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.

@InMySpareTime I've still not recovered from my cat bringing me a dead rat into the hall a year ago!

@HedjwitchThanks, I’ll check out Urban Herbs.

One of my cats brought a rat in last year, honestly the size of it! I’m not convinced it was dead when she brought it in, but it died when she eventually dropped it. I had to pick it up with the dustpan and brush, it weighed as much as the cat!

@Myblueclematisi saw something on you tube about how long some Dahlias can take to spring to life. It also said they make lots of fine roots in the pot before they emerge from the top.

I did check yesterday and one of the dahlias I've had for three years has a small leaf coming through. At the moment I have two dahlias showing signs of life, Bishop of Leicester and Firepot so if the other two don't do anything, I might buy another one at least.

I'm obvious not patient enough ... 🙄 😁

Of the three I had in pots from last year, two are growing and one isn’t showing any sign of life (though it doesn’t feel rotten so I’m hanging on). Of the ones I bought this year as bare roots, two have small leaves and two have nothing. So I think it is still pretty early days!

I am in sycamore hell. Still.
Bark area, with pear tree on one end and seating on the other. Sycamore seedlings as far as the eye can see.
Onion bed. Or should I say sycamore bed.
They are even on the roof! Amongst the hen and chicks, might be hard to spot but they are there

💀

I don't even know how you'd start tackling that.

On the ground, if it were me, I would probably pour boiling water all over them and then ground staple in 2 layers of black tarp and add some stones round the edges for security. There's no way manually removing them is efficient. I never knew sycamore had such a high germination rate.

Oh these guys are mad for the germinating, so they are. We have a clutch of sycamores at each end of the allotments and both ends border my garden. I believe there should not be any trees other than fruit trees in an allotment but these trees are huge and well, there. so nothing I can do about that.

The barked area has landscape fabric under the bark to reduce weeds but it has been down for a number of years so really the seeds have a good surface to germinate in now. Starting again is just too much. I use an upside down rake to dislodge the seeds and then try to pick up as many as possible. But leave loads obviously because the job is fairly impossible.

I haven't even mentioned the dratted seedlings in my gravel paths. And pots. Everywhere really. Just fairly depressed about it today. I'll get over it 😁

I move some osteospermums to the window box on my shed. All six of my plants survived the winter, as did most of the nicotiana. It was quite mild over the winter but I hadn't quite realised how mild.

@ILikeDungs my sympathy - I worked at a new ish nature reserve (land abandoned from the 70s) and the woodland was 80% sycamore. They're bastards but definitely harder to get rid of when they're bigger. Maybe leave it a few weeks? I'm sure some won't make it to the true leaf stage, and they're easier to pull out when the stem is a bit sturdier.

I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with sycamores. Someone in the council gardening service had the bright idea of planting one at the opposite end of the terrace and the seedlings get everywhere.

It's not helped by the fact that some of my neighbours have just allowed them to grow amongst their hedging and have clipped them into the cotoneaster and lonicera nitida.

I try to keep on top of them, but ever so often I come across a sapling that's dug its roots underneath one of my shrubs. I loathe them. I try to haul them up before it's too difficult, but I often have to use my rootslayer to attack them.

I hear ya. Sending sympathies to a fellow sufferer.

I think I have a wasp’s nest (for the third year running)!
There is a lot of wasp activity when the sun is shining. Not much when it’s cloudy.
Is it possible the wasps ‘visit’ our tiny garden and there isn’t a nest?
We had one on the fence two years ago. One in the shed last year.
And now a lot of activity in our established clematis on the fence again.

I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it.

My mum has an oak problem, but it's nowhere near as bad as your sycamore problem.

Her problem is NDN had an established oak tree, which we loved, new NDN moved in, chopped down the tree and loads of acorns managed to get squashed into her soil. Every year about 5 or 6 seedlings pop up, as well as new sprouts from the roots that made it past the boundary line, as well as squirrel activity from other neighbouring but less well established oak trees, likely also from the large old oak.

She works away mon-fri a lot and then the weather is too bad to go outside a lot of weekends, so before she knows it she's got multiple 4' tall treelings.

She does not have a green thumb at all either so unless it can tend itself, it isn't in her garden and she rarely goes out to check.

Aforementioned osteospermum. Nicotiana has buds too. Must overwinter these more often. Nice to have early flowers.

Yesterday I went to the garden centre with friends and despite saying I probably wouldn't buy anything, obviously I did.

I bought some Verbena, an osteospermum, a pack of light blue lobelia and a San Marzano tomato, I also bought a large bottle of Tomorite as I use this throughout the summer on just about everything.

The new plants are undercover until I get rough to planting up some containers, they'll also stay undercover until it's safe to put them out. Just looked at the forecast and lo and behold, we have good weather ahead for about a week. Praise the Lord!

I am pleased to say that I have all my dahlias showing signs of life now, I checked again yesterday and yes, little shoots are appearing. I won't have to buy any now. Glad I didn't chuck them in the compost bage now. 😄

Cleared another 3m x 1m bed yesterday of weeds and the remains of overwintered brassicas.

Went to see my cousins new house today and oh my god I have no idea what shes going to do with that garden.

Its on a steep slope, but it's higher in one top corner than the other, full off whistles, nettles, dandelions, rambles.

It's overgrown and the neighbour came round to say she's worried about pests living in it, and I agree with her, I am also worried.

Her budget is £0, single parent with a toddler.

I am very happy to help and offer my labour for both getting it done and maintenance but I've walked away feeling really overwhelmed.

I’ve been weeding the permanent bed which has currants, comfrey, rhubarb and wild garlic, and a plastic compost bin. I think I should probably follow @Jimmyneutronsforehead lead and put down some weed suppressant fabric around the compost bin, it butts right up to shed and the weeds grow thick and fast in the spilt compost . But I’ve also got a Rubus tricolour (whose berries , apparently are only sometimes edible), which is prostrate, it’s currently sprawled across the path at the front of the border, if I moved it to the back it would do the same job as fabric, maybe. I’m properly shit at the practical elements of maintaining a plot, like pinning fabric so it stays put, supporting climbers, laying paths. I wish I was better, but I’m not. Maybe I need to be less avoidant. But the Rubus can’t stay where it is.

I meant thistles! But I have got sausage fingers.

Ooh @Jimmyneutronsforehead . I planned a garden like this once for a relative in similar circs. We planned a slide from that used the slope , a rope banister and soft fruits, lavender, rosemary and some grasses. Wild strawberries and grasses are easily grown from seed, and make a good ground cover. Safe to say, after my last post, it wasn't me making the slide safe. She moved though, so it didn't happen

Funnily enough I've just suggested to my nan that we make some railway sleeper steps up the middle of the garden because we could just about manage that, and add a slide from top to bottom and fence the rest of the garden off and just throw in lots of plants that can outcompete what is already there because my cousin will never be rid of it. She doesn't even know how to use a lawn mower, on top of that she's a single parent with an almost 2 year old who can't be left for even 2 seconds because he seeks out the fastest, most fatal things to do.

The front garden is also a mess but it's a small area, the plan is to strim it, membrane, sand, flags, and then it's done.

I've been emptying pots and have put a couple of plants into the border that were in pots from last year. Unfortunately, one of the tubs emptied had a massive nest of ants in it and despite tipping it onto the garden, I managed to get quite a few on me. They stung a little bit too.

I've made a small inroad into moving some of the container plants around but the heavier ones I will have to leave until someone comes round and can help me shift them.

Nice to be out in the sunshine, not too breezy and my washing is just about dry as a bonus. I might be able to paint the shed again this coming week and also the bench that is looking very much the worse for wear due to the past couple of years of heavy rain. 🌞

Well, my garden is still a mess but I've cut my side of the western boundary hedge.

My problem is that the council cuts the other side, since there's a grass verge there and their gardeners now tend to come once a year and then butcher it at one end. (One starts at one end and one at the other.)

A few years ago, one gardener followed my cut, but the other decided cut down my beautifully shaped hedge to half the size and squared it off... (I had shaped it so that the sides gradually tapered out towards the bottom and had done the classical roof shape at the top.)

I've been trying to get it evened up for the past few years now, but...

I have been trying to clip it myself but I have the additional problem that some reprobate is allowing his dog to defecate on the verge and there are now piles of excrement, clearly all from the same animal, dotted halfway up the length of the verge now. Yeuch! [No, I'm not an insane excrement tracker...If could see all the piles, you'd know what I mean. The same animal once left a pile on my driveway border. I finished up putting down chilli powder there to deter it. According to various internet sources it deters but doesn't harm.]

I'm also struggling to remove ivy from the bottom of the hedge at the mid-section: I've got the hedge at the top and bottom of the slope clear of the stuff, but the middle is defeating me and a neighbour doesn't want weedkiller being used "in case it harms a dog". I've been spraying the ivy on the inside of the boundary only, in the hope of weakening it and making it easier to haul up.

The council actually does spray weedkiller on the edge of the verge to the extent that they've killed off all the grass at the narrowest section but they don't seem to spray the ivy.

I also hauled up another couple of sycamore saplings today.

Good thing: i followed the advice of a pal who suggested tomato feed for my blind daffodils, and oh what a difference it has made.