What have you done in the garden today? Part 3

[ThreeRingCircus]

The old thread was filling up so I've created a new one!

Link to old thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/4823202-what-have-you-done-in-the-garden-today-part-2?reply=128367673

Done my first sowings of the year:

1. Snaps Rembrandt
2. Snaps Circle Clowns
3. Nigella
4. Garlic Chives (commercial seed is rubbish, so got some self-collected ones off a lottie)
5. Onion
6. Laurentia Blue Sky
7. Papaver Amazing Grey and Pandora (apparently, they do better in modules than direct sown (last 3 years of failures, so trying new method)
8. White Chard

All under light and heat. Let's hope they germinate...

I can never get verbena bonaneriensis to germinate - is there a trick? I use both commercial and self-collected seed.

I don't know, I've only grown it from seed (a packet) once before so that may have been beginners luck. I've never had any self seed in my garden, and the plants rarely seems to survive the winter well.

I've bought many a plant and yes, mine also don't survive the winter nor they self-seed. I'm on loamy soil, but the flower bed is quite small and sometimes I may overweed not realising self-seeders may have been destroyed in the process.

I have the opposite problem, they were self seeding everywhere last year (verbena boniarensis). Clay soil here.

VB barely grows and never survives the winter in the clay soil here, but will self-seed into cracks in the paving in the front garden. Two small plants have, though, survived the winter in the cold frame. Hey ho.

I might start seed-sowing tomorrow.

I wasted today, just couldnt get going. Also my lawn is so flooded that any movement is a mission. But I’m desperate to get some seeds started.

Popped into a local garden centre today to check out the reduced plants & picked up a reduced Chioysa & a reduced meadowsweet.

Half-time score:

Lawn weeds 0
Hori hori 476

Got the hosepipe and the yard broom out today and cleaned down the passage that runs along outside the back door between the houses. It was full of leaves and moss - it doesn't get any sunshine during the winter so it's always a bit green and slimy. Gave it a good scrub and felt very virtuous.

I've been crawling around removing weeds, mainly creeping buttercup and an aggressively spreading wild geranium. My trusty hori knife was a great help and I don't know how I managed without one for so long. Have we all got one now?

Planted sweet pea seeds. Phew, exhausted now !

So many things I should be doing but I need some sunshine to tempt me out.

I don't usually get anything done in the gardenon a weekday even though I only work part time, except when the evenings are light. But I replaced all the pots etc on the newly clean and treated patio this morning, and tidied up the bit round the side of the house where random stuff accumulates - jolly glad I did as it started raining earlier than forecast and is set to carry on for a few days.

Wish i could garden during the week but at work and still dark in the evenings. On Sunday I put some new glass in the greenhouse and added more stuff to the pile to be collected and dumped next week. Place should look a bit tidier after that. I pulled open a drawer in my little unit in the greenhouse and dont know who got the biggest fright...me or the little mouse in there!

I got similar satisfaction from moving things around on the patio and generally tidying up, although I still need to tackle the zillion plastic pots. I also planted two roses, hoping that the promised/threatened rain would ensure they are properly watered in.

What varieties of rose did you put in @GertrudeJekyllAndHyde?

One is Buff Beauty (my only success at growing a rose from a cutting) and the other is an unknown yellow climbing rose I acquired from our neighbourhood WhatsApp group (which has evolved from a Covid self-help group to a jumble sale).

Lovely, those should make a good show and I hope they do well for you.

Fingers crossed! When I started this garden, I decided I didn’t want roses because they were old hat (and high maintenance) but then I read that they like clay soil and we bought one by accident. Gradually more and more have crept in.

Funnily enough I took a look yesterday and the cutting I took of Buff Beauty (at least I think it’s Buff Beauty) has taken and survived the winter so far. Is yours very vigorous @GertrudeJekyllAndHyde? (The original, I mean). Whatever it is that I have, it grows like mad.

Roses old hat? They're lovely! Though I must say that it was only when I worked for a woman whose garden was stuffed full of roses that I began to really appreciate them.

Yes, the original is pretty vigorous - it grows to the top of its obelisk and several feet more. I took the cutting in (I think) 2021 and have been growing it on in a pot, but decided yesterday to plant it in the border.

Yes, roses are lovely but, at the time I started this garden, horticultural fashion was against them and I was put off by childhood memories of my father and grandfather endlessly spraying them with evil-smelling stuff. Now, I have lots of them.

I’m a bit (lot) of a plantaholic and had amassed lots of different things, often single specimens, and the garden looked very bitty. After some editing, I hope the repetition of the roses pulls it all together.

I've rather given up on what's fashionable as I never agree with it 😁

Oh, me too. What I’m trying inarticulately to say is that, as a complete novice, I was reading lots of books and magazines on how to plan and plant a garden and, because roses weren’t “on trend” back then, they never suggested planting them. As we’ve discussed before, I’m sceptical about horticultural fashion because it’s so fickle. I’m too lazy to keep up with it!

Some types of roses really are 'outdated' simply because there are so many excellent newer ones - longer flowering, more disease resistant, a return to valuing scent, ones that work in a mixed border be it herbaceous or shrubs.

However, there's a garden in the next village lovingly tended by a man who is probably about 80 which is of the 'dated' type - lots of different types of the roses popular with our fathers and grandfathers, including that 'blue' one which is more or a lacklustre purple. They're meticulously pruned and fed - maybe sprayed though I've never observed that. Immaculate lawn in the middle of course. It's not the sort of garden I'd want - but I'm rather glad a few still exist!