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?

Frogs or hedgehogs might be better at taking care of a rosemary beetle problem, but I don't have either in the front garden where the rosemary is.

Ah thank you maybe it’s frogs. We don’t have hedgehogs as we have badgers.

It's too cold and wet for me today, but l have been watching a YouTube video of a gardener called Claus Dalby. His garden is to die for. I get a lot of gardening ideas from YouTube and interesting to see other people's gardens and their own different methods.

Oooh this might be my thread to bump start my gardening this year. My garden feels too big and overgrown for me to even know where to start!

I love how this new thread is drawing in new people, too!

How typical, I had two weeks off apart from 2 nights and was hoping to get a bit done in the garden. It rained for thr entire time part from about 4 hours while I was sleeping between my nights.
today, the day I have to go to my aged parents, typically is the first day it's been nice. It's beautiful here and instead of spending it in the garden I will be stuck in mum and dads sauna-temperature-heated house where the windows cannot possibly be opened in case a drought gets in or the cat gets out. Then I'm back to work tomorrow. I'll bet £100 it will be gorgeous until Sunday when I am on nights and then it will tip down again 🤣

on a positive note I did manage to chuck out the last of the manky hanging baskets that were all rotten. Does anyone know of a place that sells rattan/cane effect hanging baskets in plastic ? They always rot for me so to have a realistic looking plastic set that I could just reuse year after year would save me a fortune, but the only ones I can find are the ugly black ones.

They sell some grey ones on Amazon @£10.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smart-Garden-Rattan-Hanging-Planter/dp/B07HMCDPH9

Doesn’t matter where you start, but start small! Choose a small area, (maybe the bit that offends you most) 4sq m or less with an idea of what you want to do with it, and do that. Once you have that bit done, it will bring you joy while you choose the next bit to attack. Tidiness will slowly creep across the garden.

A tip re lawns - whatever the state of the lawn, it will look immeasurably better with neat edges.

Here's a couple of my hellebores - hadn't realised they were different! Bought both years ago & planted them too close together; one took off & completely overshadowed the other, so this year I moved the smaller one & it's looking lovely this year!

Raining....
I mislaid my back door key which prompted a cleanup of the utility room, which is where I keep my small gardening tools etc, so that was useful. And gave my gardening coat and trousers a much-needed wash!

Too cold today. But the man with the van has been and taken all the rubbish away so at least I can see what's what.

Today I took an accumulated 12 sacks of prickly prunings round to the tip. I’ve been meaning to do this since Christmas but it’s one of these jobs I put off.

Now I can start pruning roses and loganberries

Been for lunch with a friend, so not much actual gardening, but did buy some cardboard cell trays in the pound shop.

About three hours of weeding. dug up some random strawberries in the borders to put into containers.
Cut back a few bushes and pruned a tree.
Moved all of last years cuttings out of the greenhouse, everything is healthy and alive, The peonies that I divided last year and potted up are all budding, left them in greenhouse for now.
Seed sowing, chrysanthemum, sunflowers, poppies, eryngium, cosmos, lupins. I did a lot of veg last week..now have three big window cills full.
The promise of spring ❤️I feel great for being outside for a big chunk of the day.

It started to rain just after I came in, which made me very happy. Tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle until I defrost.

Planted the snowdrops I dug up the other day, about 50 or 60? bunches, in a mini-bank along a path. I ache but the virtue is dripping off me 😇

Had such a lovely day in the garden today, bit cold but mainly dry which was perfect. I've rearranged all my spring pots to make a pretty display by the front door and tidied up the edges of a couple of big borders in the lawn...my back didn't allow me to finish the whole job but I've made a big dent in it

I've been weeding. Today's garden had several absolutely monstrous leylandii which were taken down a couple of years ago and the stumps ground out. It's massively increased the space, light and soil moisture, but seems to have brought every weed seed in the village to the surface, where they are all merrily germinating. It would be brilliant to do more there but the weed situation has to be got on top of. Other than pruning and cutting back, it's all I seem to do. Saying that, it does feel like I'm starting to make headway.

There's a bed at the end of that garden with some fruit trees and not much else going on. I thought I might put some potatoes and squashes in, which would look nice, be productive and provide some ground cover.

Lovely sunny afternoon so the perfect opportunity to weed and tidy up the pots near the house while being eyed by a curious kitten (she is too young to be outdoors yet) from the kitchen window.

It is very satisfying to see all the potted plants - lavenders, fennel, mints, oregano, rose, bamboo, gooseberry, sorrel, and a sink of nettles (for compost and caterpillars) - have weathered the winter and are springing back to life. And to see the lush fresh growth on the bamboo and red robin.

I may, however, have achieved the impossible and killed off one container of mint. I won’t give up on it yet though, because mint has surprised me by coming back from seemingly stone dead before.

I quite often find that mint fails over the winter. I’m currently giving the apple mint a daily stare, in the hope it’ll reveal whether it’s dead or just biding its time.

It was cold but dry here today. If it’s similar tomorrow, I might do some more work on the patch of mud formerly known as the lawn.

Mint does normally die down over winter. The thing that surprised me about it is that the roots also smell of mint.

I’ve had a bloke in to do my hedge and a couple of other brute force high up jobs. So I’ve been able to get on to pruning the raspberries, loganberries, tayberries and blackberries and tying in the new shoots, so feel I’m about a week ahead.

Oh yes, but this looks as if it’s died terminally rather than merely died back. And I’m pretty sure now that the witch hazel has shuffled off this mortal coil.

It's raining and I'm working but I did get round to mending the lining of my gardening coat while it's still nice and clean. I've been cursing it for ages each time I put it on and my arm ended up tangled inside the lining.

The mint I planted last year appears to have turned up its toes in the original planting spot, but has transferred itself to another part of the bed completely! I don't really mind though as the whole bed is just a general 'herbs and highly fragranced things run riot' mishmash of woody herbs, lavender, helichrysum etc, all contained within a brick and cement surround at the side of the house and safely far away from the rest of the garden.

I really need to sort out the sad, neglected white lilac tree at the front this year. It smells stunning when it's in flower, but we've been here 3 years this summer and it's looking less and less perky each year. Lots of dead wood especially in the middle. It needs a very hard prune I think but I have to wait now until after it flowers, don't I? I'm a bit scared - never pruned a tree before!

It needs a very hard prune I think but I have to wait now until after it flowers, don't I? I'm a bit scared - never pruned a tree before!

If there's anything dead, diseased or dying then the sooner it's off the better. But yes, I think lilac is a prune after flowering type.