What have you done in the garden today?

[ThreeRingCircus]

I thought it would be a nice idea to share what we've been up to in our gardens.

Today I planted potatoes in buckets (with drainage holes drilled into them.) Six buckets in total, three second earlies and three main crops. I have fond memories of digging up potatoes with my dad when I was a child.... I still get excited rummaging around in the buckets when my potatoes are ready!

I also made up a herb planter from an old plant pot that had been hiding behind the shed. Mint, parsley and thyme planted in that so I'll see how that does.

I fed my pot plants with blood, fish and bone and gave them a water.

What have you been up to?

@Willmafrockfit I never get the balance right between pots/plants/compost.

Got a lovely couple of hours weeding the front white border, and popped in my geranium Laura with the one I've already got.
Also dug out some new identified Fecking Brambles and sycamore trees from pink border, and popped in a couple of shrubs.
Noticed to my delight the first opening bud on a rose in that border.
No idea what it is, but it was in my Mum's garden for years, and when she died a couple of years ago I asked her neighbour to dig it out for me. It sat in its root ball over the winter, then 18 months in a pot, and is now flourishing

Noticed some of my lilys were coming through, sat down to get a better look, and did so onto a sweet chestnut. Though I was going to have an evening of DH, tweezers and embarrassment

Sounds like one of those A&E excuses things @NorthernChinchilla ! We finally have a beautiful day.Couldn’t sleep last night, so I’m lying in my summer house admiring the roses and playing with the Merlin app. I love it so much, and it’s free. I’m going to email Cornell to say thank you. I may waft around snipping things later.

Read your update zebra 🤣 I promise not to add to my salad ! , do any of you know the ghost Koi carp story ? It goes .. a celebrity ( can’t remember who ) got his dad these very very expensive ghost Koi carp as his dad loved to sit and watch his fish in the pond in his garden … the ghosts ate all his prize fish and as their ghosts you couldn’t see them ! Well DH has just given me the garden equivalent. A swanky timer for the sprinkler for back and front … except we can’t get it to do both 🤦‍♀️. And you can’t use the hose as a hose ever ! So I’m now stood in the garden filling 3 dustbins with water (timed!) so my lovely neighbour can water the front ( where greenhouse and veg patch are ) while we’re away . I already had a timer too ! O well at least everything will get a good drink as it o for 30 min !! X

Sprinklers are beyond me really, always have more water coming out the side than the front of the hose. Attempts to tighten them make it worse. And I have 2 hoses and outdoor taps, but the biggest pots sit in the middle of my garden and neither can reach. it’s very annoying. I have a whole shelf in the shed of hose and hose attachments that I don’t understand. The dyspraxic gardener.

Prepared my greenhouse borders to put in my new tomato halos. Looking forward to trying them out this year.

Watered. Is it ever going to rain? Well of course it is. It'll wait until all my roses are out then start and not stop until they're all turned onto rotting brown balls.
My new 'Tottering-By-Gently rose is flowering. It looks promising but in the wrong place.

Moved an entire bulk bag of soil from the front drive to the back garden 💪, this is for topping up the remaining section of border which is yet to be cleared of turf/weeds, and then also to fill some large planters for the new patio.
Cleared a small section of the border. Went and bought slate chips to refresh the old border and bark chips to finish the new border. It finally feels like the end is in sight, just need to get the lawn in decent order. I’ve got some lawn seed mix with micro clover in so looking forward to seeing that pop up.

Watered up all my new shrubs and have some spare tomato plants to the neighbours.

Made the best job I could have putting supports around two flopping peonies - not the right time to do it, I know, but needs must. Continued to try to find spots for the plants I’ve grown from seed, most of which are still quite puny because they were held back by the cold spring.

Weeded to buggery. Given its a new garden and there's several years worth of borders to plant out, there's huge swathes of bare earth with huge weeds...

Just wish it would bloody rain, everything's wilting

Yes, I’m about to start the rain dance. I don’t have the strength for constant hand-watering, so gentle overnight rain would be very welcome now.

First rose here. Smells divine

Does microclover flower?

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn it does but not for as long as normal clover.
I’ve just had a look and I think it’s normal clover in mine anyway - I’d spent so long looking at all the options I couldn’t remember what I’d picked.

Another note in my renovation journey - last spring/summer we absolutely hacked an unknown shrub practically to the ground as a prelude to removing the dead cypressus (?) hedge behind and next to it. I vaguely remember from when we moved in 20 years ago that it was about 5ft tall, whippy, and had possibly white flowers. We used to just call it the sparrow tree as all the sparrows used it as a perch for the rest of the garden. We did remove the hedge but never got round to doing anything with the shrub.

So nine months later, now that spring has fully spring, it's clearly happy with its trim! - it's about 2 ft, healthy and bushy but with a good handful of tall leading stems, and covered in pale pink flower clusters. Google tells me it's a deutzia. It's very pretty and ideally I'd move it to another spot but we can't get it out as the roots go under the flag stones and the fence in to next doors garden. So I'll keep looking after it where it is, and how it tempts the birds back.

I've a few questions on pruning for the experienced amongst you, so might be doing a few posts today if you don't mind helping me out!

Started the annual good going through of my cacti, checking for pests, repotting if necessary, updating the history on the label (I use the label to record when I repot, and whether or not it flowered that year). Then my DS turned up unexpectedly and carted me off to a garden centre.

Hard times! Does that particular garden centre have a coffee shop by any chance?

It has a little kiosk selling coffees, which you can then drink at a table under the apple trees. But we didn't. We concentrated solely on plants. DS is at the beginning of his gardening career and operating largely on whim. He came away with a large quantity of bark, an ivy, a smoke bush and a pot of Deschampsia flexuosa, even though I told him it grew all over the Yorkshire Dales

DS is in that frenetic stage of life where he's packing in far too much (his Best Man, seeking inspiration for his speech, asked friends and family for a single word to describe him - hands down winner was "hurricane"), so I'm just pleased at any chance to see him. Quiet cups of coffe is not his style.

So pruning question. I have a bay tree in the front garden that has suffered some pretty serious frost damage in January. It's at least 20yo, in the ground in poor soil but south facing, perhaps 6ft tall. I left it until April and pulled off quite a bit of the dead brown leaves but it's barely recovered. There is definite life in it as there are fresh shoots coming from multiple places on the trunk and a few of the undamaged branches, but much of the main structure is dead. Do I prune off/back all the dead branches completely and just let it regenerate from the trunk? If I prune severely now will it survive the next winter?

Lost, the alternative would be to leave it which may cause it to continue to die back. I always prune off dead, damaged or diseased branches at any time other than March or April to be honest.

Once a branch is truly dead, it’s not going to magically reinvigorate itself, so it might as well come off. And since it has no sap, you can do it whenever you feel like it

@AlisonDonut @MereDintofPandiculation Thanks, I'm not a confident gardener so having people confirm what I'm thinking really helps. It's going to look pretty scrappy for a while but there's no real alternative.

Only managed watering and feeding the citrus/fruit/chillis. Bought a few nice bits for both the pink and white border, though I'm debating whether to stick them in and hope for the best, or leave them till late Sept....🤔

Mainly watered the pots today (the water butt is now only half full so I think I'm going to have to resort back to using the hosepipe to try to conserve rainwater.) I also potted on some tomatoes and will give them a feed tomorrow.

Sunbathed, drank a beer and read my book.

Winter here , but on the weekend I planted silver beet, beetroot, lettuce, pak Choi, beans and more mint. The heavens opened up last night so all that lovely manure I added will be well washed in!