What did you do in your garden today?

[Neno Baylov]

Two roses from cuttings. Madame Anisette - Kordes, David Austin Gertrude Jekyll.

 

[Sean Regan]

Mowed both lawns this afternoon.

The grass is recovering well,. still one or two small moss patches,. but gave them a dose of iron sulphate, "to help them on their way."

As it wasn't too warm decided to paint the back of the security fence. The door didn't need doing. You can see the long trunk of the wisteria that grows from the little bed near the corner of the garage, along the top of the fence and onto pergola on the back of the house. The main part of this wisteria I grew over the pergola on the side of the garage, but it died. What's left is a couple of branches from this trunk and a few from a bit that self rooted from the part that died, near the garage side door.

The door looks rectangular here, that's how this replacement one started life a couple of years ago.

But I had to shape the top as it was replacing one with an arched top I'd bought eighteen years ago and built the fence around it.
This side doesn't get the weather.

The wisteria in the bed on the right hand side, in the photo before this one, is the one that grows up and over the fence and along the side of the house. When it has blooms, they are pink, but it doesn't get much sun. You can train wisterias to grow any way you want them to.

I moved the second trail camera....again!
It wasn't getting a good field of vision where it was. That was my fault as I put it where the short lead from the adapter could reach it. from a bank of sockets on the wall in the garage behind it.

To put it where it is now, I had to put another socket in the garage roof void. and connect that up to the garage lighting supply.

It's remarkable how quickly these acers have filled out in a couple of days. I'll leave them a week and then shape them a bit, the big one needs it more than this one.

The first of the azaleas are coming out, it's always the red ones.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Two roses from cuttings. Madame Anisette - Kordes, David Austin Gertrude Jekyll. View attachment 89101View attachment 89102View attachment 89103View attachment 89104

They look happy and healthy, I always enjoy propagating.

 

[KGun12]

@Sean Regan I love that dark red-ish fence! It's too bad you had to replace that rounded door, it has so much character - i love that too haha (not to say your current door isn't nice as well!)
Are those japanese maple? (I'm so new to this haha I know nothing except how to cook)

 

[Sean Regan]

@Sean Regan I love that dark red-ish fence! It's too bad you had to replace that rounded door, it has so much character - i love that too haha (not to say your current door isn't nice as well!)
Are those japanese maple? (I'm so new to this haha I know nothing except how to cook)

Thanks fior the kind words.
The two acers are palmatums. The large one we've had since 1985 and the other fronm around 2000.

The second photo was of the original door I found in B & Q and built the fence around it.

Although the door has a rounded top, the frame isn't arched. Two 3" X 2" beams run between the house and the garage at the height of the top pf the featherboarding. I made a curved "arch" over the door with some plywood.

When the door needed replacing two years ago I couldn't get an arched door, we were in the middle of Covid and I had to order it by phone. so I had to make one out of rectangular one.

The plastic pipe was for me to draw around to get the right curvature and cut out with a jigsaw.

This is as it is now. I had to make add on false door pillars either side of the door an inch thick as it was twice as thick as the original door and then reposition the arch.

 

[Black_Thumb]

I planted some Tiger Lillies a few weeks back. They are doing quite well, me thinks!!

 

[Sean Regan]

Just a bit of housekeeping this afternoon as it was golf in the morning.
Removed the pots from the patio steps and cleaned the French window frames and gave the steps a good brush down.
I've taken the three bowls of primroses away as they were past their best. I'll plant them out in the borders tomorrow. We had a good run with them as they flowered for seven months.

It left just an azalea, a miniature rose and a hebe. So I've brought down two of the peonies I potted up from a clump which was always hidden in the border behind the shed. Something else my wife can see from her chair in the lounge.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I planted okra seed, yellow squash seed, courgette seed and 20 more solo cups of starts from tomato , peppers and eggplant. I need cucumbers and I am done.

 

[Sean Regan]

Today, finally, a firm came in and cut ten feet off the top next door's trees. This will give our garden more light. The tops were leaning about five feet over our garden. I get fed up with clearing the catkins that fall in our garden in the spring and summer and the leaves in the autumn. Anyway, things should improve. They left quite a few lower spindly branches hanging over above the fence, but I was able to remove them with my telescopic Barnel pruner. I'll prune off more back to the fence line as they grow.

Potted out the twelve primroses that had been in the bowl shaped tubs on the patio steps. Hard to find spaces for them. So six went either side of the pagoda the rest in the long border betweeen the cyclamen.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

@Sean Regan I love that dark red-ish fence! It's too bad you had to replace that rounded door, it has so much character - i love that too haha (not to say your current door isn't nice as well!)
Are those japanese maple? (I'm so new to this haha I know nothing except how to cook)

What do you mean "except"? My missus won't let me cook most of the time, it is often a case of 'I think it tastes great, no-one else does'.
Sean is very handy and very neat. That trick with the blue MDPE pipe is a useful one. I am not sure what they use in other countries, but it is the modern underground water pipe, and pretty tough. If you cut the pipe into short lengths, bore holes in two planks and stick the ends of the pipe through it makes a great support for a polythene tunnel or protective netting, no corners or sharp edges.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Potted out the twelve primroses that had been in the bowl shaped tubs on the patio steps. Hard to find spaces for them. So six went either side of the pagoda the rest in the long border betweeen the cyclamen.

We have a large oak at the end of the garden. Since I got rid of the brambles under it the cyclamen that were there have taken off big time. They must have been there an age, I dug one up accidentally when we first came and wondered what it was, it looked like a cyclamen tuber, but it was about nine inches across! Primroses are everywhere, very pretty in the Spring around the edges of the lawn, but they are also established everywhere there is a crack, greenhouse base, paths, edging, you name it.

I put up a shelf in the greenhouse and re-arranged all the pots and seed trays to get everything in and still be able to work. Weeded a tray of about fifty pots, weeded extensively in the greenhouse, then separated and potted on chard seedlings. Mowed the front lawn, I'll do around the back in a bit, but I also want to rearrange my water buts before it rains, they are almost empty where I have been using them in the greenhouse. Cup of tea, then I will go and decide what comes first.

 

[Sean Regan]

What do you mean "except"? My missus won't let me cook most of the time, it is often a case of 'I think it tastes great, no-one else does'.
Sean is very handy and very neat. That trick with the blue MDPE pipe is a useful one. I am not sure what they use in other countries, but it is the modern underground water pipe, and pretty tough. If you cut the pipe into short lengths, bore holes in two planks and stick the ends of the pipe through it makes a great support for a polythene tunnel or protective netting, no corners or sharp edges.

Yes that alkathene pipe has many uses.

It supplies water from a tap below our kitchen window along the bottom of the fence, the concrete threshold of the door, into the garage and to the basin and hot water heater in the room in the back of the garage and to my lawn sprinklers valve and the tap on the side of the shed.

Another length goes from the base of the shed along the length of the side fence about 8" below the level of the soil and into our tea-house base. It houses the electrical cables from the small consumer unit on the back wall of the shed, for all the functions in the teahouse. Anyone would be hard pushed to cut though it with a spade.

The koi pool we had filled with 20 tonnes of fine hardcore, has loose laid flags on top of it. I cemented in the small gap between them and the perimeter rocks. I sank six inch lengths of this pipe every few feet in this filler, as drain holes.

Mostly, any rain drains quickly between the flags and sinks into the hardcore. Five feet below the flags is the concrete screed base of the former koi pool, but I drilled lots of 1" holes through it for water to drain into the sandy subsoil.
Whenever it rains, any that falls on these flags quickly disappears, The drain holes I made probably don't get used much, but "periodicaly" I stick a cane down them to make sure they stay clear.

 

[Black_Thumb]

What a battle. Today, on hands and knees, I clamored around the yard digging out dandelions by hand again. I got a big container full and it doesn't even look like I made a dent. I did lay down some weed and feed about two weeks ago but there is no indication that it's working. A large number of the "lions" went to seed and so I quickly got those up and then went after the really large dandelions with roots that seemed to go all the way to China.

I also cut my grass after pulling some dandelions. I really enjoy cutting my grass! I just put on my earbuds, covered by Mickey Mouse style hearing protectors, and listen to music or something. The yard takes just under two hours to mow.

I watered the hummingbird/butterfly habitat that we're attempting to grow as well. The stupid Bermuda grass keeps coming back with a vengeance so I was in there pulling that out as well. I hate that stuff. I think it's going to take me a couple of years to get this yard whipped into shape but I'm working on it!

 

[Sean Regan]

I'm pleased with the progress of the six roses in tubs in "the alley of shame" (the drive along the side of our house). These are the ones my wife doesn't particularly like, or did not perform well enough last year to deserve a place on either of the patios. There's also two Mayleen clematis. I like this to cover just the trellis on top of the fence to give the roses more light.

I've reduced the number of roses in tubs on the patio in front of the French windows to four, increasing those on the new patio to twelve. I'm hoping that now there's more space we might get the garden chairs I bought two years ago out of the garage and have yet to use, for my wife to actually sit out on the patio on a few warm days, if she feels up to it. But it might not happen.

 

[Neno Baylov]

Weather was bad, I had to cut some of the branches of peach trees affected by the cold.