August

Well it's stupidly hot here now, 35ºC most days but on our rooftop terraces the temperature in the sun can exceed 50ºC, I'm not sure just how hot it gets as our thermometer only goes to 55ºC and that's where the needle sticks.

Obviously not everything I've chosen to grow likes these conditions, Marigolds in particular seem to wither and die pretty quickly.  'How can you kill Marigolds' asks a friend, 'they're impossible to kill'.  Evidently not!  Radishes go to seed pretty quickly and the coriander stands no chance, although I have found better success by moving it to a balcony round the back that only gets a bit of evening sunshine.  I might try another batch of radishes round there as well.  My strawberries have all died now so I definitely need to site them elsewhere next year.

Other casualties have been the Pak Choi where the white fly and cabbage white caterpillars have gorged their way through it.  I have found that Neem oil works a treat so hopefully the next batch won't suffer the same consequences.  The cucumbers fell to Cucumber Mosaic Disease and sadly my blueberry bush was done for by the wind, so a more sheltered spot next year me thinks.

The flowers however, are going great.  Our front terrace looks really pretty now and will look even better next year when everything is better established.  Summer took a while to really get started this year so as a result everything has taken longer to come into bloom.  However, this means that the everything is looking really spectacular now.

As you can see, early June and no flowers but now look at it!

Other things going well include the lime tree, it has lots of flowers on it and several little baby limes so I'll be looking forward to having a wedge in a gin & tonic soon.  I've several containers on a downstairs balcony that contain baby carrots, spring onions, spinach, chives and cut & come again lettuce leaves which are all doing well. The back terrace upstairs has pots of rosemary, mint, thyme, basil, sage, cherry tomatoes and chillies which are all loving the blazing heat.

Up at our guesthouse I've procured a little spot for a vegetable patch. I bought some plug plants from the local co-operativa and despite me not planting them until June they are going great. The tomato plants are huge and should keeping fruiting until October if I'm lucky. The courgettes are producing lots of lovely fruit, although the mice keep getting in there before me! I've purchased some mousetraps to put down although I am sure I will need t'husband to deal with them, being the big girl's blouse that I am! There's also basil, onions, aubergine and pepper plants in the patch with green beans growing up the fence.

Once the weather has cooled down a bit, I am going to make a couple of raised beds and plant my winter veg. The co-operative will supply me with plug plants of Cauliflower, broccoli, onions and cabbages and I've bought my broad bean seeds ready to sow along with sugar snap & mange tout. Spring should hopefully see a bumper bounty.

The Rain in Spain...

falls mainly on my salad leaves...

What is it with the weather this year? Crappy long cold winter, no spring to speak of and every time you think summer has finally started the forecast is for a solid week of thunderstorms, cloud and rain. Where's my sun?

My poor salad leaves (spinach and red & green oak leaves) are taking a hammering, they were planted 4 weeks ago so they should be ready by now, yet they are so far off it. At least them being splattered with mud should deter the ever present swarms of whitefly, well here's hoping anyway.

Speaking of salad leaves... a lesson in growing pak choi in containers.

Wrong way:

Firstly, mixing water retaining crystals in with the compost might have proved a good idea if we'd had a decent amount of sun instead of all the rain and cloud.  Secondly not thinning them out in such a small pot, I think it's probably essential even though it's says not to on the packet if you're using them as cut and come again salad leaves.  Thirdly, a bigger pot, wider and shallow I think is the way forward.

Right Way:

Planted at exactly the same time, these have obviously done much better.  A wider and shallower pot and grit mixed in with the compost to help with drainage.  No water retaining crystals in this one.  I will thin these so that some of the plants can go on to mature to full pak choi cabbages, well that's if I can keep the levels of whitefly down who have already started to munch their way through some of the leaves.

Unfaithful

I've been unfaithful, I'm so sorry I just couldn't help it.  The buzz, the excitement, the draw was just too powerful.  I got heady in the scent and couldn't back out. I'm trying to rectify it but I feel I have travelled too far down the road to go back now. It has cost me dear, both in financial terms and time. I feel dirty and I scrub away, but I just can't stop.

My bit on the side?  Why my lovely little terrace garden of course.

Oh come on, you didn't really think I'd been playing away from home?  Cheating on my beloved t'husband?  How could you think such a thing?  I am of course talking about my neglect of my blog, twitter & facebook accounts and indeed the world wide web in general in favour of thinning out cut & come again salad leaves.  I have ploughed my measly wages from frying eggs & cleaning bogs in our guest house (usually known as egg & bog money) into the local garden centre.  I was saving for a lap top so I could blog & twitter from anywhere in the house but instead I've squandered it all on hibiscus and bougainvillea.  Money that would have previously been spent in Mango or Vero Moda has been invested in a lemon tree and a blueberry bush.

  
I wake up each morning and instead of turning on the PC I rush outside and check all our terraces and balconies for signs of growth.   I used to lie awake in bed at night thinking about blog posts, now I worry that my chillies are taking too long to germinate and that the Jasmine isn't getting enough sun.

It is teaching me many lessons though, I have learnt that some composts are better than others, that you can over water stuff in containers even in the Mediterranean,  It is teaching me patience.  Usually one for instant gratification I've bought some Bird of Paradise seeds that will take up to 5 years to actually bloom!  To be fair it didn't actually say that on the packet.  My new best mate is Alan Titchmarsh.  My amazon shopping trolley has 5 books about gardening in it.  

So it looks like I'm going to be a bit busy this summer and I may only appear sporadically about the blogosphere, much like my pepper seedlings. If I'm honest I'm only on here now because it's raining.  However, here is my Mediterranean gardening blog, not necessarily for others to read but to chart my successes and failures. If you like gardening and especially if you know a bit about growing stuff in 50ºC sun traps then be sure to pop by and give me some advice every now and again.

Adeu. xx