As you know, I scooped up all the leftover plants after the plant swap last week and this week I took them along to the school. Each child has 6 weeks of gardening lessons as part of the creative curriculum with means that they rotate through different skills on a Friday afternoon. Coincidentally Littlest L is on the gardening rotation so she was delighted to see me turn up with loads of plants. I took a small group and showed them how to weed a bed and then we planted various plants into the space. They decided that they wanted to plant some of the brassicas, some beetroot and some chillies! It was a very odd combination and we talked about why the chillies might not be happy without any cover but they still wanted to plant them and then told their teacher that they would need to construct some kind of cover for them - that might be interesting! The allotment society also had some plastic chairs and garden toys that I have taken to give to the early years group at school so I'll be delivering those later in the week. 
Back to my plot and I am not ashamed to say that I was pretty giddy to find 2 of my figs ripening nicely. I put the fig back outside just a couple of weeks ago after moving it into the polytunnel over the winter. I didn't remove any of the fruit that were bigger than my thumbnail before winter and I didn't remove any of the fruit to reduce my crop. It has been pointed out that I might have bigger fruit if I do that but I'm just excited to have lots of fruit so it will be interesting to see how they progress now that I'm starting to take a crop from it. 
You might remember I showed you my cauliflower last week, it had started to form a head but still had loads of leaves. This week it's head appears to be fully formed and there are hardly any leaves. I know that I'm supposed to cover the head to stop it from going pink but I struggled to do that because the leaves were so small. I can't remember what variety of cauliflower they are but my neighbour suggested they might be a mini one, in which case that one might be ready to harvest when the others haven't even begun to form a head yet! Sticking with brassicas the savoy cabbage experiment in the polytunnel have gone absolutely mental. They are starting to heart up now but they are absolutely massive. The bed is 3 feet wide and the cabbages are spilling out over the edge or being pressed up against the poly. I think if they had the room they've be 3 feet across each! The 6 cabbage that I have in there are taking up more than half of the whole bed, which is 10 feet long!
I watched with interest when Monty Don said that you could plant normal garden canna lilies in the pond, even if they're not pond varieties and so this week I was in Aldi and saw some nice ones that were very cheap and so I thought I'd experiment. I took the plant out of its pot and removed as much of the compost as I could before replanting it into a pond pot with aquatic soil. I have no idea if it will work but I thought it was an interesting experiment for less than £5 and it adds a little bit of colour to the pond. I've currently put it in one of the corners furthest away from the shed but I might move it depending on how my aquatic canna performs.
I planted some more cornflowers into the flower bed and a small clump into the bee table, my plan for those is that they will self seed into the bed and I should see plenty of cornflowers growing next year. I was also delighted to find my first peony flowering when I arrived today. The only disappointment was that it was only a single flower rather than a few. I was hoping to get a bit of a bunch for cutting and bringing home but instead I've decided to just enjoy it on the plot. The variety is Shirley Temple and they are a beautiful pure white and smell amazing. I've also got the beginnings of flowers coming into bloom on the bee table, I didn't know what was in the mix but it looks like there will be some poppies, which I'm happy with (and hoping they will also self seed). The fox gloves are also resplendent and putting up a number of spikes with loads of flowers. I've never grown one before so it will be interesting to see how they work. I've been told that you don't remove any of the spent spikes or seed heads and just let them self seed everywhere. I have one of them in a pot so I'm not going to let that self seed because I'll end up with fox gloves on my paths! I'm going to experiment with removing the spikes and see if it encourages the plant to put up more spikes. Ideally I'll keep it flowering for longer if I do that. I've been told that they don't put up multiple spikes but mine already have so I'm a bit confused - it will be interesting to see why happens in any event :-)
This time of year is so lovely on the plot. Most of the hard work is done and so I can spend some time enjoying it as well as pottering about weeding or planting some pots up. I hope you all have time to enjoy your gardens too - until next time; Happy Gardening!
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