Camomile spreading

Back in London for a week to discover plums and damsons galore (lots of jam made, and plenty of fruit still on the trees) but most pleased of all to find that the camomile lawn is really taking shape now.

Olive haircut

I really should have continued trimming the olive tree regularly after its major cut-back in March, but I didn't get round to it. A couple of not-so-hot days recently and I continued -with Mike's help sawing the thicker branches. It's now a mere shadow of its former self, with all lower shoots removed and each remaining branch having been cut back to create the beginnings of a new shape. It isn't really the season for major pruning - but I think it will survive and flourish. After all, when we bought it nine years ago it must have been cut back in summer. This is a first attempt at topiary - and it really does look quite pathetic at the moment.

Lost camomiles... but spreading fans

Well, the sad fact is that despite putting in automatic watering, I've lost what seems to be about half of my camomile plants whilst we've been on holiday. I suspect slugs and/or squirrels are the culprits... I'll be away for another few weeks now so can't replace the dead plants until the beginning of July.

More encouraging, though, is that I'm getting my gooseberry and redcurrant fans well established. In the past I've started trying to trains fans, but for one reason or another they've got out of hand and I never succeeded in getting the shape I wanted. This time I seem to be getting it right:

Baby lawn

Last year I prepared the ground to make a tiny camomile lawn under the fruit trees - but I didn't get it finished before the end of the planting season. Consequently the area has been under a tarpaulin recently - to inhibit weed growth. Finally this week the new planting season has begun and our baby, bare-rooted plants arrived and have been planted. I have never grown camomile before so have been dependent on the growers' advice regarding planting and care. If all goes well, next year we will be walking on a sweet-scented lawn to pick our plums, damsons, gooseberries and redcurrants! The two fruit bushes are being tied in to a fan structure as the new shoots develop - something I've tried before but didn't continue, so I'm hoping to have the time to get them right this time. The plum and damson trees have flowered - but as they fruited heavily last year there may not be such a good crop this time. We tend to get good crops in alternate years.

There were a few camomile plants left over - I've planted a few in another part of the garden to use to replace any which don't "take" in the new lawn. With another few, though, I'm trying something different. I have two blueberry bushes in pots, and have had trouble with squirrels digging in the compost. My first solution was to cover the compost with pebbles to stop the digging - but in one of the pots I've now planted the leftover camomile plants to cover the ground (after checking with the growers that camomile like acid conditions, as the blueberries grow in ericaceous compost). To stop the digging while the plants get established, I've used an idea I spotted on the internet - sticking plastic forks in the soil around the baby plants! I wouldn't be surprised if the squirrels don't chew the forks too - they seem to gnaw on just about anything... we'll see.

Here we go round...

...the lemon tree. The new lemon tree is now planted in its pot. All being well there won't be any more really cold snaps now that both lemon and kumquat are potted up. They are at least sheltered from the predominant west wind. Next year I will wrap both up over the winter, and leave a little water going through the system whenever we're going to be away, whatever the season - I don't want to lose these.

The new kumquat had over 1.3 kg of ripe fruit on it - so today I've been able to make six pots of kumquat marmalade.

I've also begun adding summer colour here and there throughout the garden, having bought various annuals from the garden centre. I'll be back here again in a couple of weeks, by which time I think there will be the opportunity to put in more bedding plants.

Replacing the citrus

In the late autumn there was a leak in our water supply in the back garden, so I turned it off completely until we could repair the problem. I imagined this wouldn't be serious for the garden as the winter weather was due. Unfortunately, though, it didn't rain for weeks, and the plants in pots dried out completely. Most will recover, but the lemon and kumquat trees showed no signs of hope. I therefore decided to replace both with new plants (having got the automatic watering working again). A visit to my favourite garden centre in Spain (Vivers i Garden Moner at L'Escala) provided two healthy looking specimens, the kumquat being already laden with fruit (marmalade pan calling!) and the lemon looking nice and healthy - and a lot less prickly than its predecessor.

I'd already prepared the pot for the kumquat, so that is now in its new home. Wind and weather permitting, the lemon will also shortly be potted on.

Time for bedding

Back in London after a few days gardening in France, I completed the job started a couple of weeks ago - topping up the soil level in the raised bed which was begun last year, and in which the new soil had settled down to a level well below the original one. Having cleared out dead foliage and weeds, and brought the soil level back up, I splurged on bedding plants - knowing that if I left a clear area of soil, squirrels would soon come in and mess it up. Part of the bed - the bit which is below the rotary washing line - has been given over to strawberries (transplanting from the various bits of garden and pots where I had set new runners) as these will always be close to ground level. I also split up and moved into this bed a crown of rhubarb - it's not looking too healthy at the moment, but I hope it will recover. Also  in are several pelargoniums which I grew from cuttings.

Meanwhile my other half has been repairing the walls beneath the pergola which we built about twenty years ago. One side of the pergola - the side facing the house - is now several inches lower than it was originally - no doubt the effect of tree roots undermining it. He has been dissuaded from taking the whole structure down and is now just supporting it at the new level. A considerable portion of the brickwork has had to be replaced too - but we hope it will now last another twenty years! Yesterday I lifted a section of the brick paved patio so that we could remove one of the tree roots which was forcing the paviors upwards.

I have taken a few more pelargonium cuttings - some from the flowering ones and some from a scented one - and these are in the conservatory. The last ones were very successful in there so I'm hopeful for these too. I used "Strike" rooting powder.