Throwing in the trowel and nature's power to surprise- Gardening with Brendan

The latest adversary has been powdery mildew affecting the leaves of many of the potted plants dotted around the front of my house. As most gardens get powdery mildew at some point every summer and its not usually fatal to the plant I wasn't overly concerned, just a bit dejected, but thankfully I caught it early enough and after a bit of research I was able to raid the cupboard to make a home made spray to try and remedy the problem.

Here's what I tried if you see white splodges or spots developing on the leaves of your plants and want to have a go: take one and a half-heaped teaspoons of baking powder and a squirt of liquid hand soap and mix them into a litre of water. then pour the frothy mixture into a spray bottle and gave the affected leaves a good soaking (Check underneath the leaves too). That's it. and thankfully it seems to be working.

Apart from that little bit of action I've really been doing nothing in the garden this week. I've barely looked bear it. I haven't really had much free time and it's been too wet to even cut the grass or begin to tackle the weeds anyway.

But the good thing about taking a little break was that I hadn't even noticed that many of the seeds I had sown way back in February and March were now covered in buds preparing to flower. I arrived home on Friday to find some had already opened with the first nasturtium flowers, pansies, alyssum and California poppies all having popped and in a matter of days there are now a mass of flower buds on the petunias. lobelia and cornflowers. The sweet pea are making their way up the trellis and the night scented phlox are also now in bud.

And its not just flowers either. The miserable June seems to have had no negative effect on the fruit shrubs which are already bearing fruit. And I have also discovered my first baby tomato grown from seed this year.

Out in the back garden I found some more buds and the chamomile patch in particular is thriving. An unmarked mystery bag of seeds I took a punt on produced what I thought was horse radish but it now seems there was more than one type of seed in there as I noticed different growing patterns and after a check on a plant identifier app it turns out I've some sort of large poppy different to all the others I've been growing this year.

Of the other things in the ground, the lupins and honesty are doing just fine, the larkspur are slowly getting bigger and the sprouts are making a major comeback after being eaten alive a few months back. There are flowers already on the runner beans and the bright orange calendula is now blooming in the back garden now as well as in the pots to the front.

But it's not all good in the dugout. The hollyhock, which looked so strong and healthy just a few weeks back, now look a bit battered and weak from the persistent rain and the cold, while most of the sunflowers and cosmos have proved no match for the gusts that have snapped their stems with fatal consequences. On top of that the second batch of oxeye daisy seedlings have been devoured by some unknown adversary, just like their predecessors.

There was better news in the greenhouse though. A tray of chard seeds I planted and left to their own devices a few weeks back then forgot all about has produced little seedlings and the lavender and rosemary seedlings are still alive and slowly putting on growth, while the giant sunflowers still in the pots in there are now shotting up and standing at around a foot tall.

Across the garden the sprouts and broccoli planted in a small raised are thriving too and will need to be thinned out soon as it's getting very crowded in there.

All in all, most plants I've grown from seed are doing just fine and with a bit of warmer sunnier weather hopefully on the horizon they should really start taking off by early July. It's easy to get a little disheartened from time to time but I'd say at this stage I've still a good 80% success rate from among the hundreds of seedlings I've potted up or put in the earth.

And the bees are coming thick and fast already. Every day there seems to be more and more of them buzzing about. From among the flowers which have opened so far they seem to be particularly fond of the calendula, the nasturtiums and the Iceland poppies. I even found one asleep inside the cup shaped flower of a poppy early on Saturday morning. I've also noticed them checking on the buds of other flowers out the back, like they are keeping an inventory. And just seeing them buzz about is a reward in itself and enough to lift the spirits on even the drabbest of days.

Nature, it seems, still has the power to surprise, even when you least expect it to.

Maybe I should do nothing more often!