What have you done in the garden today? Part 6

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

Ordered some pebbles for a small area at the bottom of the garden. They will be delivered on Friday. Hope DS is here to help.
Checked on the alarming amount of frogspawn in our tiny pond. Hopefully the fucking frogs have finished fornicating.

We encountered an absolutely orgiastic mass of dozens of frogs in a pond in a country park last week. I've never actually witnessed them at it en masse before ... frogsporn.😬

Packet of nemaslug arrived today, had forgotten I'd ordered it.

Then had to explain what nematodes were to DH, who became very concerned with what the nematodes were going to eat when they had eaten all the slugs, and were we being cruel to nematodes?

I suspect hell will have frozen over before there are no more slugs in any British garden.

I suspect hell will have frozen over before there are no more slugs in any British garden

How are they so successful? We have hundreds of the little sods.

I feel sorry for all of the creatures whose habitat is being eradicated by early garden clear-up.

@BettyBardMacDonald . It’s not an early clear up, I have stuff to put in the ground. I keep lots of wild spaces, I’ve had to fence off part because the badgers and foxes have runs there and my little dog can escape. My garden is bursting with insects, birds, frog, toads and mammals. Surely I’m allowed to grow some leeks and carrots?

I bought a mini walk in greenhouse from Aldi. DH has promised to erect it. Unfortunately I caught Covid through hospital visiting and though I’m over the virus itself, I feel absolutely grim. I have do much I want to do out there and the weather’s been lovely.

Hope you feel better soon @BestIsWest. I've had it twice now and wouldn't welcome it back

Thanks @TinyMouseTheatre. Second time for me too. The first time was a breeze in comparison.

Erected the Aldi greenhouse yesterday. Going to get some more compost today and get my dahlia tubers in. Very excited.

Yesterday I finally got round to pruning my hyacinths. I've got some yellow primulas that I'll be planting out later day.

My hyacinths still look like this. Is this normal? It's my first time with them.

Of course I meant hydrangas, not hyacinths.

@Rosemaryandlavender1 the flowers on my hyacinths (not my hydrangas, lol) have died now. I cut the flower stalks off and have been feeding the bulbs. I think I'm going to plant them in the ground.

Totally normal for ones that haven’t been forced to bloom early for Xmas.

Meant to start some seeds today but slipped and fell into the garden centre for the 2nd day in a row instead. I'm so clumsy.

Delighted to see today that the hydrangea cuttings I took from my Mum’s last year are doing really well. I plonked them in a sheltered corner over winter and forgot about them. My ensete ventricosum seems to be ok too though I’m a bit nervous of unwrapping it yet. I took a peek through the top of the fleece.

I’m working on digging up the root of a jasmine - one of those that grows like crazy and has a handful of flowers. It is a bugger of a job as it’s jammed up in the corner of a low wall. It grows over an old arbour that DH is going to fix and we’ll paint and I have roses waiting to go in to grow over it.

We've got an overgrown rosemary in the garden that we're going to pull out so I took a load of cuttings a couple of weeks ago and stuck them in water and they're all rooting 😁. I may also have spent rather a lot of money on bare root perennials from Farmer Gracy.

My perennial sweet pea looks like it's about to have it's first ever Good Year, so I've built it a better bamboo and twine obelisk. Except my canes are all on their last legs, I only had a few things ones, so now the obelisk twists like a strand of DNA. I'll pretend it was intentional.

Also got rid of yet more green alkanet seedlings (sigh), and added to the Pot of Snails. I'll release them eventually.

It’s been a week of hard graft in my tiny garden. I sanded and stained my dining set, it looks amazing now, totally worth it. I planted two topiaries in large pots for my front garden. I started pruning my laurel hedge, I need to finish that at the weekend. I emptied my window boxes, replanted the spent bulbs in the fernery, and planted more primulas instead. Moved an Acer to a smaller pot as the previous one was too big and it looked unhappy. Gave the patio a deep clean and moved all my bulb pots around so they are artistically clustered 😂 and I can see them from the kitchen. Tended to the propagator seedlings and the cannas and dahlias that are growing in my kitchen.

My back aches like crazy but things are shaping up nicely.

I haven't done a thing in the garden today, but have learnt an excellent garden-related word.

Yelve: (n) a garden fork, or (v) to use such a fork.

Hello all! Please may I hop on these threads?

I'm determined to sort my gardens this year and keep on top of them.

Front garden is fine. That's mostly slate and a hedge, I weeded lots of little weed seedlings out of that though this week.

Back garden I tidied up today. Swept up, cleaned the patio furniture, moved some things around. Popped some clover seeds in my patchy lawn. Etc.

Then I have a third garden that I've only recently been able to access. It's very big and very very full of brambles. I am determined to defeat them all and carve out a lovely extra garden space. This one will definitely keep me busy!

Planted seed potatoes but suspect they are way too close together( in a box container). Think I'll redo them tomorrow. Had to move this guy first...

Got myself motivated to go out and discovered it was raining.

So have started my seeds off in the porch: sunflowers, cosmos, nicotiana and cleome.

Raining and cold here too. Mowed the front lawn yesterday and continued the ongoing battle with the jasmine stump. Had planned to mow the rest today but it’s freezing out there.