I’m going through a bit of flower phase. I currently have 5 vases of flowers in various rooms of my house. In fact there are probably more flowers in my house than in my garden at the moment, but there are still some things worth noticing outside.
For me Spring flowers are the flowers of my edible plants in my kitchen garden. There are a few exceptions, my favourite garden flowers – Cosmos, and the things that my children begged me to buy.
But most of the flowers in my garden at this time of the year are the ones that hint of fruit to come.
Most impressive are the passionfruit flowers, although this particular vine has steadfastly refused to follow these with fruit since I planted it a few years ago. Personally I doubt the ‘self fertilising’ claim on the plants label and will purchase another plant to test this theory.
There are the less flamboyant but no less exciting flowers of the potato that tell me that there is (or should be) some under soil action happening and that I can start harvesting new potatoes pretty soon.
But my favourite flowers at Springtime are those of my bean plants. Not only are the flowers pretty but their arrival means I can start watching beans grow and grow.
Most of these would be summer flowers in our garden, We still have penstemon flowers at the moment. Just a little query – which way do your runner beans stems wind,
Like Sue those would be summer flowers in my garden. And those runner beans are so beautiful.
They are lovely aren’t they. They will flower all summer here too but we’ve had a warm Spring so we are getting to enjoy them early here.
In regards to your comment about passionfruit, I have never had problems with my single $2 passionfruit plant fruiting. In fact we had 7 yrs of ongoing fruiting, from just one plant. Our biggest crop 35 kgs. We have since ripped her out, and replaced with new plants from the seeds of the fruit. Our 2 yr old plants are now covered in hundreds of passionfruit and we don’t do anything special to the vines. I am constantly growing and giving away new plants as I want others to enjoy not only the stunning flowers, but the incredible fruit.
And yes I agree that some of the best flowers are from the edible plants. I love your photos.
That is fab, 35kg is a really good haul. Where are you and can I have some seeds?
Welcome back, you’ve been missed.
I only have one passionfruit plant and it’s only in its second year so last year it didn’t have a lot of flowers at all. But I did get out my little paintbrush to transfer pollen from one flower to the other. I didn’t get a lot of fruit but it was a very young plant so I didn’t have great expectations. This year it has a heap of flowers so the paintbrush is being wielded again and hopefully will do the job. Fingers crossed!
Thanks Nina – much appreciated. I will try the paintbrush method but I was hoping the bees would do that for me, unfortunately I tend towards laziness in these matters.