What have you done in the garden today? Part 2

[ThreeRingCircus]

A continuation of the last thread.

Your new plants must have been very young for the snails got them. Japanese anemone once established are ignored by snails/slugs. Delphiniums on the other hand are like manna to them. You'll have to grow them in pots with copper rings around the rim to protect them.

Finally, the forecasters were correct in that we had our showers today and tonight. Happy to see my garden is looking well.

Chopped back the rasps as they didn't do that well this year which were probably due to the drought we had in spring. I dug up a peony and have a good size space for a new plant or two to think about replacing. There's a plant fair in Southwell Minster (Notts.,) that I'm looking forward to, and hope that I'll find some new plants.

All I've done is pick up half eaten cherry plum fruit from the bottom of the garden - not yet ripe but the pigeons literally hang upside down off the branches to get at them and the remains end up on the paving. Surprisingly acrobatic birds when they are motivated!

Beyond that I just watched the rain with thanks.

DH handed me a bag of the shredding from our home office paper shredder and I mixed them into the compost bin which is really hot and rotting down a treat. Compost making is very therapeutic, I've decided. I left the lid off and the rain gave it a good soaking. It'll be ready to mulch the dahlia in a few weeks - they still haven't flowered yet, they must be a good few weeks behind what they were last year. Hoping for a colourful August display 👍

We have a pair of pigeons which are really cute @WobblyLondoner they sit on the rose arch shoulder to shoulder rocking side to side then come down for a splash in the birdbath when I've washed it out. Sometimes they fly up and sit on our chimney stack and make cooing sounds which we can hear in the living room where the log burner is.

@OnTheRunWithMannyMontana Your tomatoes are a bit late but nothing to worry about as long as you have flowers

That sounds very sweet. Ours are less lovely - entertaining acrobatics true, but then prodigious amounts of poo as well. At the moment there is turf war between them and some magpies who are muscling in on the same trees.

We have far more magpies here this year. Are their numbers increasing everywhere?

I've wondered about this for the last few years - I really noticed more around in the early stages of the pandemic but then I was working from home so would be more likely to see them..

This is what the RSPB say:

Since the Second World War, magpie numbers have increased. Their numbers trebled from 1970 to 1990, since when they have become more stable. Urban and suburban magpies increased much faster than rural populations. In towns they are not persecuted, there is more food available, magpies will nest close to people, which protects their nests from crows, and they can breed earlier in the year because towns are warmer than the surrounding countryside.

One more specific gardening thought for today - I asked for decent plant supports this Xmas and used them for my astrantia and Japanese anenomies (which tend to lean to the light in my narrow garden and then flop). So far really successful so I'd definitely recommend them.

That’s interesting, (fellow) WobblyLondoner.

I’ve invested in a lot more plant supports this year and am generally pleased with the results. I was late putting them around the peonies and hydrangea floppy Annabelle, so it was a bit of a bodge, but the supports I’ve just put around persicaria Red Dragon have been a great improvement.

Sweet peas finally starting to flower,geraniums nearly there,dahlias not yet.
Cornflowers on the way out as are the corncockles. The clover in the grass is attracting lots of bees which is nice.
Picked more chamomile and set it to dry.

Today I fed tomatoes, weeded the gravel, and clipped out a few bamboo canes to give light and space to the rest (mostly already dead but a few still green - needs a good few more pulled out).

Went to see my neighbour's garden as we're doing a joint charity opening at the end of the month. Felt discouraged (repeat to self 'It's not a competition'). Came back and went round own garden in detail and felt less discouraged. He gave me a rare miniature Solomons Seal whose name I have promptly forgotten. Gave him 2 celmisias as he lost all his last winter. He's less than a mile away but has a totally different climate. Spent 2 hours online looking for Benton irises. Mostly sold out.

As you say, Bideshi, it’s not a competition But who serves the better cake? A gardening mate has recently acquired some Benton irises, although that might have been informally. I’ll see …

Bideshi, your garden always sounds absolutely wonderful! Don't ever feel discouraged.

I am wondering what I think of Benton irises. Some of them are lovely, and I get that they got their moment of glory at Chelsea. But they're a bit too ruffly for me ... they look as if one good sprinkle of rain would turn them into a slimy mess quite fast!

I have just been round the garden before work and am wishing evil things on the slugs. We got kittens last year (necessity: we had a recalcitrant mouse/rat issue - and yes, I know in theory you're not meant to get both - and they were a very effective solution). But sadly, I've realised they have disturbed the system of birds/hedgehogs/goodness-knows-what that was keeping the slugs under control. And I don't know if it's related, but I've seen the owls far less often this year - usually they're round and about because they nest in a tree at the back, but I've not seen any juveniles at all. It might also just be a bad year, as my neighbour, who has at least two nesting pairs, also hasn't seen any.

If anyone has good (non-dodgy) solutions for slugs, I'm all ears, though I think I have tried the obvious (eggshells, sharp spikes, rubbish commercially available pellets, coffee grounds, etc. etc.).

Garlic spray?

Any tips for reviving lavender? It was beautiful last year but looks quite sad and bare this year. I keep it next to the bee hotel in the sun as the bees normally love it!

Managed to get out yesterday inbetween the showers and planted the spring onions and green beans. Just hope it's warm enough for them to grow properly as it's really cooled down up here.

I’ve always been fond of Benton irises because, years before I had a garden, I loved Cedric Morris’s painting in the Tate, but I take your point, SarahAndQuack, about them dissolving in the rain. All my various irises are prone to turning to mush!

The best thing I’ve found for dealing with slugs has been a pond - once the frogs arrived, the slug population certainly went down, although the recent rain has shown that they haven’t gone away completely.

@SarahAndQuack have you tried nematodes? Utter game changer for my garden.

No discernible difference in mine

@SarahAndQuack Thanks for the heads up on the Benton irises. As we live in at times the wettest part of the UK I think I'll give them a miss. What a useful thread this is. Looking for irises that are near to the type, rather than the excessively ruffled efforts that modern breeders are coming up with.

Just catching up after a few days decorating, so not a huge amount of time being spent in the garden currently, particularly as we've finally had lots of rain.

I do need to get out and do some staking as my willow stakes - and the plants they were supposed to be supporting, especially the veronicastrums - have taken a battering in the wind and downpours.

In our 'jungley' bed the maccleaya cordata has gone mad and the telekias (which were only supposed to be there temporarily) have settled in nicely so probably won't get moved now. Otoh, my crambe cordifolias that were too huge for the white bed have disappeared in a sea of nettles that I should have dealt with but my dodgy sprained ankle didn't allow.

Annoyingly, it appears a stray sheep (DH found a poop as evidence 🙄) has somehow got in and made a feast of our bed of persicaria taurus that were starting to put up flower spikes.....grrrr!

@daisychain01 Thank you...our project (inside and out!) is very slowly coming together. We're planning to sell up here soon so trying to complete as much as possible, but we're perfectionists so don't like cutting corners 🙄

@BestIsWest Hope you had a lovely holiday and sorry to hear you returned to find some plants had disappeared. We've never had any success with delphiniums - even when we lived somewhere considerably drier they were forever being munched - and I've been really disappointed with Japanese anemones here (only Honorine Jobert has survived 🤞)

@Nachtvlinder We too have lots of borage that's seeded everywhere. Tbh, if it fills a few gaps I'm happy for it to stay...better that than the blasted ground elder I'm still fighting a (losing in some areas) battle with! Hope you succeed in eradicating it.

@catwithflowers and @OnTheRunWithMannyMontana Lovely veg - I really must try growing broad beans as they're a favourite of both mine and DH's. We're trying gherkins for the first time this year - did do mini cucs three or four years ago but they weren't a great success so hoping the gherks do better!

@Bideshi Your garden sounds wonderful! I wish we lived closer so i could come to one of your open days. Do you have an Instagram account for it? I try to follow as many inspirational gardens on insta as possible and do put a few pics of our fledgling garden on my account too, although more recently the progress shots of the house itself have somewhat taken over 🙄

Nematodes are the only anti-slug weapon I haven’t deployed, but (as here) I’ve heard very mixed reports of them. Some friends have been very pleased with the results but others have written them off as an expensive failure, because (they say) it all goes wrong if you don’t apply them at the right moment or if they’re immediately rained on.

I've just placed an order for 10 bare root dahlias from Gardening Express. It was a super cheap deal, 10 Café au Lait dahlias for £10. Will they actually do anything this year? I know it's pretty late which is probably why they were so cheap!

Is it worth planting them in the garden or should I put them into pots to flower next year (which seems like more of a faff 😬)