Gardening 2020

japan to thread

(UK question). Hoping to buy a plant for a friend who is having a shit time of it. I'd normally buy house plants as gifts but I'm thinking something more garden-y. I know she has yellow lupins and some salvias. Any ideas? In an ideal world, it would be something that could be delivered sooner rather than later (I'd looked on Sarah Raven but everything I'd clicked on was "Delivery in July").

There's a good web-thingy here to choose plants by garden type/season/colour/whatnot: https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/search-form

I love digitalis, which blooms about now, and passion flower which is ravishing in a nice weird way, and blooms mid-late summer. Some alliums are late summer bloomers too.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0255/9760/8011/products/52629-00-BAKIE_20200213163555_960x960_crop_center.jpg

Something volunteered out back and we let it go for a while to ID it, and now we have a big sunflower partly blocking our walkway from the house to the carport. The bees are digging it.

Xpost - Echinacea too

Thanks Chuck. Went with an echinacea in the end.

For the first time in months, the windowsills only have houseplants rather than pots and pots of seedlings. Is there anything still worth planting? (UK)

Good time for salads and herbs, small tomato plants…

Have a load of squash planted in the garden (and next door's garden) - far many than there is room for. I'm finding it fascinating to see them almost visibly reach for things to climb.

Probably shouldn't have put a Tromboncino in the raised beds. It's the size of a medium child with flailing arms.

I don’t know if this is gardening per se, but has anyone else (in the UK specifically, but maybe it extends to other countries?) noticed an EXTRAORDINARY crop of acorns this year?

Like, not just that there are an exceptionally large amount of them, but they are also enormous? I swear I found an acorn yesterday that was nearly 2” long and shaped like a rocket ship. I can’t remember ever seeing acorns of this size before!

There are definitely plenty this year! We've got a few young oak trees hanging over our back fence and cutting the grass is lethal.

From what I understand, oak trees have 'mast' years, where they produce a bumper crop - the reasons for which are poorly understood.

Ah, thank you for the word / explanation. I looked it up and it makes sense now:

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2017/10/autumn-is-back/

Seems like a supersaturation of acorns is generated by specific weather conditions, and the benefit is that there is too much mast produced for animals to eat all of them - so in certain years the trees all go crazy together.