What did you do in your garden today?

[Esther Knapicius]

yesterday in my walk about pulled a few weeds, got a bunch of pansies potted them up in 3 pots, one on the front stoop, one corner sidewalk and one hung by the mail box. Purple, to contrast the yellow about.

 

[Sean Regan]

Watered our sambucus and our mimosa. Both these are in large tubs in which they've been for years, so the roots are pretty solid. At this time of the year I use a 10cm metal rod to drive half a dozen deep holes into the root ball a few inches away from the rim of the tub. It meets quite a bit of resistance from the compacted roots. But this ensures that when I water them the water doesn't drain around the outside of the root ball and out the bottom of the tub.

I topped up the two tree azalea tubs with some ericaceous compost and added more around the roots of the two acer palmatums. Then gave everything a good water.
Then cleaned the car and the front door of our house.

 

[DrMike27]

Beans and cukes are flowering already. My eggplant has about 14 fruits on it right now (I have no idea what I'm going to do with these), and this is my biggest/only producer directly in the ground. Flowers seem to do ok in the Casa Grande series soil here, but most non-citrus fruits and veggies hate it (mostly clay/hard). Since I've been in the DE mood, I decided to just put it all around every perimeter of my house/yard/garden beds. I want to make sure no ant/aphid survives.

Garden beans

Cucumbers

Eggplants

DE around every border

 

[Andrew_]

I knocked some more of the wall down. Reckon I'm 30% through it. Running out of space to store bricks and cement. Need a skip

I ordered a few bags of top soil to fill in the holes left by the pillars. Only 4 weeks delivery time... So a bit of a wait there.

I cleaned the pond filters too. Planted a few things. Tomorrow will probs clean up the border.

 

[Sean Regan]

I 'spose you could call it working, I gave everything a bit of a water. I've one of these Hoselock retractable hose reels on the back wall of the house, its fine for doing the front garden and washing the car.
It connects to an outside tap above the kitchen drain, but it's a bind to use on the far end of the back garden. All that unwinding and rewinding. I have a tap on the side of the shed, which I use for filling watering cans. So I've just ordered another Hoselock wall mounted reel, which I'll fix to the front of the shed, so you can't see it from the lounge windows.

I guess I'm looking for things to do. I use the polystyrene boxes in which the chilled and frozen food arrives, that my wife orders on line, to store stuff.

I was irritated that I couldn't get two rows of boxes on top of the racking and under this wall unit. So I emptied it of paint and a lot of other stuff and took it off the wall and moved the brackets up a few inches. I've the corner one to the left to do tomorrow.

Garden's doing fine. This smaller palmatum is almost completely in leaf.

First of the "plague of bluebells."

 

[Sean Regan]

I raised up the other cupboard in the garage, the one in the corner, by 4".
This would if not under the present self-isolation circumstances, have seemed necessary, even for me.

But it does allow me to have two rows of polystyrene boxes on top of the racking and still leave some space on top of the cupboards for "other stuff." These boxes are excellent for storage as they keep the damp out, as the garage being a simple concrete post and panel with an asbestos roof is quite drafty.

I'm very pleased with the £7.99 rhodos I bought from Aldi. They look quite at home in the space that originally featured an azalea that died.

They wiil probably all be pink like this one that is already starting to flower.

I've dumped the blueberry bush we bought last year, we had in this ceramic pot as it didn't survive the winter.

So I promoted one of the roses in plastic tubs we have against the fence to the side of our drive. It is a patio rose called "Peachy." but it was only a cheap one.
It originally lost its place on the patio when the five bare root roses we got from David Austin arrived in November.

Our azalea "hedge" in the front garden will have a really good showing of blooms this year. The number tends to go up and down a bit each year.
This is the one my wife bought thirty years ago for 50p in the reduced to clear bin on a stall on Altrincham Market. She also managed to split the stem when she brought it home on the bus in one of several carrier bags of shopping she was carrying (I was at work). We wrapped the stem in some Sellotape and it survived.
I've layered it several times over the years.

It won't be long before it's in bloom. But it will still be some time before our "lollypop acer" is in leaf, or the grass under the azaleas recovers.

We've never been able to identify it. Nor could the owner of the local nursery we often visited, whose stall it was, on the market.

The lawn is finally responding to feeding and regular watering.

I confess to taking a lot of photos in the garden, but it's the only way my wife can often see, the parts not visible from her chair in the lounge.

 

[SHAKEnBLAKE]

Built a platform and installed a rain barrel next to our new raised beds. The neighbors threw out a bunk bed so I used the drawers and panels to cover the posts below the platform.

 

[Sean Regan]

Built a platform and installed a rain barrel next to our new raised beds. The neighbors threw out a bunk bed so I used the drawers and panels to cover the posts below the platform.

View attachment 63061

Looking good. It's great when you can find something someone is chucking out, that is exactly what you need.

I was going to install a rain barrel, but the waste from the bathroom baisin and shower, joins the downpipe from the roof gutter before entering the drain. The only other option is the downpipe from the gutter on our small kitchen extension.

 

[roadrunner]

I planted a Vitex Chaste tree and I got tons of Sunflower seedlings needing to be placed all around my yard.

 

[Sean Regan]

"Looking for something to do," I sorted out the solar lights.

These (taken last year)

Ours are just the cheap ones, glass globes on steel tubes.

I keep them in polystyrene boxes during the winter having taken out the batteries. But despite giving the contacts a spray with switch cleaner before they go away. They still need a bit of "fettling" to get them working. On a few I have to use bits of copper wire, to connect the positive terminals of the battery.

One of the problems is that they leak. So stuff rusts inside. I run a band of black insulating tape around and over the join between the globe and metal cup it sits in, where rain water running off the globe can get inside.
Anyway, job done. We only use nine of them. So I've a few spares.

 

[Rene61]

I thought I'd start a new thread that can be continuously updated by everyone any day of the year. We have people on the forum from all around the world, so there is always somebody doing something with their garden. I think it would be nice to check in and see what our members have done. So whether you've been busy today or busy three months from today, here's the question... What did you do in your garden today?


I spent today preparing my vegetable garden. I had tons of weeds to pull. There's some kind of invasive grass that pops up in there, along with creeping charlie, so I pulled as much as I could find. I can start planting in about four weeks, so it's nice to have it all ready for the season! If I remember right, peas seeds can be planted before the average last frost date, so I might plant them soon. As some of you may know, growing fruits and vegetables is only a small hobby for me. I'm not into it as much as other forum members. I grow peas for my pond fish, as well as couple of tomato plants, pumpkins for decoration, strawberries, a blueberry bush, and a peach tree. I'm also trying lettuce this year. Tomorrow, I may add a few native plants to the outside edges of my vegetable garden so it looks a little more showy throughout the season.

It was too wet to do anything today, but tomorrow, I will be digging clay.

 

[Sean Regan]

I was able to cut away a small strip of turf with roots about two to three inches wide from this edge where it had grown over the flags.

I used it to patch this area under this acer palmatum. It's always a problem as the lack of sunlighht getting through it encourages moss. I removed the moss and banged down the bits of turf with my lump hammer. Then banged in a few golf tees to stop the birds from pulling them up. It looks a bit of a mess, but it will soon blend in.

You could buy a roll of turf for patching lawns, but the grass is never the same and will show even years later.....Well you'll know even if no one else notices.

It's getting quite warm now.

The fifteen roses collected over the years we put in ceramic pots on our two patios, can get very warm and dry out quite quickly.

They sit on plastic pot movers, where I drilled a hole in the bottom to let out surplus water when it rains a lot in the winter.
Today as I do every yeay, I put a dab of silicone over each hole so the pot mover can retain about half an inch of water. This will either be drawn up into the pot if it's a bit dry or evaporate if it isn't.
In the autumn I remove the silicone.

 

[Giri]

The trees were black where the bark was wet, but the grass was dry underfoot.
It was my first chance to cut the grass after a period of wet and cloudy weather, and I made my way down the steep grassy zig-zag path in my grippiest footwear and Carharts dungarees. (I play the banjo).
It´s taken me two years to realise that the balance of the strimmer was wrong, mainly perhaps because I usually pay someone to use it. I moved the pivot forwards and suddenly the head was floating weightless above the ground — duh!

Some lovely roses along the path, a few nispera at the top of the tree have turned yellow, the lemon tree has blossom, newly forming fruit and ripe lemons simultaneously —? The almonds are nearly splitting open, looks like a good crop. The walnuts and chestnuts are still stark and bare, reminding me of the poem which used to ease the dread of a Yorkshire winter for me :-


Autumn.

I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive.
Winter, the Paragon of Art, which kills all forms of life and feeling,
Save what is pure -- and will survive.

Roy Campbell.


Half way down the garden is a public footpath which cuts the garden in half, and further down still, the lower garden is a fair bit wilder than the upper. Cutting the grass is no mere nod to tidiness, we don´t do ¨tidy¨ much here, but when the heat comes, the grass dries and allows the fire to run up the mountain a lot quicker than I can. If it is lying flat the fire´s progress is considerably slower.
The strimmer started first pull on the cord, and I weighed in to the two-feet tall grass and weeds, leaving a couple of unidentified bushes to do their thing, and I got the first terrace cut with a drop of fuel to spare. There´s a couple of cherry trees, but the frequent depredations of the wild boar make it impossible to grow a crop there. The terrace below, with avocados feijoa and citrus, plus the ruin of the first habitation here, hundreds of years old, will have to wait for another day. I´m twenty years older than the guy who usually does it, and I still have to climb back up to the house.

 

[Andrew_]

I reinforced my pond net today as woke up to a video of this fella in my garden...

 

[wal3]

Cleaning, clearing our garden area pulling weeds.