colour and to enhance the scent in seating areas.I hoped to buy some at the local garden centre but I have left it too late so I am hoping a very late sewing will save my bacon. I rescued most of the cuttings I took over the winter by changing the compost ,not something to be recommended but at least it has worked.It does not matter how careful you are there is always something to trip you up.Listening to Gardeners Question Time always makes me feel better as they all make great big mistakes.A mistake I made last year was to grow all the tomatoes outside a disaster as they all got blight due to the awful weather. This year they are staying in the polytunnel which pretty much guarantees a scorching dry summer.

My last confession was the dahlias last year which I did not cover up in the barn sufficiently well - they all died.I have grown nearly all the replacements from seed and they are terrific so I do not feel quite so guilty now apart from the beautiful 'David Howard' that I must replace as I miss it so much.Dahlias are so easy to grow from seed I will do quite a few more next year and just leave them in the ground to overwinter with a decent mulch.If they survive well then great but if not it is not such a disaster.