What did you do in your garden today?

[Oliver Buckle]

Four tomatoes progressed from the window sill to large pots (buckets) in the greenhouse. Sowed some later tomatoes, watered in greenhouse. Dug out some odd bits of root sending up leaves where I moved the rhubarb, faffed and tidied a bit.

 

[Trang]

Hey I just did my daily routine watering my plants,

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Hey I just did my daily routine watering my plants,

India and England, here the weather watered my plants for me, there has to be some advantage to April showers

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Don Perry]

I made raised bed #5 today along with mowing my 2 acre lawn. I watered early . My plants are not looking very happy. Look stressed. I filled 4 beds with 2 year old "Dyno Dirt" and I think it is still too hot for veggies.

Welcome, Trang. It's a fine madness we have here.

 

[Black_Thumb]

My wife and I installed six 4x4 posts into the holes I dug for our chicken coop run. I dug the holes two feet deep through heavy clay, and it sucked. I also finished the roof the other day, but didn't get a chance to post it.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

tree surgeons came yesterday and spent the day pri+uning the lower limbs of the oak tree at the bottom of the garden. Its a bit restricted with fences, next doors+'s greenhouse, my shed and greenhouse, etc. so they cut them in sections and lowered them, quite a job, some limbs were like small trees themselves. It lets a lot more light in. At one point I looked down the garden and saw one of them stood where a horizontal branch divided, about fifteen feet from the trunk and maybe twenty five feet in the air, texting on his phone. Of course he had a safety line on, but still …

That looks really nice, Black Thumb. Hope you treated the posts well, clay is wet nearly all the time.

 

[Ruderunner]

Pressure treated lumber is easy to find in the states and can last decades with minimal care. Is it uncommon in the UK?

Thumb, did you use coated screws on the coop? The newer chemicals for treatment are highly corrosive to uncoated steel . I found that out the hard way when I built a front stoop shortly after the changeover.

 

[Sean Regan]

The problem I've found in the UK, is that "pressure treated" means little more than, "a coat of looking at." The density of the timber is much less than it was thirty years ago, as it comes from "sustainable resources." i.e. quick growing varieties of pine or similar. Even "hard wood" ain't that hard these days, for the same reasons.

 

[Ruderunner]

Most US treated lumber is pine, southern yellow variety. Pressure treated hardwood is uncommon since the chemicals can't get into the core of the wood.

So I've got my upper plot ready for planting, new fence is installed but needs a few finishing touches and adjustment of the gate. Watering system installed and leak free.

Next week is the lower plot fencing and soil building. I have some excess soil in the upper that I'm going to spread . Enough for one or 2 rows. For the rest, lots of grass clippings, leaves and chopped sticks. Going to take at least the summer.

 

[Sean Regan]

Most UK timber comes from Baltic countries. "Back in the day" they came over in small ships, some sailing up the Manchester ship canal from Liverpool to Salford Quays. They won't now. 'cos Salford Quays looks like this.

A crew member of one of these ships, played by Paul Danquah appeared in the 1961 film "A Taste of Honey," starring Rita Tushingham

The film shows what a real dump Salford and Manchester were for a few decades after WW2.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Yes we have pressure treated timber; no I wouldn't trust it. Some doesn't seem to be so good. You can't tell which by looking at it, but when I worked for a builder we used to buy certified and stamped timber that was always pukka, and dearer.
Sean is right about modern timber being softer too. My brother in law showed me two pieces of oak, one present day, one several hundred years old, the annual rings are several times the width in the modern timber. I am not quite sure I understand why trees would grow at different rates, but it is so. Possibly the spacing of plantation grown trees as against forest trees?

 

[Ruderunner]

Old oak is tough! When I lived in the city, I was involved in a couple home remodels. Houses built in the 1920s. The oak wall studs just laughed at circular saws and Sawzall. Chainsaws were needed along with extra chains.

 

[Sean Regan]

Yes we have pressure treated timber; no I wouldn't trust it. Some doesn't seem to be so good. You can't tell which by looking at it, but when I worked for a builder we used to buy certified and stamped timber that was always pukka, and dearer.
Sean is right about modern timber being softer too. My brother in law showed me two pieces of oak, one present day, one several hundred years old, the annual rings are several times the width in the modern timber. I am not quite sure I understand why trees would grow at different rates, but it is so. Possibly the spacing of plantation grown trees as against forest trees?

I think it's more to do with the variety of trees grown for use as timber. There are at least 115 different ones of pine.
I would imagine the producers, would choose those known to be the fastest growing varieties

 

[Sean Regan]

No gardening today other than checking the roses for blackspot.


I get this every year on some roses, despite my best efforts. They've already had two doses of Sulphur Rose this year.

I found two old roses with just a very few infected leaves, which I removed and gave them another dose.

As well as both sides of the leaves, it's important to also spray the area around the roots.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

No gardening today other than checking the roses for blackspot.

Dad used to grow lovely disease free roses in North London before the law stopped thousands of households burning coal, there is always some disease nowadays. You are so right about cleaning up the ground underneath, it is the main source of spores.

Well, the tree surgeons have left and I have a lot of timber, sorting it out, will take me a while, but I have finally succumbed and bought a chain saw. Played with that a bit.
My swedes are looking reasonable, put a bit of wire over them, I am not growing them to feed pigeons. Things are moving from the propagator to the window sill, to the greenhouse, and the first few are reaching the garden outdoors.
A couple of rat holes appeared in the bed with a lot of timber under it, a possible disadvantage. The rats have not survived my attention.
I thought I had lost all my pelargonium to frost, but today I see one is sprouting well in the greenhouse. (Shouldn't that be pelargonia, plural ) No idea what colour it is.
Watered some in the greenhouse, whilst the garden is still mostly too wet to get on to. They just told me on the weather that the first two weeks of this month there was the average rainfall for the whole month, last Summer we had 9% of our average rainfall. I know England is an offshore island with unpredictable weather, but not that unpredictable surely.