What did you do in your garden today?

[Logan]

Planted some more wallflowers and polyanthus in the front garden along the path.

 

[s'mores]

I transplanted some brown eyed susans and added some marshmallow daises, shasta daisies and coneflowers in a new clearing fingers crossed for next year.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

we buy things and accept they are to be thrown away

As someone said, "There is no such place as 'away'. "

 

[Sean Regan]

Busy day today.
Did the week's shopping this morning, including getting some more hedgehog pellets from the big pet shop in Altrincham. While I was in that retail park I noticed that Homebase had some turf so I bought a roll, then called into Toolstation for some Sentinel, more of that in "My Day Apart From Gardening." But it was the first job I did when I got home.

I bought a roll of turf on the spur of the moment as it prompted me to do a job I hadn't got round to doing, thinking I'd do it next year. But it was the second job when I got home.

The grass in the area under this acer palmatums always struggles, more so since the acer has increased in size.

I've tried re-seeding it but it still struggled. So I returfed it. I know it's a bit late in the year, but it's still warm and if weeds can thrive at the moment the grass should stand a chance.

Hardly notices from here.

All jobs completed by 2.30pm.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I have to finish and not rush to plant a soil builder crop if I'm not ready for that.
If I miss the best time to plant the winter soil builder mix then i won't plant that this year.
I also wonder if I would just grow out as far as it gets, some orchard grass; with this unknown future weather. It just might stay warm enough for a while. I don't know... Advice?

I would go ahead, with the soil builder and the orchard grass. The soil builder will still help, even if you turn it in a bit young, and the weather may well be reasonable. As you say we don't know what it will do anymore, but what's to lose? A couple of packets of seed.

 

[Ernst]

I would go ahead, with the soil builder and the orchard grass. The soil builder will still help, even if you turn it in a bit young, and the weather may well be reasonable. As you say we don't know what it will do anymore, but what's to lose? A couple of packets of seed.

Yeah that makes sense. I'll go ahead.

Update on Garden activity: It rained really good last night and this morning so there is the main push for more grass harvesting in about a week.
I promised to mow the neighbor's land again and all the rest of the season. I do he Forrest Gump for my own gardening reasons but she could use the help since her brother passed away. He owned a lawn care business so it was not a problem before.
Also I do volunteer at a "soup kitchen - food pantry" that has a dinner every Tuesday and I got permission to take the trash home and sort out the food to feed the Black Soldier Flies.
Wearing proper gloves I did that and fed about half a five gallon bucket of slop.
The next day all of them were out of the hiding. They hide from light but not then. It was a food-fest the likes I have not seen with those grubs in years. There are at least ten thousand grubs in there it would seem.
So I believe Compost activities count as what fits in this thread.

Edit:

They are looking really white. That is FAT! These guys are as bulked up as they can get I bet. Soon they will pupate.

 

[Sean Regan]

It's been chucking it down all night and so far all morning, so no chance of any gardening.
I wasn't going to do any as there's the Ryder Cup on TV to watch. I've recorded it and started watching the recording half an hour into the match, so I can fast-forward through the adverts and the waffle from commentators, presenters and pundits. But I'm sure half an hour won't be enough.

It made me smile before the first game started, the thousand or more European supporters in the stand behind the first tee, sang their version of this.

 

[Ernst]

@Sean Reagan : Ah the old Black Screen of a YouTube video.. Feels like home.
We were just commenting in the music thread on how YouTube videos no longer seem to show what we are about to click on. I realized there must be money involved. No add revenue if it's outside of YouTube proper?
But Congratulations on the rain! Then again do y'all have a drought issue in that wonderful country I see from your Flag-Location?

Well this is supposed to be about Gardening so the news is More Rototilling today.
The news about that is I am "over the hill" on the majority of breaking the ground down to the ten inch depth uniformly.
So it's about half way done but it's the better half of rototilling.

In this picture the shadow is the seasonal shadow. I suppose I could tell seasonal time like a Sundial with the shadow off the shop.
Now the second plot would go on the south side of the shop when I get there to it but that is for another year.
Here is my song for hoping I survive to rototill anew : Oh Death by Ralph Stanley.

Here is what I got done yesterday. The Piles of grass are atop already worked soil so going down to depth is work but not the hardest work that was.

I mean I think I would have left the farm as soon as possible in the age of actual Mule and Plow and I have a Rootiller! How they plowed forty acres I tell you was by hella-hard-work!

 

[Esther Knapicius]

Finally got to ctut the front yard, finally dried out enough and picked up all th branches and limbs that had fallen over the last days. Rained again last night, so back side has to wait some. Still branches to pick up etc. Harvested lots of Hardy geraniums for a fellow member who came by for them.

 

[Ernst]

Finally got to ctut the front yard, finally dried out enough and picked up all th branches and limbs that had fallen over the last days. Rained again last night, so back side has to wait some. Still branches to pick up etc. Harvested lots of Hardy geraniums for a fellow member who came by for them.

Congratulations of some non-rain weather!
Man y'all got hit hard!

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I mean I think I would have left the farm as soon as possible in the age of actual Mule and Plow and I have a Rootiller! How they plowed forty acres I tell you was by hella-hard-work!

From Wiki
Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, an acre was conceived of as the area of land that could be ploughed by one man using a team of 8 oxen in one day..
Take Sunday off and that's almost seven weeks, and fallow land was ploughed three or four times a year as well as ploughing for crops. We really have it soft with machines, if you don't count noise pollution and vibration

 

[Esther Knapicius]

We don't have Ox over here, but lots of horses plowing the fields. And picture is something I see often.

 

[waretrop]

We don't have Ox over here, but lots of horses plowing the fields. And picture is something I see often. View attachment 100025

I love to see this... How splendid....

 

[Oliver Buckle]

One of my favourite land measures is a 'hide'. I kept coming across it, 'The king granted him 60 hides of land' and wondered how big it was, so looked it up, 'Anywhere between 20 and 90 acres, depending on it's quality'. It is the amount of land needed to support a family and their dependants. How wonderfully vague.
Didn't get out there today, with the missus away I had a day of shopping and housework

 

[Sean Regan]

Too wet to do anything today, so looking ahead, I know I'll have to lop six inches to a foot off all the way round on this tree again in the winter in our tiny front garden, as I do every year, to keep it this size. The top is as high as the eaves of the roof of the house.
I like this lollipop shape, but if I left it a year, it'd end up looking like a pincushion as the branches grow at different rates.

The leaves are just beginning to turn so there will be a lot to collect in the meantime.

The problem is that my Barnel telescopic pruner is having an increasingly hard job getting through the branches where they've been cut back several times before, as the ends of the branches from where the new growth starts, are progressively getting thicker. I have to be careful with it as it is easily damaged trying to cut something too thick for it and I've busted one before and they are expensive.

I have an old Fiskars lopper which is far too short and no longer cuts too well despite my having sharpened the blade many times.

So I've ordered a longer one. A Fiskars 86, which extends to four metres.

With a combination of that and this very versatile ladder, I've had for nearly twenty years but rarely use, I'll still be able to manage it.