What have you done in the garden today? Part 2

[ThreeRingCircus]

A continuation of the last thread.

I love that! I might do something similar (we have so many pots on our patio already, there’s hardly any room but still)

@ComeIntoTheGardenMaud I bought this one on the advice of the proprietor of the pond place st a garden centre near Hereford. It’s a small variety for my smallish pond

My patio is too small, when we had it done we didn't know how long we'd be here and didn't want to have to deal with the slope so space was limited - so it's nearly full of pots. I thought I had a better photo of my barrels with some irises in flower (some planted in pots with no holes - experimental mini bog garden, seems to be working) but I can't find that, this is a more recent one.

@ErrolTheDragon that looks lovely! Yours are quite densely planted… think I meed more plants!

They've grown! The waterlily looks as though it's trying to escape.

Cute peahen too.

@Seaitoverthere , Thank you for asking. I am ok. Trying to find the balance between sitting about failing to do my physio, and easy pruning the whole weedy falling down mess of my garden. Did too much yesterday and hurting today. Enjoying the thread though.

The other thing I did yesterday, inspired by this thread, is book another assessment for my crumbling hip. I hope you continue to heal, Zebracat.

Thank you, PottedPalm, for the waterlily information. I’ve read/heard contradictory things recently about how full of plants a pond should be - one thing said three quarters of the water should be clear, but (again) I noticed that Adam’s pot pond on GW was full of plants. Mine is certainly fuller since I cadged some oxygenating plants from my neighbour. I’ll take a photo later - I’d welcome an ID on one plant.

She graced our neighbourhood for a few weeks until she was lured into a garage and taken to join a flock. We're not sure how she got here as the two flocks we know about locally are each a couple of miles away. I'm sure she's happier and safer not being alone, but I rather miss her - I spent quite a few happy hours sharing the garden with her, she'd just calmly walk elsewhere if I came too close. Quiet too - I don't think I'd want a peacock!

I’ve read/heard contradictory things recently about how full of plants a pond should be - one thing said three quarters of the water should be clear, but (again) I noticed that Adam’s pot pond on GW was full of plants

I'm not sure - my feeling is that with little container ponds, they're prone to getting very warm and there's a lot of evaporation loss so more surface cover is likely to be helpful.

Yes, my thinking - for now at least - is that container ponds probably need denser planting. As I’ve mentioned, mine went very green when it only had a couple of plants (although that might of course have been about the type of plants, rather than the number).

Clear water will attract damsel flies. If there’s too much plant cover the pond is slow to warm in the summer, tadpoles won’t complete their transformation into frogs and will have to overwinter as tadpoles. Slow warming won’t be such a problem in an above ground bowl or barrel.

Too much clear water = bigger problems with algae and blanket weed

Exactly. I think the ecology of container ponds is probably slightly different.

Slow warming won’t be such a problem in an above ground bowl or barrel.

No, the problem is heating - mine get distinctly tepid in summer, too warm/variable for much fauna beyond small snails unfortunately. The birds like them for drinking and bathing though. (So did our old dog). A shadier position might help but I've not really got anywhere else suitable.

One of mine gets a lot of algae/blanket weed (not really sure which, green gunk!) but the other (the one with the waterlily) doesn't. I just fish it out regularly, have to rummage through to save the snails.

algae/blanket weed (not really sure which, green gunk! Both are algae. But people usually use “blanket weed” for long strings of algae that can be wound round a stick, the stuff that can be picked up in sheets, and when they say algae they mean single celled green algae that turn the water into pea soup.

I just fish it out regularly, have to rummage through to save the snails. I once managed to wrap an entire large frog in blanket weed.

I read somewhere that lavender stems work as well as barley straw in clearing algae. So now when I prune the lavender in spring I tie it in bundles and lob it into the pond. Don’t know whether it’s the lavender doing the job or the over abundance of vegetation that we have at the moment.

I prune the lavender in spring not the recommended autumn because a) the goldfinches like the seed b)in our confined parking area, tall, flower filled lavender bushes are a warning that you are close enough to the stone wall (the car’s parking sensors have long since dissolved into hysterics). That’s an explanation not a recommendation. I don’t mind big old woody lavenders.

Glad you're doing ok @Zebracat 🙂

I love what you've done with the table base @Bideshi - that's right up my street!

Sweet peahen @ErrolTheDragon - love how she's almost camouflaged amongst your pretty pots!

We offloaded many of our huge pot collection soon after moving here - we brought getting on for a couple of hundred from our previous house - as we put lots of the plants into the ground. I think that was a result of previously owning houses with far more established gardens (and large patio areas!) so we'd always kept quite a lot in pots/planters.

In the end we just kept the largest - or most interesting - pots, most of which are the dark brown (Thai?) stoneware ones. Trouble is, now we're planning to sell and move again we've actually had to buy a few more large pots to accommodate plants we're no longer intending to put in the ground (for example some - more! - David Austin roses received as gifts and a smallish gingko tree we'd purchased for the jungley bed).

Yesterday started dry here and, as DH had an unexpected day off, we spent the morning strimming and tidying. Whilst strimming the mini orchard DH discovered that a whole load of medlars have been munched, which is a complete pain as it's the first year we've had more than three fruits. We also managed to weed one bed (one of two 'hot beds' filled with only orange/red/yellow plants) before the rain arrived. It looks so much better now, although in doing it I realised the heleniums (Moorheim Beauty) are yet another casualty as they've completely gone.

Here’s mine, rather dominated by the barley straw bundle. Any guesses on the ID of the plant my neighbour calls the pineapple?

I spent a lot of time yesterday potting up dozens of seedlings of papaver rupifragum. Half have been munched overnight. Ho hum.

I think they're water soldiers.

I tried making mini straw bundles for mine but it wasn't very successful.

So the mystery sheep.....is actually a pair of deer 😳

I just popped out into the main garden and found two deer (one I could clearly see its antlers, the other just a blur of brown) grazing amongst the fruit trees and rose beds. They wasted no time in scarpering - one leapt over the stock fencing into the farmer's land behind ours, the other headed down into our leat.

Not sure I can do anything to prevent further ingress. We knew they'd been about in the area but have never seen them close to our property and assumed they moved on as not sighted for some time, but now I can add deer to the sheep, pigs and cows we've had 'trespassing', lol 😆

Thank you! Off to Google.

I cheated and bought these straw bundles. The others are in the water butts. I was going to say there’s not much straw to be had in the inner city but, on second thoughts, would straw from the pet shop be suitable? Is that barley straw?

Gosh, LibertyLily! The most invasive wildlife here is squirrels, foxes and the occasional mouse!

They usually sell it in garden centres along with the pond stuff

I rarely go to garden centres and those around here don’t sell pond plants. Do they sell loose barley straw in small quantities?

Mine only had it in some sort of plastic holder, which I opened up and bundled some in a bit of hessian.