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 deadheaded the dandelions again to stop them seeding, hopefully DH can get round to digging up a few over the weekend.
I don’t mind dandelion flowers (and I know bees like them) but don’t want them seeding everywhere.
I rescued the banana skins and have made a tub of banana coffee potion quietly fermenting in the kitchen. I added some citric acid to help it along and make it acidic.

Well done everyone! Gosh I’ve been away for a few days (not well with pain) and come back to reading about rats (🐀 urgh!!) and everyone’s hard work.
@Jimmyneutronsforehead for the single mum - I was also a single mum who also has a tearway young one who could climb 5 bar field gates at 11 months. Safety is the thing. But keeping an eye out for a trampoline, slide etc is a good shout. We gave ours away when we moved. I think you are Yorkshire though? Otherwise I have a few bits I could give off. Can she fence off an area the child can play in. Even at aged 2 mine had their own garden. Recycled pallets to make them. If it is badly sloped either sections I guess it raise and level it? Ours has a 1:6 slope and we basically made a huge decking and then a large decking step down and then at the other end we put in railway sleepers we had waterproofed with like a rubber paint and bracketed them together. She can get some compost bins going. See what she can get from freecycle or local WA group for free. We got a bird bath, tools, bench and two compost bins for free when we started the allotment.

But it’s a long game we are year moved in and the garden is nowhere done yet!!

if it is steep and overgrown a cordless strimmer roughly £30 on Amazon is a good investment.

Plenty of teenagers looking for a summer job? Is there a local scout group that might help or community group?

DH and I had a good cry yesterday standing looking out of our bedroom garden over our decking and raised beds with sheer pride at how hard we have worked. It’s not 100% complete more like 75%. He had got two more tiny beds to make and some paving slabs to put down for a bench and we have 5 tonnes of top soil to come and a lawn but it’s just a delight - the really hard bit is done and we are 54 bags of compost done!!. We watched a pair of nesting blue tits feast on mealworms and sunflowers and a couple of chaffinches and a robin and a few thrush feast. It was wonderful. Now they have got the cherry trees to perch on and hide in as well as a couple of roses and woody climbers on the arbour planted they are happy to perch about and feed.

The broken bird bath that fell over and broke in the storm- DH has used some strong waterproof outdoor glue to glue it together and then we now have cement drying. So hopefully that will be back up soon for them.

Here are more close ups of the tree I’m trying to identify but I’m going to the conclusion you guys are right and it’s a cherry tree. It’s covered in black aphids and some huge amount of leaf curl with black aphids underneath. I have sprayed it with neem oil and hoping it will come good when planted.

@Myblueclematis I had an ants nest in a pot last week. Ugh.

Been to Aberglasney today. Unfortunately the weather was awful but we did a quick walk around in between the rain and it is looking wonderful. The newish head gardener is doing a great job.

We weren’t keen on the grass round one of the ponds (see pic below). My friend said it looked like a giant hairy caterpillar and needed some googly eyes.

@Liquoricethyme yes it's a cherry, these are the glands I was looking for (sorry, hadn't clocked earlier it was all the same plant).

My carrot seeds have germinated in my first raised bed! They were sown nearly a month ago. I guess the soil was too cold for them earlier.

They join the cabbage and lettuce sprouts that are doing well so far.

Planted out 3 more of my pea plants and sowed Brussels Sprouts in the other end of the 2nd raised bed.

Am warming up small pots of compost inside ready for sweetcorn sowing tomorrow. I aim to plant those out around late May.

😂it does look like a hairy caterpillar and definitely needs googly eyes 👀 😂

I’ve got all my veg beds weeded now. Need a bit of work to get to a fine tilth tho. We got the greenhouse tidy and planted my tomatoes. I bought a multi pack of 5 types of seed , but sadly the ink ran on the labels, and I don’t know which is which. I planted out my sweet peas, they look healthy little plants, I saved the seed from last year. I need to sow some courgettes and broccoli (inside)and get spinach , kale and beetroot sown in the ground. I’m determined to plan the beds properly and not cram everything in. We are going out tomorrow. Even though I feel a bit burdened by the garden, I’m sorry to miss a whole day out there.

Planted potatoes, chives and mint today. Plus some elderly seed bombs in case they can still germinate!
Moved some weed smothering cover around and weeded the strawberry patch. Planted into pots some tomato and courgette seedlings.

I had quite long day in the garden, 6 hours or so - moved some plants, plant out things I'd bought in the last few weeks, loosen up the soil a bit for future planting, put canes and string out for perennial sweet peas, feed, water - the soil is so dry already. I've allocated a box for this year's snail jail. They live in there for a week or so until I remember to dump them in the park.

What do you all do with bulbs once they start dying back? I've usually left them in place but wonder whether to plant them somewhere else temporarily, so I don't have to look at them.

I cut the flowered off and then usually tie them up and then cut them off when they have turned over a bit. By that I mean wither and go yellow!

I discovered today that a person unknown otherwise known as the child I had named ‘it wasn’t me’ has been watering the terrarium- honestly 🙄 so 4/6 of the plants are dead in a huge swimming pool bog! It had been fine left alone for years! I had to take everything out squeeze the two living plants out on kitchen paper the soil was totally water logged. Then rinse all the stones off and throw the peat bog soil and water in the garden waste and then dry everything and put it all back. Currently downstairs with lid left off to dry out thoroughly. I am livid though I have tended that for years and everyone knows it is mine! 😂. DH made another raised bed and another climbing rose is in. We have decided where the climbing hydrangea, the honeysuckles and where the wisterias are going so it’s all good. Got a second bird bath out the front in the front garden now so it is all nicely progressing. 🪴

I also hauled up another couple of sycamore saplings today.

I probably pulled up a thousand seedlings today along with many hundreds of forget-me-nots from my gravel paths. 😓

Get them a pitcher plant.

I'm sure they can be over watered too, but we've got one that is watered almost every day and we've had it for years and it was fairly old when we acquired it.

Also, not that I have a bird bath so not sure why it came up on my targeted news feed, but I think it was the RHS just put out a notice saying be careful with bird baths and bird feeders because they're hot spots for disease amongst birds.

They only took into account disease spread as a factor though and not the potential deaths by dehydration or starvation so make your own informed decisions. I know by summer they'll probably be begging people to leave some water out especially if we hit a drought.

They're encouraging people to plant bio-diverse food forests instead to encourage birds and wildlife to forage in our gardens. Easier said than done depending on your garden real estate.

Spent most of yesterday and this morning weeding between the the paving stones in our very long path.

we empty and refresh daily our 2 large plant saucers which are used as bird baths and drinking sources - started doing it a few summers ago when I saw a squirrel drinking thirstily from one, then kept an eye on it and found it was regularly used by foxes, hedgehogs and all sorts of birds ( and neighbourhood cats). Give them a scrub every so often too. The one nearest the house is a complete and utter time-waster as I sit and watch the birds having fun!

I’ve stopped feeding for now but partly due to rats as well. But the birdbath(also a large plant saucer gets filled every morning.
Just planted the azaleas I bought last week in time for flowering and just before the rain.
Pulled up some heathers which hadn’t survived the winter.

Wondering about my sweet peas. Put them in a couple of weeks ago but they haven’t really taken. I’ve got some more to be planted which look so much better in their tiny pots than the ones in the ground. I might just stick them in a big pot for now.

Chucked in the big mixed bag of summer bulbs. I have no idea what is what so I have just stuffed them in everywhere. Finally got the huge,manky football goal cut into pieces and dumped ( DS is 24 now!) so have a nice clear space by the fence.

Last of (I think!) the plug plants I ordered are potted up and I have sown some basil and coriander in the hope I can keep a steady supply of herbs over the summer.

Planted numerous flower seeds and greenhouse is heaving now. Still waiting for tomatoes and chillies to germinate in the propagator in the kitchen but think it’s a lost cause tbh. I’ll give them another week and then accept defeat!

Fortunately, I have a chilli plant on the way and picked up a couple of patio tomatoes at the garden centre a couple of weeks ago so we won’t be totally without, but the tomato seeds weren’t cheap and there were only eight of them I think 😳Chilli seeds were from the seed library so I’ll try and find out if anyone else has had any luck. Beginning to wonder if it was the compost but the basil and coreopsis germinated ok on the same stuff.

I did some weeding, mostly to keep on top of the bramble and dandelion plants that love our garden.
I managed to persuade dh to mangle mow the back garden so I could spread the moss killer on with a view to scarifying it next week. The mower makes a mangled mess a bit like if you take one of those pairs of kiddie scissors that don't cut anything and tried to cut dh's thick hair with it. When I get the shed removed and my new shed then I will get a better mower.
Dh said triumphantly that there were sort of lines mowed into the lawn. I pointed out that they were like a Mohican hair cut. Short lines and long lines...

Then I took a bag of rubbish to the tip. There was a queue from quite a while away which I understood when I saw the price of the petrol at the garage next to the tip. Tip was fairly quick when we were through with that.

And I've bought a dangly swing chair. Dh is not impressed, but it was down from £150 to £97 at Tescos and I've told him it's for me. Happy days.

Flipping any tyres is hard enough... believe me, I've been on top of enough silage pits to prove it! (We cover them with a plastic wrap which is held down with a mixture of bales and a vast assortment of tyres. Throwing enough tyres to cover a pit is tiring!).

I am recovering from the last of a migraine, so only put a few lavender plug plants out in some leftover compost, in the hope that they'll rally long enough for me to get some new compost. I'm hoping to make the garden a bit more bee-friendly this year, so that they might like to pollinate everything when I get around to establishing a proper kitchen garden. (I'm aware that I could get an allotment, but I've been on the waiting list for five years, and it's the kind of place where you have to wait for an allotmenteer to die before you're bumped up the list!).

Pulled out a birch stump today (it got completely waterlogged over the winter and died), levelled the resulting hole and seeded it with grass seed. Given how wet it got over the winter I’m not planning to try another tree in that spot.
I weeded the base of some other trees and the border along the front fence.
I’ve also put an arch between two raised beds, and planted melon seeds at the base on one side and courgettes on the other. The carrot seeds planted about a month ago are an inch tall, so I’ve planted another row. Peas are a couple of inches tall, and the strawberries (from Lidl a few weeks ago) have a couple of flowers.
I bought bare root blackcurrants in the winter, and they’ve had tiny buds on since they arrived, but still no leaves.

Across this weekend I’ve probably spent 8+ hours in the garden, and I am very much realising I have bitten off more than I can chew with this garden (moved from a 100foot garden the width of a semi detached to a 3/4 acre plot with a house in the centre).

I went to a seed & plant swap today, I donated two peace lilies that I’d taken out of Tesco terrariums (terraria?), and I came home with a large spider plant covered in babies, and a stick in a pot, labelled blackcurrant.

I mowed my lawn today, for the first time ever. It’s not going to win any prizes, but most of the grass is shorter than it was, so I’m calling that a win.

I also noticed that there were lots of tiny violets growing in the front garden, they’re gorgeous little things!

I adore violets and they have self seeded into my pots as well as around the garden. Thank you for the lovely photo.

Today I am hoping to repot the San Marzano tomato plant I bought last week at the garden centre and also pot on the cherry tomato plants that I have grown from seed from the Poundland mini greenhouse I bought a few weeks ago. I have seven very healthy looking young plants and I think they now deserve their own pots, I will keep one or two but give the rest away once they are big enough.

I am still deadheading daffs and tulips and emptying pots so now my shed is full of pots and planters ready to be filled with summer plants. I am going next week to a small garden nursery, no cafe, no gift shop, nothing fancy, owned by an elderly chap who I have been going to with my friend since 1991.

We are dreading the day when he finally hangs up his gardening gloves, lovely man, doesn't do a massive range of plants but everything you buy is good quality and always blooms so well. We've earmarked a week Thursday when she returns from holiday so before Bank Holiday when the likelihood is he will be quite busy if it's a nice day and the plants we want will be sold out.

Lovely. I might try and get some violet seeds