What did you do in your garden today?

[Sean Regan]

Did a bit more today.
In a couple of really shady places the lawn was a bit beyond recoverable. The canopy of this acer palmatum, shuts out a lot of light in the summer.

So I bought a couple of rolls of turf and replaced it. It's a bit yellowy, but it will green up and there's no rye grass in it.
The darker green area is where it's had some iron sulphate, to kill of small bits of moss and where I've been kneeling on it.
There's a new place opened up locally that makes fence panels and sells turf, the two rolls were only £6.

I just need some warmer weather and some sun for the lawn to recover and I'll try to stay off it. Although it will need scarifying in a month or so when it's dry.

I also bought a couple of Caladonia hebes.

We had a garden nursery voucher, that my wife received from a friend for her birthday in September!
So I used it to buy a couple of peace lilies for the hanging baskets in the hall, they're about the best for there, as there's not a lot of light.

 

[cntrlwagdnr]

Filled trenches with kitchen waste compost
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Then levelled with sieved garden compost
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Bridgwater beans are ready to go out, not had a frost for a week so keep em crossedView attachment 19174

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Reminds me of my childhood. I used to dig out and compost the trenches for the celery my Dad grew. One row for white, one row fro red. We left then below ground level so he could earth then up to blanch them. He grew some great celery.

 

[cntrlwagdnr]

Not doing much today. Gotta take care of a few things before our Hawaii trip. Spider spray round the house. Put the snow blower away so our niece can park her car in the garage while she cat and house sits. Talk to the insurance adjuster when he comes to look at the missing roof shingles after the windstorm the other day. Water the new tree in the front yard - had the inappropriate Maple taken out last week. House is only 8 years old and it was already 20ft and I had topped it once. Code requires 2 trees for new houses. (But once you move in you can do what you want). Builders go cheap - a lot of maples. Roots were almost at the foundations. It would have got to 45x30. Highly inappropriate for a neighborhood environment front lawn. Neighbor across from us had theirs taken out at the same time. He's putting a weeping Japanese Maple in next week. We had an Avondale Redbud planted. Will only get to 10ft, 12 at most. Very pretty and compact. Also gotta do something with my young passion flower plants in the garage that are starting to shoot - another caerulea and two maypops, one blue one white. Hoping for some fruit from from the maypops. Have a big caerulea in the back yard. Irrigation water won't be on before we go, so I don't have to go through and check the sprinklers. That's about it for outside today.

 

[Sean Regan]

Wasn't going to do much today, but in the end spent three hours in the garden.
Weeded the rockery. It's tightly packed with phlox, so nothing else can get a look in, except grass. That'll grow anywhere, except where you want it.

Tied up a few clematis which are just making their annual appearance.

Then washed down the exterior of the tea-house. It was a bit grubby as I'd jetwashed the paths around it last week. It's now into its thirty-fourth year and still now signs of rot.

I've opened the top vent and have taken the covers off the two vents in the bottom of the back wall. It gets very hot in there in direct sun. My jukeboxes don't like being too hot or too cold (they've still got their winter "thermals" on as it's still cold at night). and I don't like leaving either of the doors open during the day when I'm out, or cats could get in. I have got an extractor fan above the centre door which I turn on with a timer on hot days if I'm not in the garden.

Tidied the shed then gave everything a feed.

More blossom on the quinces.

I took the six bamboo canes away I had surrounding this little Acer Palnatum Taylor.

This was our "freebee" as I bought it on-line and it looked nothing like the one in the illustration, more "the runt of the litter" so I got a refund. The branches were all over the place and it needed the canes to push the branches in the direction I wanted as several crossed.
Now they have "grown into" their new positions and the tree is more ballanced and doing well.

These are our "Christmas roses" presents from a friend to my wife. They came in 3" pots for a table display.

The back two are from the Christmas before last and the front two from last Christmas. The back ones are a peach colour and flowered for most of last year. The front ones are pink, we hope they will do the same. I've put the newere ones on the patio steps with the original ones so they'll get more sun.

So I'm almost up to date.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

just going about to the various beds digging out weeds.

 

[zigs]

Tetters got us some big butts

So I built a concrete pad, hoiked some railway sleepers onto it and mounted the butts

Linked them up to the guttering, just need some rain to make sure it flows ok, then put some filters in and fix everything in place.

 

[marlingardener]

Ah, you and Tetters are folks after my own heart!
We have three fiberglass cubes that catch rainwater off the barn roof and garage roof. The rainwater is better for the hens to drink, and I carry water to the various gardens without paying for it (if you discount the cost of the guttering!).

 

[Esther Knapicius]

Spraying weed killer on these horrid yellow mat like flowers that spread about. an pulling them out from areas we can't spray in. Pain in the neck. better burn calories.

 

[Sean Regan]

This is the "stone" bird bath I bought new on e-Bay a few weeks ago. I don't know why they call them "stone" as they aren't , they're some sort of concrete mixture. I guess it's just a way of letting you know it's not naff plastic.

It was quite nice, but as it was grey it didn't match the York stone patio and paths.

So I've changed it.

Well actually I didn't.
I made up a sand/cement/yellow cement dye/SBR rubberiser mixture and painted it.
The SBR will keep the mixture adhering to it. It dried in minutes.

I'd always intended to do it, but hadn't got round to it as I'd run out of suitable fine sand.

 

[zigs]

Ah, you and Tetters are folks after my own heart!
We have three fiberglass cubes that catch rainwater off the barn roof and garage roof. The rainwater is better for the hens to drink, and I carry water to the various gardens without paying for it (if you discount the cost of the guttering!).

Looks good @marlingardener

I made another butt out of a trash can as well

 

[UrbanWild]

Just sat down for a break & a drink.

Blended up approximately 1500 eggshells into powder. This gets added directly to beds, containers, all soil mixes, and the compost bins.

Dug trenches in garden beds to receive spent grain this week. The robins moved in to hoover up worms.

Used hole saw bits to drill drainage holes in some ceramic pots. Covered the holes with a small section of landscape fabirc and am about to go mix some soil to fill them.

After that, I'll be planting some container stock I got in the last few days. Mainly salvias for the hummingbirds and some plants for hanging baskets for the same. I just swapped out sugar solution in the feeders but haven't seen any takers yet. Early ones have made it further North but the wave is coming.

Pulled more plants up from the dungeon (cellar). There are a LOT more! Then it's a waiting game to see who survived the dungeon treatment!

Will be planting tomatoes and other warm weather crops into flats. They're already full of soil so all I need to do is to sprinkle, cover, label, & water. I guess that means it's time to stretch out the hoses as well.

Well. I've been lazy long enough. Time to get back to work!

 

[Logan]

Pricked out some more marigold seedlings and potted on some lupins.

 

[marlingardener]

Zigs, we have two 55 gal. trash cans catching rainwater off the house roof. The cats think they are their cans to drink from, but I dip and carry to the potted herbs along the path to the barn. If you can't find the large fiberglass cubes, trash cans do just fine!
So many towns/cities in Texas go to water restrictions (limited watering of gardens and lawns) during the summer. We don't have that problem because we just let the lawn go dormant and use the rainwater for the gardens.
Congratulations to you and Tetters for being so sensible and so conserving!

 

[Diana77]

It's not a garden, but we only have a balcony. We bought our first plant, a philodendron, today. I won't keep it outside for now as the low temperature is in the low 40's. We have it inside right now, by the window. I'm excited to get my first plant and get my green fingers doing something. I was hoping to also pick up some lemongrass and lavender but they're not out yet. How did everyone's day go?

 

[Tess]

Today my friend and I built this garden box out of the scrap pieces of cedar planks we cut for other uses. It should help keep the slugs at bay, especially if we top the sides with copper tubing!