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?

Tiny snails have eaten all the leaves from my Nellie Moser too 😔

Talking of clematis ... I've now completed planting a collection of different clematis along our low stone wall. Some before winter and a couple of extras that were in pots. I saw a version of this in a local garden with the branches flopping over the wall with a beautiful cascade of flowers and I thought I'd give it a try. I think one of the plants may have succumbed to snails as there's no growth at all coming from ground level - hopefully some new growth will come but I'm not hopeful

Rain was biblical yesterday, couldn't believe how much rain fell in a 30 minute burst, probably a day's worth, the patio was flooded! Including hailstones.

i sheltered in the greenhouse, dividing some dahlia tubers that I rescued from the border. I dug them up to see if there was any sign of life after a winter of rain and spring of cold and more rain. Was expecting them to be all rotten, but was overjoyed to find they were really solid and healthy, with a couple of tiny sprouts. So I've divided them up and replanted them in the greenhouse.

Theyll hopefully catch up with the others which are now officially squatters! I've been holding back planting my main batch of dahlia because of the cold, hopefully they'll be fine by the late May bank holiday weekend. By then I'm evicting them, they're taking up my whole greenhouse! I need to plant the toms and chilli in grow bags. Everything is about 4 weeks behind schedule.

@catwithflowers my front borders are full of foxgloves this year despite not having sown any or grown any there. There must be at least 50 plants so I’m leaving them to see what happens as they’re amongst the roses and perennials.
i love foxgloves so I might sprinkle the seed heads around the back garden later in the year.
Still no joy with the summerhouse here…..

I had a really good tidy up in one of the flower borders yesterday. I pulled out some huge clumps of ox-eye daisies (why I put them in I'll never know!) as they had tripled in size since last year. I also found loads of perennials I had planted last autumn which had been hidden by the more vigorous growers such as the cornflowers and said leucanthemum and have moved them to better spots where they will hopefully thrive. Also moved lots of foxgloves from the front to the middle and back of the bed.

A friend gave me a couple of healthy verbascums so they are now in too. I've planted out my pumpkin seedlings on one of the compost heaps as an experiment. It's fertile stuff so they should do well.

Poured down here last night which was great as it will have watered everything in nicely.

in my experience germination is either near 100% or near zero. So you’re right, definitely don’t sow the whole packet. If you sow only a dozen, you won’t be pricking out hundreds of seedlings, and if they don’t germinate, you can have another go

I've never managed to grow foxgloves from a pack of seed but have a mix of white and purple selfseeders from a couple of plants bought many years ago.
I quite like them popping up in random positions but they seem unfazed by transplantation

I might have to buy a white one and hope it self seeds. Last year B&M had some plants which were well priced but you had to get into the shop within a few days of them arriving as the plants never seemed to be very well cared for once they left the nursery 😕

Bucking the trend here, because my greatest success recently with growing from seed has been with foxgloves. No idea why or how, as other ‘easy’ things often fail at the germination or growing on stage.

Well I've not planted the foxgloves today, and considering we've a week of rain ahead that might have been a mistake, however I have planted my tomatoes and cucumbers which I also just sowed onto one solid mat of compost in my laziness so we'll see if they survive the shock.

Did finally take out my giant silver cardoon today, which was beautiful just in the wrong spot. Only took 17 days of digging to get all the roots and pups out though. 😮‍💨

Done a couple of bits today but nothing like you ladies achieve !

• more weeding in the front border
• moved some pots of hostas to a new position
• looked sadly at the jungle of weeds that was once a herbaceous border and has such potential, thought about what plants I wanted to go in it. I have posted fantasy abd reality 😂
• fantasised about waking up and finding the garden totally cleared abd a team of burly shirtless chaps ready for my direction abd a bottomless plant budget
• started the long-put-off task of refurbishing our neglected BBQ
• started off another much-prevaricated task of getting a tip run ready
• divided some overcrowded houseplants and repotted them
• potted on my 3 yellow courgette seedlings

so essentially starting tasks. Hopefully I might actually finish them. I want to clean off our decking so I can arrange the furniture ready fir our pool to go up but unfortunately DH is building a new fence and there are lots of piles of counted-out wood all over it 😭

A day's holiday at home, so after Pilates I went plant shopping. Somehow, despite living here since 1995 I'd never been to the plant centre at the local FE college a few miles up the road. We'd been to open days there when DD was young, knew they had lovely gardens and did horticulture, and I was vaguely aware they sold a bit....
I got :
2 each eryngium 'blue hobbit', geranium cinereum 'Guiseppi', Veronica spicata 'Rosa zwerg' and guaranteed 'geyser white' which are dispersed around the borders; a Thunbergia 'rose sensation' which is in a pot on the sunny end of the arbour, a lantana for a pot at the front, snapdragons for another tub, a couple of fuchsias which are in pots at the front with some white alyssum (i never can resist the scent) and then for the patio a mix of blues and white - a couple of salvia 'black and bloom', white pelargonium, anagallis, trailing lobelia and more of the alyssum (the last 3 from the local nursery ... I need to get more.
Also a dozen white busy Lizzies which I've not decided where to put yet.

I was delighted to find I was able to lift the gone-over bulbs, compost and all, out of my blue pots and plonk into plastic ones to finish dying down and store for the summer.

However, I didn't find anything for the shady, very damp corner. Irises are happy there, but everything else drowned other than forget me nots - but they'll be gone soon. Any ideas?

@ErrolTheDragon in my garden, the "damp & shady" stalwarts are London Pride and Crocosmia, but if it's really damp you could just embrace it and make it a moss garden. There are some lovely mosses out there.

Jimmy Did finally take out my giant silver cardoon today, which was beautiful just in the wrong spot. Only took 17 days of digging to get all the roots and pups out though.

Been there, done that!

@ErrolTheDragon Lily of the Valley, Solomon's Seal, Astrantia, Epimedium. Would any of these work in your shady spot? They seem to work well for us and we are in the north east of England.

@ErrolTheDragon thats prompted me to look on the website of the nursery literally 500m from our house I've never been to in the 7 yrs we've been here. It's a community project for people with learning disabilities.
im over to my friend for lunch tomorrow, she lives about 300m the other side of it and is an avid gardener, maybe I'll suggest a little mooch

I'm not sure mosses would like occasional drownings! But I'm curious ... I've never seen mosses for sale, are there specialist suppliers?

@ErrolTheDragon yes there are, and a good moss carpet goes a long way to absorbing a surprising amount of what would otherwise be a flooded area.

https://mossclerks.co.uk/collections/live-moss

However, I didn't find anything for the shady, very damp corner. Irises are happy there, but everything else drowned other than forget me nots - but they'll be gone soon. Any ideas? Astilbe? Marsh marigold, Caltha palustris. Ragged robin, Lychnis flos-cuculi (pink and white versions available). Water avens, Geum rivale, perhaps some of the garden varieties.

Sorry about that, I meant to ditch the quote but posted too soon

Depends which moss. Sphagnum species like to be drowned most of the time. Calliergonella cuspidata regularly invades ponds. Mosses absorb water through their leaves, so they can dry out completely then rehydrate quickly (some in seconds - watching the leaves uncurl looks like time lapse photography) and most don’t rot easily so can stand being inundated. Sphagnum species are made mainly of huge water retaining cells - thats why we use them to line hanging baskets.

https://www.thebryophytanursery.com/

Ha, yes my small barrel pond often has a moss surface! I'm not sure I want that elsewhere but maybe I'll sling it on the boggy bit instead of binning next time I have a clearout.
I'd hoped to get marsh marigolds but I've not found anywhere selling them ... maybe need to look online. The sensible thing may be to move some of the astilbes from further up the garden from where they dried out and went crispy last year, though they're obviously looking fine this year so far!

My next dumb question... just checked the morning glory seedlings on the windowsill upstairs. I think I can probably put them out to harden off now, but they're starting to get flower buds already - not sure if at this stage I should pinch those off?

My entire tray of Creme de Cassis Hollyhocks has germinated ! In double quick time too. I've never managed to get them to flower before when grown from seed or bought at a nursery, can anyone give me some tips ? They always seem to get eaten. How long would you leave them in the seed tray before you pot on ?

I planted some geums into the border today. I'm late to the party with geums but I've really fallen for them.

Today didn't go exactly to plan. Well, for a start off the forecast had been for rain all day so I'd planned a potter to the nice nursery on the other side of town. But this morning it had changed to more or less dry.

So, I thought I'd go and transplant some astilbes. But then i thought, oh, while I'm about it I could put some in that more or less bare area near where DH excavated a drainage hole back in March, but first I need to get rid of those little shoots where the thing like a huge pink meadowsweet has spread...
So, it turns out that these little shoots were deep because DH had piled up the spoil from the hole, and he'd dumped it on top of the vinca which had been there. And, it turned out, still was, pretty much intact. So that turned into a rather heavy session of digging and hacking with the hori hori... during which of course it started to rain hard.

After lunch, a trip to the local nursery for compost ..returned with a couple of red geums and blue salvia, a brunnera to replace astilbes, some bedding plants and a salvia 'hot lips'. Most of which are planted, plus filled a large pot with sweet peas... but didn't get round to moving the astilbes