8 August 2026 — In the rows
The first poppies are cracking open.
Bright orange, peach, creamy yellow and pastel pink — the first poppies have started cracking open this week, and they are worth the eleven months of waiting. The sweet peas keep climbing the trellis with the first flowers appearing; we use both the flowers and the foliage in our bouquets, and the scent gets into everything.
We have just finished weeding the ranunculus bed and applying Wildsoil fermented mulch, to keep the weeds at bay and add a boost of nutrients. It is slow work on your knees, and the sort of thing that pays you back in November rather than this week. Winged everlastings, calendula and feverfew are all still in bloom.
And in the greenhouse we have started sowing our first succession of warm-season flowers — sunflowers and cosmos. Sowing summer while spring is only just arriving is the strange arithmetic of a cutting garden: you are always working two seasons ahead of the one you are standing in.
