What have you done in the garden today? Part 5

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

Keep us posted 😊 Are they mixed or just one colour?

I'd accumulated a selection which I decided to plant out so they don't get too old, including blue, purple and mixed colours with the wonderful scent. I also found a dwarf variety 'Bijou' which I'll put in a large pot on the patio.

Yes, brambles canes. Remove the leaves and cut into sections arrange around plants.

It's worked for my carrots and some of my newly planted high risk babies (lupins, cosmos) I can't do every plant as I have a big garden. I'm doing the dahlias today though.

Apart from that seek and destroy. I'm out at 5 am everyday collecting them, plus I am checking every hiding space as I weed and plant the annuals.

I am a bit obsessive and retired for context.

Risk with bramble canes is that they root and overtake everything.
I prefer holly boughs, and leave the leaves on. The risk with that is the leaves get sharper as they dry and will pierce through gardening gloves when you try to work near the soil.

I haven't had them root, but I do remove when the seedlings have toughened up/ end of season.

I don't find holly to be a deterrent at all, I have a huge holly that sheds it's leaves next to a shed and the snails love living there.

I don't use loose holly leaves, I cut short sections of branch so the spiky leaves stay pointing out. That seems to do the trick, and also keeps cats off.
I have had brambles root, quite quickly too. I'm not sure what's in my soil, but things grow quickly and easily in it despite my ham fisted approach to garden maintenance.

It's very reassuring to know that most people have a slug and snail problem this year. I can't seem to get things to germinate, and when they finally do, they are eaten immediately by the slimy pests. I don't use pellets but this year I might have to.

Hope your injury heals well @Hedjwitch

My newly planted courgette is still alive on its hillock of strulch! I might take the risk of planting out the remaining 2 that are still in pots! Thank goodness I kept all the seedlings ! New french beans are sprouting too. If it stays dry and the sun comes out maybe I’ll get some veg this year!

Had a result yesterday - FIL cut all our grass, and DH decided that he wanted the gravel that I’ve been removing from a bed bit by bit for another project so they did about 3 wheelbarrows for me. Meant I had time to have a run round with the strimmer and today can focus on weeding and planting out. Might need to convert another bit of lawn to vegetable bed because he also turned up with some yellow courgettes and some leeks.

Also pleased that the bare root nectarine I planted a couple of weeks ago is looking a lot happier, completely wrong time to get one but it was so cheap I thought it was worth a punt and it’s started to properly leaf out. And so far my latest bunch of cuttings are looking really promising.

I'll get loads of hate for this 🙄 - my lawn was 75% geranium, and it was awful- I tried removing it but it's very tough and I got nowhere with it.
I got a lawn company in to weed and reseed. You could also try digging a few feet of soil and then replacing it with new soil and turf but you're on a slope so that option will be tricky.

Really pleased with my progress this weekend - moved a tonne of compost, removed 5 tree stumps, filled in an old path. Now everything I don't want is out of the soil and the ground is fairly level I am finally ready to start planting. So excited!!!

@ungarden I also got a lawn company in. Mine was 75% moss.

Trying to do it yourself is backbreaking. The lawn company whizz round with their machines and it looks way better.

Every now and then I feel a bit guilty and wonder about a flowering lawn but then I remember how shit the lawn used to be.

Which geranium are you both having trouble with?

I've made a note to never plant any geraniums in my garden! Not much planned for the garden today. Although I did dead head one of my plants around 9 a.m. It's a bank holiday weekend here and the sun is shining (these two things rarely coincide in Ireland ) so I'm joining in a local festival and bringing a picnic. DD has her boyfriend over so she has talked him into mowing the lawn for her. I reckon it's a fair exchange for dinner last night and a bed after the festival.

Mostly shining geranium.

And then a few self seeded hybrids too.

Our garden is massive, we're a corner house and we've got 2 "front" lawns, separated by a path to the house, then a side lawn at the side of our garage then a back lawn at the back of the garage and then it wraps round the back of our house, which is fortunately fenced off and I've started killing the grass there through smothering so I can plant a tapestry lawn.

Everything except the back garden is mostly taken over by geranium.

Also I'm afraid I might have made it sound like we live in a really posh house, it's just an ex-council house end semi but with a really liberal amount of land.

We even had a bramble problem that was about 25 years in the making and then along came the shining geranium and thankfully now we don't have a bramble problem, but we have got something much worse that just won't die.

Sorry, shiny geranium. Cranesbill. Using text to type and it's not always perfect.

Same here shiny geranium - even bind weed is easier to deal with.

I’m grateful for the geraniums this year. Just moved and split a Samobor. Everything else is eaten by the bastarding slugs and snails.

Some Geums are still standing, so I’m thinking I’ll plant some more instead of providing dahlia salad.

Finally got the grass cut and some more potting done. First rose is out and foxgloves just beginning to flower. So lucky to have this precious little green space.

Oh I have the cranesbill. I don't mind that as much as all the many many other weeds.

Am also staggered by the ability of grass to grow absolutely anywhere EXCEPT in my lawn. No, don't like the shady bit of the lawn, that'll have to be moss. But in the shady border that is much much more shady that the lawn, yes please this seems nice.

Today DH has kindly cut down the pyracantha which had got carried away and full of ivy. I couldn't untangle the ivy and that had started on the front of the house. He's also cut back the twisted hazel which we had chopped down last year, but decided to treat that as coppicing and grow back.

We have a tree surgeon coming to grind out the stumps so hopefully the hazel will get the message. Will also ask him to do the pyracantha as it's right by the house and neither DH or I like it, plus it attacks us each time we prune it.

Mulched the border I weeded yesterday. I have one weedy border left, looked at it and felt a bit overwhelmed. It may take more than one weekend to do.

I'm soaking in a hot bath as I type this! Have planted up two new salvias today - salvia nemerosa 'Sensation Rose' and another with a French name that escapes me right now. Plus, a couple of geum 'Totally Tangerine', a couple of gauras from the sad plant shelf and some achillea which is a lovely burnt orange colour but I forget its name. Watered, deadhead, fed everything.

I got talking to one of the assistants at the garden centre who was telling me all about the time he met David Austin and started showing me pictures of his own garden 😂

I also went to the allotment and covered pretty much everything that isn't an actively growing plant with a shedload of half-rotted bark chippings. I'm fed up of weeding the damn thing and will definitely be committing to no-dig next year!

Now I need a glass of WINE.

I love my geraniums, the only weedy one is herb Robert but that's easy to pull out (if smelly). I've got a patch of that vigorous pink one that has taken over an unnecessary bit of lawn between the border and the arbour, it does have to be controlled to stop it spreading sideways but I've reclaimed a section of border from it, it's not too hard to dig out the roots.

Some of my others have been in since the early days, there used to be a pair of adjacent private gardens open to the public near us, one of which had a national collection of geraniums and they did plant sales. Unfortunately they didn't continue; the side which didn't have the geraniums is now a nursery specialising in acers which I'll hopefully use in future.

I'm in year 3 of my no dig veg beds and it's wonderful how little effort you have to put in.

In one of the beds I did actually have to dig because what was sold to me as a small globe artichoke was actually a giant silver cardoon and I'd planted it right against the wall of our conservatory so it had to go. I did love it though. So that bed did get dug so I expect I might have turned over some weed seeds.

I'm 2 hours away from home. I've been and dipped my toes in the sea, and now I'm heading back home to see what damage those bastard slugs and snails have done.

I totally agree @Hedjwitch - I feel so lucky every day to have a little patch of earth. I think my love of it came from 'the secret garden' which my dad read to me when I was 6. Been enchanted with gardens ever since.
Finally got a little patch at the age of 39 and the novelty hasn't worn off.

Today I bought 2 aubergine plants and put them in big pots in the warm. Watered all the toms and chillies. Looked at my various ailing squashes but decided to just wait and see. Earthed up my potatoes.

BBQ'd and ate some sausages

Right first time. In England it’s Shining geranium or Shining cranesbill.

It’s a lot easier to pull up than brambles

I took some of the poles from coppicing a hazel and started building a rustic “fence” to tame the raspberries and divide the “orchard” from the next bit of garden. Then I took some more poles for the uprights of a curved dead hedge in the “woodland”. Pruned the Lonicera henryi to stop it swallowing next door’s apple tree. Found two roses - a lovely deep pink wild one, and Alister Stella Gray, which I’d taken a cutting of, and which is now flowering high up in the trees. David Austin says it grows to 15m. I should perhaps believe that everything grows well in this garden and stop buying more vigorous than they need so they can cope with winter sogginess.