What have you done in the garden today? Part 8

[Jimmyneutronsforehead]

A continuation thread.

Thank you to MereDintOfPandiculation for threads 1 through 6. We wouldn't have built this lovely gardening community without you.

No gardening job is too small or too big to tell us about.

Spring is springing into action, let's get mucky.

I started digging out strawberries and replacing with herbs. Dug a 2m length, de weeded and de strawberried it, raked it over then dug up herbs from a different area, chives, garlic chives, oregano, thyme and lemon baln, and split them up and planted them in rows, watered in and then mulched with the first edge mow mowings of the season.

@Jimmyneutronsforehead From the last thread - no, the cat was not doing what you thought 😂 (I’ve name changed, was TeamToeBeans)

I finally did a bit of a clean up in the greenhouse. Scrubbed, swept. Getting ready to sow some seeds next week.

Going out to a nursery tomorrow to pick up some pratia pedunculata. I'm pretty sure that's all I'll get. No, really.

Warm and sunny today, but I only had an hour to spare. Sowed some tomatoes and weeded half of my long rose bed. Cut the dead bits out of my Kilmarnock willow. It’s about 15 and I know they are short lived, so now I’m wondering if the dead bits are the beginning of the end. I did quite well!

@Liquoricethyme That was such an encouraging reply. I’m really grateful. I live alone so it’s nice to have a pat on the back.

i did 4 hours in the back garden today. Started off with a bit of an accident as I fell hedge trimming. I’ve got some grazes and I feel battered now. My neutrophils are still low so I’m hoping I don’t get poorly from the grazes. Got to be more careful in future. Like you say it’s a nice feeling to look at what you’ve achieved. I regret not taking before and after photos now!

I'm off to the garden centre to avoid my responsibilities in the garden.

That sounds like a plan!

Today I poked some bamboo canes in a planter in the hope of keeping my cat out of it. Yesterday I wrote a plan of action for replacing a heavily leaning fence post. A Travis Perkins just opened near me, so here's to no longer paying extortionate B&Q prices for timber 🍾

@ismiledather it's odd when you live alone isn't it - no one to see the difference, appreciate your efforts and say well done! Not too late to start taking photos. I'm always happy to see others' progress here, or sympathise with fellow owners of Crap Corners.

Did a fair bit of tidying in the garden yesterday, but today wandering around Wisley

We bought a tub of daffodils to add to the tyres.

It is customary on mother's day for my mum to chop the daffodils out of the garden and give them to my nannan. This has been a long standing tradition since my mother's childhood, and she's started encouraging my son to do the same for me, so we have stocked up ahead of time.

In order to give these daffodils chance to settle in before they're ruthlessly murdered though I did pick up some 2 for £1 bunches of pre-cut daffodils for my son to give to my nannan today as it is her birthday so I did treat us to a birthday brunch at the garden centre. I've put them in a pot, held up by some gravel so he can just pluck them out on his way in from school.

I finished my rose bed, might need to shove in some of the carnations that are a bit out of place in the veg garden, although bugger all veg grows there so why not. I now need to tackle the herb bed by the back door. First steps are to remove all the dead/ empty pots, cut back the blackened stalks, then top dress. I might nip and buy a tray of pansies to cheer things up before the herbs start .
growing.
Every garden needs a crap corner, maybe 2, where else can we store big pots and leftover paving and prunings that might be useful as plant supports? This is one of the reasons why I never put sheds right in the corner. Apart from being impossible to paint when against a fence, you lose that valuable spot for potentially useful crap. My herb bit currently looks worse than the space behind the shed

One of my friends turned her unused veg plot into a small cut flower garden and sells cut flower bunches on a weekend in summer. She doesn't make much from it but it prunes her flowers, she gets more growth and gets a small piggy to put towards her christmas fund for her kids.

I keep telling her to join mumsnet and come on our gardening board as she outshines me quite a lot but she dissolved all her social media and lives a quiet life. Meanwhile I quietly cry that my green thumb isn't all that green. I shall have to take photos when I am next over there, but don't feel like using your veg plot for flowers is ever a waste even if it's just for yourself.

Thanks , Jimmy. I am better at flowers than veg, so maybe I should do that too.. I love the idea of veg tho in reality the pigeons eat my cabbages, the radishes and beetroot go all woody, everyone hates chard. Nothing ever comes of the exotica. I have some success with beans, leeks and tomatoes tho. I keep hoping Dh will develop an interest, he’s methodical. He seems quite happy to watch telly while I work away for very little reward! Except to my mental and physical health, of course.

My NDN keeps fancy pigeons. We are at war.

My NDN is actually very lovely, he is just really uninformed about a lot of things, like planting his bamboo in the ground right next to our boundary, and his pigeons using my garden as their own personal food trough.

He is ever so remorseful about his pigeons. Less so about his bamboo.

Taking before and after photos are vital - I remember getting the allotment and DH and I did like 4 hours and we came home and I said ‘it’s too big the plot and we can’t do it’ the following week and months or when we do something one of us takes a photo and you can see the difference - it lifts you? @ismiledather it will make such a difference to you - the ‘I did that’ feeling and also it will be nicer to look at. Where about are you? - we are Somerset and there is some open gardens soon and DH and I, are looking at garden visit holidays - although the ones in our GW magazine seem super expensive. We are looking at a local ‘start an allotment’ course at a college in the SW one day course/ but hope it might be useful! Have you got a local gardening club where you are?

My house had bamboo planted on the border between one neighbour when I bought it 10 years ago. I had it dug out so I could have a garden border but lo and behold the blasted stuff started coming back up.

Long story short, it's been dug out twice more since then to have some landscaping done but I still get little bits coming up in the lawn and odd bits coming up in the pebbled border. Unfortunately, my neighbours are not gardeners and so as it comes up in their garden, they just leave it which means it comes back up in mine!

It really is a losing battle. 😡

It's a nightmare for us because the area where his keeps popping up is where I want to put some membrane down and some playground bark on top.

We had a new fence put in and while our old fence panels were out we asked him to help us dig up the roots, but it was made into a right dogs dinner and this year I fear it's going to come up prolifically.

Finally stopped raining.
Planted some primroses in my woody area, some bulbs can't remember the name, peacock something I think. I use to have one and always enjoyed it but it's vanished so bought a pack of 20 in lidl hopefully some will survive. And direct sowed some night scented stock.
My indoor started nasturtiums will be able to be moved outside soon I think as the temp has shot up. Will wait for the stragglers to get bigger before moving to a colder room then plant out. Will sow some outside as well.
If dry weather holds up ill get some weeding done at the weekend maybe.

Tackled the bramble bed ready for veg planting today. Also came face to face with my foe and did not scream.

Yesterday DNeices and DNephew asked if we could do some crafts this weekend so I have ordered some permanent paint pens and I will be washing down some unused plastic plant pots and they will be decorating their own plant pot for the garden where they will be sprinkling their own strawberry seeds.

On one of the older threads, and I can't remember who it was so please stick your hand up if it was you, made a wonderful dinosaur mini garden with one of their young ones and I am really inspired by it so I've dug out the old dinosaur toys and some fancy pebbles. I really hope I can do it justice because that was a beautiful idea I've had on my mind for a while.

Dinosaur garden sounds splendid, and very well done regarding the teeny tiny aphid eaters.

Have had the loveliest two hours in the garden this afternoon in the sunshine.

Planted various herb seeds into the propagator (now on the kitchen windowsill). Planted up a big tub of primroses and popped them on the deck where I can see them from the kitchen table.
Planted the baby Christmas trees into pots with the cyclamen I found lurking in the greenhouse; they are still flowering great guns.
And finally took some rosemary cuttings; been meaning to do that for ages!

Amazing what gets done when the sun shines 🌞

I moved a two year old cherry tree from a position where it was really not doing well. It's now in a much less crowded, less boggy and sunnier spot.

It's still looking dormant so I do hope it will survive.

Today I feel like I won the battle, but the brambles have won the war.

My legs and back have no flex in them, I am walking round like I've got a rod strapped to me.

It's foggy here this morning, and DS has a dentist appointment this afternoon where I've to consent to a GA surgery so there'll be no gardening from me today.