A strange year

What a strange gardening year this has been As usual I was looking forward to all my plans and expectations in the garden to come fruition and as usual Mother Nature went her own way!! April came and was the warmest April for a long, long time. My herbaceous borders came into flower weeks ahead of time and peaked long before they should have. I had to deadhead and cut back plants to get them to reflower again so that they were back on track.
In the Greenhouse I had 14 tomato plants, 4 Sweet Pepper plants, and two Cucumber plants and I was rubbing my hands in expectation. While I had a reasonable crop of Tomatoes it was nowhere near what I imagined I'd get. My Sweet Peppers were little better. while one of my Cucumber failed to fruit at all!! There just wasn't enough Sun or real warmth to get things humming and of course the constant wall to wall cloud didn't help.

But strangely some of my herbaceous plants seemed to love the conditions and flowered their heads off. My roses seemed to love this strange Summer, putting on more growth than any other season. All my roses are repeat flowering and when they did so the flowers were fantastic.:D

But now when having an amble around the borders I can see Oriental Poppies starting to put ON new growth,as they normally do and starting to produce big buds ready for flowering,which they don't normally do. My Borage has usually finished by now but is still in flower. I've still got Alliums, Cambriam poppies, and other perennials looking as though they think it's mid Summer. So what a strange year it has been. Has anyone else had the same things happening to them??:D

 

A lot of the plants in our garden have grown and bloomed at unusual times of the year and by May some of our plants were almost three weeks ahead of normal. We were very worried that all the colour would have finished by the time we opened the garden.

Having two periods of drought (almost three months in the spring and only one day of rain in the last two months) has made things difficult for us and some of the plants are fighting to just stay alive - even with me using the sprinkler. I'm rather concerned about a 15ft, 25 year old, acer that is looking poorly.

Although it's considerably milder than normal most of the plants are starting to hibernate because of lack of water but the privet and laurel are growing like mad. So they are going to need an extra cut.

It's a bit too dark to do that at the moment

 

Definately a very strange year for me too. One of my favourites, tuberous begonias, are still in full flower and my trachycarpus palms are throwing up new spears as though its spring. On the veg plot the tomatoes have been mediocre and carrots and peas very disappointing, but to make up I've got some monster leeks and parsnips not to mention the 8 ft cabbage.

 

My Nicotiana didn't flower until 3 weeks ago, Sheal!! But it's the Oriental Poppies putting out new buds that's the real strange thing happening this year!:D