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?

@MereDintofPandiculation Triplets!

I have sacrificial forget-me-nots too but I didn't really realise I was doing it.

They grow all over my vegetable beds and I love them so only pull them up when I have to put my veggies in. They are still thriving

The grass finally got its first trim of the year today. Just a trim as the mower blades are set too high and I cant loosen the bolt to lower them, but thats ok. I dont want a bowling green lawn. Have planted out marigolds and dwarf cornflowers...the only seedlings to have thrived this year!
The slugs ate the last lot I planted out.
Am STILL removing frogspawn and tadpoles from our tiny pond and running out of homes for it. It is actually now a problem. We have more tadpoles than water! I cant bear to kill them but.....a cull is going to have to happen before we are overrun with thousands of froglets.

Treated myself to a new strimmer, which arrived in the week. I've put it together now and the battery has been on charge overnight. I think today is going to be dry and warm, finally, so I'm going to get out there later and tidy up round the arbour where I've planted some climbing roses, clematis and honeysuckle.

plenty to do in the greenhouse this weekend, as it has been so miserable I haven't felt like going out there after work for the past few days. I expect my seedlings will need to be potted on.

plenty to do in the greenhouse this weekend, as it has been so miserable I haven't felt like going out there after work for the past few days. I expect my seedlings will need to be potted on. That’s why a greenhouse needs a comfy chair and a radio

I've upset the garden cats who have my polytunnel to hang about in all winter [I cover the soil so they can't use it as a toilet and have a litter tray in there] by daring to put a load of plants all along one side and cover it with cold frames and big cloches to keep them off it.

They thanked me by immediately climbing onto the cold frames and cloches and enjoying the additional heat they give off.

That's about it so far. We had 2 and a half days of less rain and a little dryness in which I weeded my two fruit beds but that is already a distant memory.

Oh I did pick a handful of strawberries from the covered pots. Nice.

It's cooled off today (13 degrees) and it rained last night. This morning I have collected slugs and snails..thousands of them!!
I had left a large tarp on the lawn overnight and the underside was covered. Every bed, the lupins, the paths..I collected until my hands were frozen.

This combination of mild winter and wet spring has given them the perfect conditions. I don't think this will be a great year for all the seedlings I wish to plant out.
I wouldn't mind but I have a huge pond and an army of frogs.
Weathers due to pick up tomorrow and 19 degrees, but not a lot of sun. 😢 I feel very sorry for the farmers this year, it's going to be very tough.

Gorgeous day today. Nose has gone quite pink and freckled...

Anyway, today I redid my pallet planter. I'd had everything in little terracotta pots which looked lovely when first done, but they needed insane amounts of watering. So instead I have now lined the 'slots' instead and planted straight into them, hopefully will retain the moisture a bit better. This one has a mixture of erigeron, saxifrage, creeping jenny etc. I've got another pallet which needs doing and I'm tempted to fill the whole thing with pelargoniums.

My huge raised planter arrived a few days ago and I finished the planting today - pieris, astilbe, fuchsia, veronica, hedera and digitalis. It's by the front door on a North facing wall and looks pretty striking - let's hope it stays that way!

My geums (Mai Tai, Mrs Bradshaw and Scarlet Tempest) are coming up beautifully and bringing me much joy.

Oh, and I also went to the allotment, put up a polytunnel and planted more strawberries and some French beans.

Am knackered and need to stop buying plants. I have a ton of nemesis Wisley Vanilla sitting outside the back door that smell divine but have no home...

*nemesia 🙄

Ahhh! That suddenly makes so much more sense.

@DougAndTheSlugs, until recently I had two excellent mousers who were feral kittens (and stunted for the same reasons). I now have their successors who have yet to shape up in this regard.

Did about 1.5 hours gardening with DH and filled the green bin cutting back things and weeding. Also planted 6 lavenders in pots and 1 jasmine.

Moved tomatoes and courgettes into the greenhouse, moved broad beans from greenhouse to outside. Went to watch our local team lose at cricket.

Third courgette may or may not get potted up tomorrow - I have reached the bottom of the compost heap and need to turn over one of the other bins, which made it too big a job to do after cricket.

SarahAndQuack we had lost our previous mousers and outright amazing cats in 2020 to old age. As soon as they were gone the vermin moved in! The new cats are catching up and doing a sterling job. Interestingly and happily they are not that fussed about the birds and our blackbird family have stayed in the garden. Except pigeons. They have caught a pigeon or two, but they could catch a hundred here and not make a dent (farming country, unusually large population because so much food is available to them). Love my Slugs, and Doug too.

Planted out my new bed for flowers in the allotment today.

Front row: night scented stock.
behind that: groups of cosmos (short) and of florist's dill
behind that: groups of blue lace flower and korean mint
behind that: groups of straw flowers and apricot stock
In the far right corner: sunflowers

I've also netted it because the rooks blackbirds and pigeons get very interested in any new bed I do up and have a right rootle. I want the plants to settle in and the birds to lose interest before I expose the bed to real life.

Weeding the front garden, but was delighted to find a lot were actually cosmos seedlings (tiny win!)

@DougAndTheSlugs I wish my cats would go for pigeons!

But I mustn’t complain - they’re pretty good on rats.

And that’s why weeding is not “grunt work” that “anyone can do without any skills or knowledge” as has been asserted in another thread.

I have fallen dreadfully behind on account of the horrible weather. The rain then wind then rain then wind that we've had has formed a hard crust on top of my garden so seeds are struggling to break through. I've been out with a new little hand hoe and dealt with the weeds, which has also dealt with the crust as well, so I'm hopeful that's the end of that for this year!

Funny story about gardeners: we got someone in to tidy up our garden after I broke my arm a few years ago. I showed them what I needed done, then joked about my crop of thistles and how impressive they were. They weeded everything else but left the thistles.

I suppose it was Scotland so I shouldn't have been surprised.

Serves you right for joking while giving instructions Just be thankful you didn’t joke about one of your favourite plants making a bid for world domination!

My mother had a gardener who was not dissimilar. He was really an allotmenteer and not very knowledgeable about ornamental plants. A vague instruction to please weed this bed led to it being stripped bare, with everything thrown in the green bin.

I've treated most of the garden with Nemaslug, dull job but worth doing. Then I spent some considerable time picking slugs and snails off the pots in the greenhouse. Planted the baby tomatoes out and a couple of plants that I bought in the walled garden at Holkham Hall. Treated one of the chickens with some purple spray, spraying her was easy but catching her was a big, 2 man job. Tomorrow is for tidying pots I think. I'm very grubby now so a shower is called for. Leftover chinese for dinner so no cooking.

Have not been able to go out in the garden for a while and have been so impressed with all your activity.

Have been out today and have: dug up some bits of phlomis that are trying to come back after I dug up the main plant, transplanted a load of cyclamen I bought last year and dumped in a veg bed while I decided what to do, mulched a bit of garden. And pruned hacked some of my out of control 'woodland glade'.

Shamefully I've been here over 10 years and some if it showed no signs of ever having been pruned. No wonder it is overgrown and nothing nice will grow there.

In a low point, I also found several sites of what I am sure is bindweed.

An unplanned but overdue tidy-out of the utility corner at the side of the house, prompted by us seeing a young rat climbing around in the pieris on the patio. I should have known I was tempting fate by starting to think about compost bins the other day. We didn't mind the voles, and wouldn't have worried too much if we'd seen a rat at the bottom of the garden but this is right next to the kitchen door and he was pretty much eyeballing the cheese sandwich DH was eating at the time.

Anyway... no rat nests detected but the excess leaves which accumulate have been cleared and my pot store is sorted.

That put the kybosh on our planned trip out today but that meant that after a local walk I could do some gardening. I've planted out some lychnis coronaria seedlings and the biggest of the cosmos (the latter needed pinching out too, tiny flower buds forming already). Also planted out 3 tobacco plants grown last year from a pack of out of date seeds given me at the local nursery. They were too late last year to flower but they kept fine in the growhouse over the winter.

Potted on the 3 bought tomato seedlings, the tumbling Tom into a hanging basket. They can stay with some protection a while longer but I've hung the basket of Cupid sweet pea seedlings on the arbour.

And some weeding and bulb deadheading.

The clematis Montana is pretty much in full bloom now, and releasing its lovely soft vanilla scent into the warm air.

I’ve had a brilliant day with grandchildren , but did feel sad to miss a fine day in the garden. We went to a farm cafe with alpacas etc, but the animal that most excited them was of course the slinking rat.

Oh and I had a garden accident yesterday, my swing seat collapsed with me in it, it looked fine but had rotted in the joints. Should I have moved it into the garage over winter?