What have you done in the garden today? Part 7

[Jimmyneutronsforehead]

Continuation thread from MereDint's previous threads.

It is kind of turning into a hate/hate situation but they were here before me. Bet next door neighbour thinks hes saving a fortune on feed for the buggers

The beans have been great here. I picked 900g today which I've blanched and frozen.

Beauties!

I'm not jealous, promise 🗡🗡🗡🗡

No but really, well done. It feels like it's been a tough year for vegetables, so that's a wonderful harvest.

It has been a great year here in the vegetable patch. 4kg of white onions, 6kg of red onions, 15 garlic bulbs, lots of salad and cucumbers, celeriac thickening nicely, borlottis 7 feet tall and started to make pods. My oak leaf lettuce are practically trees.

But if it helps, I've had a dessert cherry tree for 8 years and I've had TWO cherries. The pigeons have stripped every other fruit from the tree as soon as they appear as tiny green things.

As per my previous post the pigeons can do one.

Considering the heat my garden has not been disappointing, but the crown prince squash leaves started dying back early this week. At least a month early!! In 2023 I harvested crown prince on August 28 (didn't record for 2024).

They look big enough. But still.

The other squash are still romping away.

I never think to record my harvest dates for my garden stuff, but actually that sounds nichely fun data to collect.

I do have an old paper map of our town where I stick blackberry stickers in good picking spots, and write down the dates and general temperature preceding the picking.

I might need a second book for garden data.

Sorry too late to edit. Just rechecked and it was actually September 23rd. Don't know where I got the other date.

I need a new squash patch. We had a new fence fitted last year, and the difference from 4 foot to 6 foot has blocked off over an hour of sunlight from my beds.

It's difficult to decide where else is best to put a patch though because the prime real estate in the garden has a great big bloody useless garage in the middle of it, and the rest of the garden gets too much shade. We have got some basket hangers, and I'm wondering if I can do upside down squash plants. I've got terrible luck with anything in a hanging basket.

I’ve de-seeded some honesty pods (very satisfying!). Kept some and planted others randomly.
Gave the apple trees a good watering with the watering can.

Today I have cut back some long & wispy bits of honeysuckle, deadheaded my climbing Queen Elizabeth rose (what I could reach of it anyway), discovered that a persistent and annoying bramble has put out more growth so got rid of that, and tidied up some wayward branches on my Judas tree.

We've got a bramble that has probably been here as long as the house has. It's certainly been here for as long as my nan has lived here. That's 46 years ago.

It grows in the rose bushes, and is so impossible to get to because it is all so well established, so we just have to prune it back every year.

I wouldn't mind nearly as much if it gave us some juicy berries but they all seem to be pretty rubbish, malformed berries.

I don't let this one get as far as producing berries! We're only a hundred yards from hedgerows full of blackberries at this time of year, so no need to actually grow my own. lol😂

The gardens one side of me have brambles back and front that constantly come through or under my fence. The garden was originally maintained by a gardener when I first moved here 10 years ago but after the old chap died, from 2015 it's become a bit of a nightmare to me.

I get fed up (no, seething) with trying to protect my garden from being invaded but it's getting harder to spot the brambles in the back garden as I have my own shrubs and plants that shield it from view.

Also, due to the hideous mess in the back garden, I now have a rat coming in so I am not only fighting their blasted overgrowth of greenery, I'm blocking up holes that the bastard thing is digging under the fencing.

Bloody neighbours! 😡

Hello! Hope it’s ok to join in. We’ve acquired a fairly large garden (almost half an acre!) with the property we’re currently living in, so today is going to involve my digging out staghorn roots from the ground. They’re an absolute bastard to get rid of so if I manage one today I’ll be very happy with my achievement.

This is the first time I’ve had a garden, I’m completely in the dark with it all so I’m taking advice from a local handy person and winging the rest.

If you've a spare car tyre, dig round the root as much as you can, tie something strong round it, and pull the rope over the top of the tyre, it'll help alleviate some strain. Wear gloves though.

Love your username btw

Rats are so resourceful.

Around Christmas 2023, we had a rat in our kitchen that took us a month and thousands of pounds to get rid of.

The bastard kept chewing holes in the U bend of the sink, and ate the grounding cable for the washing machine, and the output pipe of the dishwasher, it could smell a trap a mile away, we had exterminators out, we had the drains surveyed at £200/metre, we had the council out, it was an absolute nightmare.

Basically all the professional advice was block what you can but seen as they can climb walls, walk on string, and can dig better than a mole, there's just no way to stop them once they're determined.

It was Christmas eve eve when my uncle walked into the kitchen one night, startled the poor thing, it skittled into a sticky trap (I know, I was 100% against the sticky traps), ran behind the cooker, dodged the snap traps, bounced off the radiator and then sought refuge thankfully in a humane trap. It was like something off mousehunt.

It lived in the garage over Christmas, got posted some Christmas dinner scraps through the cage, then was sent off with pest control.

We do still see some in the garden but that's because we live at the bottom of a hill so when it rains the sewers flood and they all climb out.

I use the canes of dried brambles and raspberries to put around my veg patch to deter any of the little buggers getting in easily.

We have the same problem in my DM’s garden. Both she and her neighbour were keen gardeners but neither can do it now. DB and I keep some sort of semblance of order in DMs garden but the neighbour’s is left totally wild and is overrun with brambles which are forever coming over or under the fence. I can’t fit behind the greenhouse so it’s awful behind there.

Is that a staghorn fern? Popular plant, so I'd advertise them for free on the condition that they dig them up 😅

@Jimmyneutronsforehead Thank you! That’s a brilliant idea. No tyre available so have been hard at it with a shovel and a garden fork. I’m hoping the graft will mean I’ll wake up tomorrow in a size 8 body gifted to me by all the manual labours. 😅

@Agapornisare they really? Everything I’ve read (Dr Google) suggests they’re really invasive and can take over quickly. I’d be happy to hand them out though, if people were keen on them.

Ah I've had a google - I think you might have stag's horn sumach/staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina), the fern I meant is staghorn fern (Platycerium bifurcatum). Unless you live in Hawaii or Florida where apparently the fern is invasive!

I'd still offer it for free. People do buy it, there might be some local gardening group on Facebook/WhatsApp. If you're going to do it yourself, I'd wait until there's been a decent amount of rain so the soil is a bit softer. I tend to wait until winter with this kind of work, less sweaty and there's less greenery to deal with (providing it's died back a bit). Get yourself a spade rather than a shovel - it's more narrow and has a nice sharp edge. Shovels are for moving, not digging.

@Agapornis Yes it’s the sumac. I will get a spade! I quite enjoy tinkering about out there as it’s a new phenomenon for me, plus the DC gets to sit in the sun lounger and coordinate the works, but winter works do sound more doable. I’ve got elderly neighbours and they’re agog at me out there in my leopard print leggings merrily hacking away at everything in sight.

Ah - are you by any chance completely levelling a perfectly lovely garden? 😅 It's always worth waiting a year or so to see what grows where, and what you want to keep. Especially when you have lots of mature plants - they're expensive to replace.

That's presuming you're not a concrete and plastic grass person...

How about starting with construction rather than destruction? Bring in soil improver/manure, new plants that you like. Then think over time about what you want to remove.

Lots of handymen/builders think a garden should be (plastic) grass and nothing else. Have read of this thread - the worst nightmare for lots of people on this thread, I imagine! https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5379098-devastated-cant-believe-my-builder-did-this

We've got a volunteer buddleia that's popped up in the middle of the weeds I've lopped back. Smack in the middle. Compacted soil and gravel, I want to dig it up and repot it somewhere but I think it might be best if I just lop it down.