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?

I might do it in the next week or so and plant something I’ll get value out of this year. I figure I’ve got nothing to lose.

Jimmyneutronsforehead I'm really hoping whatever this is is mild on me.

I do hope so, Mums and gardeners can't take too many days off.

Yours does sound a bit different, I had no joint pain, but could not regulate my body temperature for two weeks, with repeated chills and sweats. Flippin' heck. It did start with a sore throat though.

Been away for a while and came back to a jungle- been pulling out about to flower goutweed- cutting roots to throw in bin and put rest in compost. My back is aching and can hardly move.

Im carrying a lot of extra cakes... I mean weight on me these days 🤭

That's possibly what's doing my joints in.

I've been drinking more water because my lips keep going dry so I'm weeing for England and France and every time I walk upstairs my knees cry and I think someone keeps adding an extra stair when I'm not looking.

I did see a plant I've not seen/registered in my plant memory bank growing as a weed on our local roundabout while I was on the school run, and I wish I'd Google lensed it because I wouldn't actually mind one in the garden.

It was like a red hot poker but thin and purple. Tomorrow I shall have my camera at the ready!

My peony has yet to make an appearance this year, let alone flower. But it’s one of those that looks like an oversized maroon dishmop, so I’m not fussed. DS had a tree peony which had giant pink cabbages, so when it started producing suckers I didn’t worry. It’s now a neat bush with dark pink open flowers and lots of stamens - far nicer.

Covid? That’s what my similar thing turned out to be. (I test because of visiting Dad in a nursing home)

Linaria pupurea, Purple Toadflax

Yes, that's the one!

I shall buy a couple to offset all the plants that have been munched on. The one on the roundabout looks quite slug hardy.

We spoke to the Peony lady at the Chelsea Flower Show and she said the most common reason for peonies not flowering is that they are planted too deep.

There are no buds yet on any of my peonies. I might try to raise them somehow.

Our peonies have been in since this house was bought 42 years ago. I think they need splitting as they've not been split for a few years, my nan used to do it as it's her house really but her hip has been a bit dicky and I've never split anything before so I don't really know how or when to do it.

Had a tantrum about the fucking slugs.

I'm on holiday so quite glad to see there's been, and will be more, rain on and off at home. Which is a bit mean but think of the plants! we visited Fairhaven gardens in Norfolk today, I'm now lusting after candelabra primroses. I used to have some but they got pushed out by thugs at some point.

We have three peonies which must have been planted years ago by the amazingly talented gardener who owned the house before us. Two have flowered and gone over now and one is just coming into bud. All in the same bed so I assume they are different varieties?

I planted out the rest of my craspedia today which I grew from seed. I'm praying the slugs won't eat it after eight weeks of being nurtured in the greenhouse. I love it as a dried flower so really hope it succeeds.

Moved a few foxgloves which had self-seeded in the wrong place and split some erigeron which I love so much. Our Mme Alfred Carrière is lovely this year so I spent ten minutes admiring it with a glass of wine in hand 😍

I have a greenhouse question. If you have seedlings/young plants in the greenhouse at this time of year do you close the door and windows completely at night or leave them open to allow ventilation? I've just read it's going to be 4 degrees here tonight. I tend to leave the door open a little as the cat sleeps there but wonder if seedlings might be damaged and new seeds I have sown will be too cold.

I did wonder but stupidly did not test.

If so it took me five years to catch it. Not bad. But I still feel quite bad so actually, can't joke about it. At all.

@ObliviousCoalmine 😫me too. Stupid slugs.

@Jimmyneutronsforehead toadflax is one of my favourite garden plants. It self seeds, it flowers for months, and the bees love it.

Finished clearing my section of the common path. The woman in the garden at right angles to mine should have done half of the section, but there's no chance of that...

Leaf mould, rubbish, broken branches, offcut of plastic (from when the neighbour had gravel laid?) general rubbish. 5 bags at least. That's the brown bin and the landfill bin full.

I couldn't do it last year - had a shoulder op then.

Also pulled up some sycamore seedlings and a sycamore sapling, plus some brambles. I'm trying to rescue my neglected greenhouse.

Anyway: nice things - plenty of self-sown Welsh poppies, both yellow and green. I seem to have two descendants of the Wm Guinness/Magpie aquilegia that we planted years ago. Plenty of deep purple almost black aquilegia round the front; also some lighter purple. Round that back, a Red Barlow has just about survived in a pot.

My Johnson's Blue geranium/cranesbill has survived the onslaught of the superthug hubrid geranium which has taken over my garden and it turns out that the biokovo geranium has also survived.

Plenty of ajuga around. I've forgotten the name, but it's a purple variety.

Also three of the roses that I dug up and put in pots in desperation when I had to empty Mum's council house have survived. (I don't feel guilty - the new tenants turned Dad's garden into parking spaces.)

I split my Peonies at the end of the summer/ early autumn. I think it was September. I had four large clumps (including the one that didn't flower) I only split them as I am moving later this year.
Dig the clump and divide so that you have between three or five good stems. per section. The more stems the sooner they will flower the following year/s and you will have bigger plants. Dig deep they have deep roots, I divide with a bread knife.
Mine are in pots and they all attempted to flower, I removed the buds this year, so that they concentrate on roots.

If you are desperate to move them now, it's worth a go, but really it's an autumn job. I wouldn't split now.

I’ll try to divide and move them in the Autumn. I don’t mind them now, they look green and fresh and there’s not much I can plant there without it being eaten, apart from geraniums, and quite frankly I have geraniums coming out of my ears by now. At least the bees are happy about them, so there’s that.

Normally I leave the doors wide open, but if it’s going down to 4 deg I might close them just for tonight.

I used to use a wireless connected pair of thermometers, one unit went in the greenhouse, and alerted the one in the kitchen if the greenhouse got too cold.

Probably not too late to test, if you have a test in the house and want to satisfy your curiosity.

Anyway: nice things - plenty of self-sown Welsh poppies, both yellow and green Green??!! Never seen those! Orange, yes, but not green. Treasure them!

the new tenants turned Dad's garden into parking spaces. If they tarmaced it, they were supposed to have got planning permission. But if tenants, they probably just parked on it.

Here in Melbourne in the first days of winter, more clearing and winter pruning.
I dug up a small pomegranate tree, about four years old but every year the blossoms blow away in the frequent winds, so no fruit. Time to go. Oddly the small mandarin/satsuma trees right next to it fruit easily.

LOTS of weeding, as the mild winter is weed time to the max.