Kitchen Garden Forum

Just measured our teasels (see above): the tallest measures 2.70m or 9 feet! and they are just starting to flower.

In contrast, our sunflowers which usually go up to 10 or 11 feet are quite short this year because of the earlier lack of rain but are flowering now, much earlier than usual. Well, you win some, you lose some.

While feeding the ducks and chickens today, I was delighted to see the insect life the teazles attract, bumbles, butterflys and varius beetles too enjoying the pink rings of tiny flowers climbing the teazles, they really are a nature magnet.

Gladioli all over where I left some poor stems to fruit and die last year.

Peter, not sure of your connection here, are teazles a member of the iris family or you got gladioli where your teazles fell ?

Neither, they were just a surprise arrival in my plot.

We get little gladioli coming up from the tiny bulbils that develop on the main bulb. They look just like grass but when the eventually flower they all seem to revert to salmon pink! Have you had any flowers Peter?

Only from the single survivor of last years bulbs, as you say these are like grass. They are everywhere along the front of one plot across the path from where last years were planted as a three foot block. I reckon the seeds got across the path and I must have cultivated them further when raking. A lot also in the block as well.