From the Allotment

Our allotment gardener has sent some more pictures from her patch.  And an intriguing bunch they are…

1  Strawberries vs Leafcutter Bees

It looks as though the strawberries (the sweet little wild alpine type) aren’t too bothered by the bees’ depredations.  Isn’t it marvellous how the bees manage those perfect geometrical circles?  Even when I was at school, I could barely do that with a compass and protractor….

Our gardener has a bee hotel, with quite a few of the holes now filled with discs of strawberry leaf and, hopefully, bee larvae.

2  Digitalis ‘John Innes Tetra’

This is a lovely little foxglove, a real shorty and a real sweetie, not nearly as well known as it ought to be.

It’s a hy­brid be­tween D. lanata and D. gran­di­flora. Bred in the 1920s at the John Innes Hor­ti­cul­tural In­sti­tute in Sur­rey – later the John Innes Cen­tre in Nor­wich, and the people who invented the recipes for John Innes composts, among many other things – it has glossy, spear-shaped leaves and 2ft-tall spires of orange-yel­low flowers.  Unusually for a hybrid, it comes very true from seed.

I have a certain parental investment in this plant because it, and its friends out of shot, were grown from seed from my own plants.  I’m assured that they’re all doing very well…

3  Tomatoes ‘Sweet Million’, with marigolds

The weather has been murder for plants like tomatoes – stifling hot and then freezing cold.  But these look to have shrugged all that off, and are now loving the current warm and humid conditions.  Our gardener, naturally, is waiting with bated breath for the first bite…

Thanks for sharing!