What have you done in the garden today Part 4 Spring 2024.

[MereDintofPandiculation]

What have you done in the garden today? What went well? What surprises have you had? What could have gone better?

Lovely & sunny today so weeded the raspberry bed.
Got DD & DS to sow their sunflower seeds for a school competition & also sowed a load more types of sunflower seeds with DD to put along our back fence.
DD then decided she wanted some perennial plants of her own, so we went to a nearby garden centre & she chose a pink mallow & pink hibiscus both in the reduced section. I got a reduced golden marjoram.
When we got back she repotted her plants.

Chilled with a glass of wine- ultimate goal 😀🍷🌞

Weeded the patch I weeded before and didn't mulch. Well half of it.

That half is very much mulched now.

DH is busy pruning the Hamamelis and the Viburnum. Not sure if that is meant to be pruned but it's been in 15 years untouched and now looks like a monster.

Cold but sunny here. On a whim, went to an NGS garden we hadn’t visited before - lovely planting, delicious teas and a well-stocked plant stall. Everything a girl could want, really.

Yesterday I planted out red cabbage and kale.

Spent today replacing grass paths with wood chip paths in the allotment, and built and filled a new bed. That sounds straightforward but my life runs on the "nothing is ever easy" rule. Nothing. Won't go into details, too painful and I am so very weary.

Then coming in I dropped my Allotment Wanker mug on my arthritic toe. Broke the mug! Feels like it broke the toe! (Doubtful actually, but still)

Long, long day. Now drinking medicinal wine.

Put some shelves up in the shed and organised my tools, fertilisers and stuff, a very satisfying job done. Tidied up the patio, put empty pots away. All ready for some new furniture I've got on order.

I had a trip to a local nursery and bought some plants (obviously) and planted them. Did a little bit of weeding and tidying.

Planted basil, parsely and climbing bean in little pots to start off in the conservatory, Lettuce seeds planted outside but can't go in the ground due to slugs.
Sowed some wildflower seeds direct in the ground.

Edged the remaining side of the lawn, which turned into a bit of a land grab. We've decided to leave the hole where the little 'spring' appeared so we can keep it clear, and have made a sort of inspection hatch from a couple of those tough square grids intended to reinforce lawns stacked on top of bricks dug out of our garden; I banked up the gaps with some of the turves from the edging. The rest are in a heap in the dark back corner where they should degrade back into nice soil to be redistributed in due course.

We're going to get a pot to put on top of the 'hatch', I'm thinking a pieris will go nicely there.

Then quite a bit of weeding, buttercup, goose grass and some of the excess red campion. The amount of work that incautiously bought pack of wildflower seeds has cost me...

The latter part of my work I was taking circuitous routes around the garden to avoid disturbing the cock pheasant, who is becoming less nervy. However, at one point I turned around to find he's the culprit (or one of them) who's been digging in some of my flowerpots, the ungrateful sod. I've put some wire mesh in front of those pots now but I fear many of the emerging lilies are spoilt for this year.

So now the question is... I've had squirrels bury acorns etc in the pots over the years but never been aware of birds digging in them before. It's not just mr pheasant, I saw a female blackbird at it a while ago.

I think I'll have to get gravel or wood chip to top the pots with in future to see if that's a deterrent.

It’s quite surprising how much stuff fairly small critters are capable of pushing out of the way. We’ve found 5-6cm diameter pebbles displaced from our pots.

I love pieris. I’ve been looking at ours at least twice a day and commenting on how nice it’s looking. The deepest pink is fading now and it’s graduating from pale pink to lime green- beautiful.

Despite having about 500 pots, I never have enough of the exact size that I want at the time.

(See also The Lego Problem, The Bayko Problem, The Meccano Problem)

I believe this is called 'the curse of being a gardener'.

Indeed it is! I use hundreds of pots every year, potting things for sales, and as quickly as I acquire more, I run out again.

I did a lot of weeding today - so much Creeping Jenny; it is the bane of my life!

I also went along to a volunteer day at my DD's school, set up by one of the staff who wanted to plant some veg. He'd heard of the idea of using pallets to make planters. He thought it meant you put a pallet down flat, poured compost into it, and planted into the little 3-inch gaps between the slats. He didn't understand that the compost would just wash straight out (as pallets don't have any sides!) and he didn't think plants needed any root space above 3 inches. I was just so mind-boggled by it! Am I odd in thinking this was really obvious?

I finished weeding and raking the lavender bed. It has taken me 5 days, but I hasten to add that I only did an hour here, half an hour there over that time.

Id bought a couple of big bags of granite gravel to top dress the bed - I seriously under-estimated that one. It's very difficult to estimate how much coverage you get! So I'll have to drop by the garden centre tomorrow after work - I reckon I need at least 4 more bags...

That's Pieris japonica I take it, and not Pieris rapae
(I love the things taxonomy throws up sometimes)

Many years ago I was helping at a school tree-planting. The guy running it started by explaining the brown bit went downwards and the green bit upwards. It's impossible to overestimate people's possible lack of knowledge.

@SarahAndQuack - Having taken part in numerous community gardening events over so many years, I am no longer surprised by anything. Things that seem obvious to fanatical keen gardeners aren’t necessarily so to others.

Good lord. Well, yes.

But then, you wonder, why do these people set themselves up as the experts?!

True ... but, I mean, this is a person who'd volunteered to create a kitchen garden for the school. I don't think you need to be fanatical to realise that, if the soil will wash out of the sides of your planter as soon as you water it, you're on a hiding to nothing!

Well, I suppose people have been making compost bins out of pallets for yonks and not doing anything to fill the gaps.

Ah, pehaps he's thinking of that sort of thing - a bin for composting dry leaves, where you do want massive gaps.

But, this wasn't pallets stacked up to make a crate shape. He literally had a single pallet on the ground as a 'raised bed'.

Weeding. Making lists of things to do before May 2nd when the telly people are coming to film.
Staring at my meconopsis willing them to come into flower before May 2nd (see above).

Ooh, MaxandMeg. Do you know when it’ll be screened?

That's Pieris japonica I take it, and not Pieris rapae
(I love the things taxonomy throws up sometimes)

As it happens I do get the latter in the part of the garden that the former is planned for.

I've done it a few times and it's usually a couple of weeks. This was a short notice job so it might be sooner. Last time I did it was only in 2021 (I think) so I was quite amazed to hear from them again.
It's been a cold wet spring though and, despite a mild winter, everything seems quite late. I know they want to do the blue poppies but they're not cooperating. They've got a week to shape up! Trilliums are the other thing and they do look good.