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A SUMMER WITHOUT SUN

© Michael Campbell

As July reaches the halfway mark there is still no sign of summer weather, or at least what passes for summer weather in these parts. While June produced one of the wettest months on record, July started a little more on the dry side but still no sunshine. The result of this weather is a catastrophe as far as summer flowering plants are concerned, especially hanging baskets and containers. Temperatures have kept on the low side with the wind in the north for the past month. While surfinias and petunias have made lots of growth, they need sunshine to open the flowers. One basket in particular with tumbelina petunias is covered with flowers, but they refuse to open without sunshine or at least a rise in temperature. Cuttings that were potted up and stood outside in May have refused to grow, and indeed some of them have rotted and died off with all the rain. Peat-based composts have proved to be a disaster in the wet conditions and the containers with water-holding granules in anticipation of dry warm weather are now just a wet soggy mess. Sometimes Mother Nature refuses to accommodate our newfangled gadgets and ideas in the garden.

The slugs and snails are also having a field day. With the wet weather and the absence of the thrush (birds that feed on snails) in recent times, they have increased tenfold and are devouring everything in sight. A foray into the garden after dark produces a constant crunch underfoot as it is almost impossible not to walk on the blighters. Sweet pea plants that I had put along the fence at the back of the potting shed were completely demolished in spite of my best efforts. A large plant of clematis 'Nelly Moser' covering part of the same fence to a height of seven feet, is now just a skeleton of branches, snails having scoffed all the leaves. I don't think that I will get a second flush of bloom in September, as I usually do from this plant. A plant of clematis 'Hagley Hybrid' planted at the end of the potting shed seems to have avoided the onslaught and is flowering to perfection, complete with all its foliage. Hostas have grown to huge proportions and look like something that had spent a week on a firing range with all the holes in the leaves.

Cardiocrinium Giganteum - a favorite with slugs and snails in normal conditions, it's been completely demolished, in spite of the use of slug pellets, sharp grit, liquid slug bait, and a nightly foray into the garden with a torch and bucket. When these blighters decide they are going to eat something, that is exactly what they do. They even climbed up a bonsai tree, went out onto a branch until they were over the desired plant, and then dropped unto the leaves and munched away contentedly. This was to avoid the circle of sharp grit and a ring of slug pellets. I wonder if they had planned an escape route before I caught them in the act.

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