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?

We’ve been away for a week and came back to foot high grass so spent yesterday mowing. A couple of roses have bloomed but a few are looking very straggly so I need to pay them some attention.
I emptied some old pots yesterday- I need to sort through and get rid of some more.

Tips on how to kill off the stump of a small oak would be welcome too. I hate cutting trees down but this was too close to the house (and should have been dealt with a few years ago) DH cut it down last year but it keeps sprouting. Have tried covering with black plastic.

a HUGE amount to do because everything’s ready for planting out/potting on at once. Yes. I spent a good part of yesterday turning one of those 6-cell black plant trays, about 15cm x 20cm, into 2sq m of pots.

You can buy stuff to put on the stump of the tree that soaks in and kills it. We've just felled 3 30 year old conifers that are extremely determined to survive and so far this stuff seems to have worked. We did cover it with a black sack until it had done it's job.

Nothing in my garden...but I did go to the Chelsea Flower Show! Weather crap but loads of beautiful plants to see.

I've done a lot of weeding, then I cut the lawn, it was really too wet but I think I got
away with it.

Oh no, Hedjwitch! I’ve mostly been running errands, but am now catching up on the telly coverage of Chelsea. I was saying earlier that I felt sorry for anyone there who was getting soaked.

as it was raining and over-filling the water butt, I filled the pond, gave the greenhouse a good water and watered the pots that seem to stay dry even in the rain

Planted out a pumpkin and 2 tubs of bedding plants, earthed up my potatoes and put my new bare root nectarine into a big pot because I’ve not got my act together to sort out the bed I want it in.

Pruned some terminal buds off one of the apple trees because it looks to have some powdery mildew. Apples are proving to be a PITA, I’ve got one with wooly aphids, this one that seems to have both powdery mildew and cedar rust and one with apple scab. Luckily the one that decided to randomly dump all its leaves in May last year seems to be happier at the moment.

Yeah,disappointing not to have a lovely sunny day. Been planning this for so long so the miserable weather was a bit of a bugger. However,still nice to be there and see the exhibits

My house and garden are both a mess.

DH died three years ago after being ill for many years. Trying to get my head back to normal and I've a few physical issues which have held me up - the knees are shot and I had a shoulder decompression over a year ago.

Have managed to cut my front hedge into shape - it's about 6 ft and I may yet take the height down a bit. I think it's lonicera nitida.

The side boundary is probably cotoneaster. It's the length of 5 houses. The council is supposed to cut the exterior, but missed it completely one year; since then, they've only cut it once a yr instead of twice. They also chopped it down too small at one end, so it went from 6ft at the highest point ot two ft at the lowest.

I've managed to cut the side hedge inside and out by myself. Last yr, I managed to do about half of it and when the council came out, whoever did that half tried to follow the line, so I'm hoping that by doing all of it, I'll encourage the council not to butcher the top end later on in the year.

I'm also on a mission to root out ivy from the hedges and also sycamore saplings. There's a large sycamore on council ground. I see that one of my neighbours now has a large sycamore sapling next to her birch and a few of the neighbours have just cut sycamore saplings into their hedging. I've realised that I have two in the boundary between my hedge and next door. I've tried to uproot them, with no success. Gave them a spray with glyphosate to try to weaken them.

I also cleaned bird mess of my hut door, meaning to give a coat of creocote, but we now have a flood warning...We've had one shower of rain today.

It's due to rain here for the next couple of days but still dry and sunny today. So we went to Tatton Park this morning, which we've not been to for years. The rhododendrons and azaleas are at the peak of perfection.

I thought I was going outside for a stroll round doing the odd bit of tieing in and tidying... but I noticed most of the clematis Montana had gone over so thought I might as well start pruning it a bit...
Which of course ended up as pulling out great tangled swathes, about half a bin full once it was squashed down. I've done about half of it, the rest still has enough sweet vanilla flowers to be left a bit longer.

So much has started to come out in the last few days - a couple of varieties of geranium, aquilegias, ornamental onions, some of the roses, foxgloves, oriental poppies and geum. I love this particular stage where the summer flowers have begun but they're still amid a soft sea of forget-me-nots.

You’ve inspired me to tackle the clematis montana here. It’s got very leggy, with most of the flowers on top of the neighbours’ shed and reaching into the apple tree, so a big prune is probably overdue.

I’ve been trying to sort clematis as well - we have an archway thing with clematis and roses growing over it, though when we moved in it was so overgrown and tangled that you couldn’t actually walk through. In the process of trying to tame it and reclaim the path I seem to have managed to kill the plants growing in 3 out of the 4 corners, so this year I’ve taking cuttings from the remaining ones to hopefully be able to replace it.

Though I’m pretty tempted to ditch the Montana in favour of a group 3 that I can just chop to the ground at the end of each year…

I should attempt some clematis cuttings. I’ve lost so many over the years and cuttings might have been an insurance. I’m currently staring hard at Kermesina, which is supposed to be covering an obelisk but seems to have shrunk to a couple of spindly stems.

I'm ridiculously bad at thinking about doing cuttings or dividing perennials. Except of the hylotelephium spectabile which almost does the job for you.

I got a replacement for the slugged to invisibility Nellie moser, moved the original into the border in the hope it regenerates there. The roots looked ok so there's a good chance.

they're still amid a soft sea of forget-me-nots. I mowed the “lawn” last night, carefully avoiding the sea of blue bugle backed by red campion, then avoiding the sea of forget-me-not, then I worked my way round the mulberry and found another blue sea, this time of germander speedwell. I do so love that bit of my garden!

That sounds perfect. I'd love to just get rid of our grass and have a flower lawn.

That would be a mammoth task though, and I wouldn't know where to start.

Hate mowing the lawn.

I planted an Etoile Violette about 30 years ago, but it got slugged every year and disappeared. Then about 10 years ago, I found it in full flower half way up a lilac, and since then it has flowered its socks off every year.

Except last year when its lilac fell over. But I expect another resurrection.

Clematis have a huge will to live

I’m pretty bad with clematis apart from Montana. I plant one most years but they never seem to survive more than a year or two.
I notice my next door neighbour has the same issue.
In our old house they used to thrive. We had a beautiful blue Alpina that grew through a pale yellow rose.

I've been using my polytunnel all winter for the semi tame feral cats to live in during the day. I put lining paper down, old towels etc and some cat beds and of course a few cardboard boxes to keep them off the actual soil. They love it in there when it is raining and it has been almost consistently here since 18th October.

So yesterday I planted up the first side, half of it. I cut the cardboard into wide strips to go inbetween each line of plants, and strung them up. I moved all their cat beds closer together. I have a range of pallet pieces that I've sawn into around 15 inch lengths that I use to weight things down, which I used to weigh the edges of all the cardboard down. And this morning they are ALL INTACT.

I put in tomatoes in lines, vines at the back and in the middle and a bush at the front. In between those are 2 peppers per line of tomatoes. And at the end of one side is a courgette for early harvest and at the other I've put in 2 of my 'leave them be don't prune' tomatoes, with a net to just push the ends into to keep it up. And in front of that 9 fish peppers in a grid format. For these I popped a coldframe over until they are big enough to be tied up with string to the frame.

The other side is currently full of trays of tomatoes, peppers, and a range of flowers which are all covered again with cold frames that the cats love lying on top of. So once I can start to properly plant out those in the garden, I'll do the same with that side.

Apparently the rain might actually start stopping at the weekend and into next week.

Planted a Mme. Alfred Carrière behind the apple tree to hopefully grow along the trellis at the top of a wall . Lady Emma Hamilton was planted further forward in the same bed.

Started hardening off broad beans which are pathetic and leggy currently and will definitely need support. It’s going to be a mixed veg and flower bed until I the raised beds up and running which I’m not in a hurry to do as will need a lot of filling.

Nearly planted out rhubarb which is well travelled around several allotments, however I spotted a bit of bindweed in the pot so it isn’t going in at the moment as don’t want to introduce it to the garden. I might leave it in the pot until the autumn the brush off all the soil before planting out.

Noticed a shrub starting to flower from a distance that will look at more closely once the flowers are out. I think that’s probably the last thing I didn’t know about, it’s a year now since we bought the house.

🤣🤣 It's peed down with rain all day.