What did you do in your garden today?

[Black_Thumb]

Dead-headed these rhodos this morning. It's a chore I like to get done before it's possible to damage the new shoots when they appear.
Didn't have time to clear up the fallen blooms afterwards as it started raining.
It's "tennis time" now on TV. Men's Final

Looks fantastic, Sean! Well done!!

 

[Black_Thumb]

These are the two trees that had branches hanging down to the ground that I had to trim. It's looking much better now, and I don't have to worry about getting knocked off my lawnmower when I go under them. LOL Now I just need to figure out how to rescue the grass along the edges of my driveway.

 

[Sean Regan]

These are the two trees that had branches hanging down to the ground that I had to trim. It's looking much better now, and I don't have to worry about getting knocked off my lawnmower when I go under them. LOL Now I just need to figure out how to rescue the grass along the edges of my driveway.

I have a similar problem in my small garden, where the lawn meets the path. This strip will dry out quicker than the rest of the lawn as heat will be transferred to it from any adjacent paved or tarmaced area. So when I do any watering I make sure this strip gets more than the rest.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

We are planning to do some landscaping behind our garage. It's too difficult to mow due to the angle of the yard. My mower would roll over.

I used to have an embankment like that to do. I would put a bit of tape round the controls of the hover mower so it ran continuously and tie a rope to the handle, then stand at the top of the slope swinging it from side to side in increasing arcs as I let the rope out. Bit leary, but it worked.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Thank you, Oliver! We have some moss on the lawn, it is very stubborn. Good luck with improving yours

Posting made me look at it a bit more critically, so I spent a while yesterday cutting out some ornamental daisies that someone introduced and now seed themselves everywhere. They roseate, but I have an old German army issue first world war clasp knife that does it admirably. I have filled the holes with a bit of compost mixed with some grass seed and put a strip of old aviary wire over them to stop the badger and birds digging them up.

The standard treatment for moss is one of the iron chlorides, but it leaves it dead and black in the grass and looks horrid. I bought an electric scarifier and rake that was on offer, and the rake function on that works well on it, but when I pick it up it seems it will sit in a black bag for at least a couple of years without breaking down much at all. I have taken to digging a deep trench, putting it in the bottom, treading it down flat, then a layer of compost, a thin layer of earth, and plant runner beans on it. It should at least give me a moist, draining under layer, and next year I will put something that doesn't need me to disturb the ground too deeply so it gets a really good chance to decompose. I suppose ultimately I am making my own peat

 

[Sean Regan]

I used to have an embankment like that to do. I would put a bit of tape round the controls of the hover mower so it ran continuously and tie a rope to the handle, then stand at the top of the slope swinging it from side to side in increasing arcs as I let the rope out. Bit leary, but it worked.

We've a few steep slopes above the ditches to the side and across the fairways of my golf club. They use hover mowers on a rope to tackle these.

 

[Black_Thumb]

I used to have an embankment like that to do. I would put a bit of tape round the controls of the hover mower so it ran continuously and tie a rope to the handle, then stand at the top of the slope swinging it from side to side in increasing arcs as I let the rope out. Bit leary, but it worked.

I don't have a push mower though. I have a tractor. I'm just going to dig it up and terrace that area so I don't have to deal with trying to mow it. It'll also help with rain run-off as it all runs down that hill right to my garage, and I've had some water intrusion into the garage as a result. I'm digging a small trench right along the back of the garage and putting flashing on it to create a ground level gutter for the water to drain properly. It's always something. LOL

 

[Sean Regan]

Pretty much up to date with the garden, the lawn just needed a mow.

The bit of patching I did with the grass seed I "cooked," seems to be taking, I've more "on the boil."

Got round to doing a job I'd been putting off for...years.

Down the side of our French windows were three cables (all different colours) one from the aerial on the roof, one for the cable TV and another that supplies the coach light next to the trellis. They looked very unsightly. So I went out and bought some conduit.

I could only get white from my local electrical supplier, if i'd wanted black,it'd mean a ten mile round trip to another supplier and I wasn't doing that, (filled up with petrol this morning on my way to do the shopping, a tank-full cost me seventy-six quid). So settled for white. I positioned it next to the frame of the French windows, so it doesn't notice so much. This stuff is brilliant. On hard surfaces it will stick on, but the back is also drilled for screws. The top just clips on. I put some clear silicone at each end where the cables enter. Only took me an hour and a fiver well spent.

 

[Sean Regan]

Played golf this morning, but came off after 7 holes as it was chucking it down. Rained even heavier this afternoon, so no gardening.
When I was in the kitchen I noticed 'arry up by the side door of the garage. By the time I found my camera and made my way ro the French windows, he must have reached the the top of the steps down to the patio next to the garage and turned right (to avoid a puddle) and was at the top of the steps between the two planters, ready to make his way to the dining room. This was about ten to nine, so he must have been on patrol down the bottom of the garden, before having his chicken dinner.

Looking a bit like Stewart Granger with his grey side whiskers.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Planted some tomatoes that were overcrowding the greenhouse outside, they may or may not be any good, but they had to go. Picked a small pudding bowl full of strawberries, my aviary wire construction is keeping the birds off. Fixed a gutter so I could water the tomatoes under my cloche improvised from the plastic from the aviary roof without having to take it all apart.

 

[Black_Thumb]

It was a sad day for gardening at my house today. I pulled up the radishes in hopes that they'd grown well because one other one I pulled up was fantastic. Well, ALL of the rest failed. I also had to pull up the cilantro as well. The cucumbers we planted seem to be doing quite well (no picture at the moment). I also planted a raised bed planter full of flowers for pollinators (butterflies and hummingbirds, mostly) and that was a dismal failure. Nothing grew but weeds. So, my wife dug up the entire planter (ten feet long by three feet wide) and we are going to start over with all new flowers for pollinators.

My Tiger Lilies are opening up and I'm so excited!! They are so very beautiful. We also had some other flowers pop up that are beautiful. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but when we moved into our new home six months ago, we started doing some digging and planting. I found scores of bulbs in the ground as we were working on amending the soil and trying to plant some things of our own. We had no idea all these bulbs were in the ground. So, I gathered up a huge bag full of them and started planting them. This is the first one to bloom:

And here are some other flowers we've planted as well:

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Blackthumb. I had a packet of 'Blue wildflowers for pollinators' given me, I planted a nice curved row, so I know where they are coming up, but a lot of them are the sort of thing I would call "weeds", the rest look like rather common stuff like cornflowers and borage.

I wish my 'found' bulbs were like that, the same happened to me at our last house and I found I had planted a large patch of pheasant's eye daffodils, nice to cut for in the house for a couple of weeks each Spring, but nothing like your collection! This house I put them in some spare troughs I had and we got three troughs of paper-white daffs to put on the patio, they smelled nice, I am guessing people got them in gift pots and planted them out.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

There is a bit at the end of our pond which all the surrounding lawn slopes down to and which always floods in heavy rain, with a stepping stone in the grass in the middle of the flooded area. Today I lifted the stepping stone and dug out a hole about a foot square and a bit over a foot deep, then filled it with all the larger pieces of sintered clay, terracotta, from where I have been putting it in the incinerator. I am hoping it will be enough to act as a soak away. We are on quite heavy clay and if I dug a hole that size almost anywhere in the winter it would fill with several inches of water.
Planted out a couple more tomato plants, it is getting possible to walk through the greenhouse again, they will keep growing.
Mowing the front grass, I won't dignify it with 'lawn' when a post lady turned up with a T shirt for the missus, I took it and she thanked me for the plants, apparently she had a couple of tomato plants the other weekend when I put them out on the drive. "I like to grow things you can eat so the children see where they come from" she said. That was a nice feeling.

 

[Sean Regan]

///
Mowing the front grass, I won't dignify it with 'lawn' when a post lady turned up with a T shirt for the missus, I took it and she thanked me for the plants, apparently she had a couple of tomato plants the other weekend when I put them out on the drive. "I like to grow things you can eat so the children see where they come from" she said. That was a nice feeling.

I'd take them to Waitrose.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I'd take them to Waitrose.

We tried, but they didn't even want them, let alone give us anything for them.