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.

No gardening here. I’m on the Isle of Man and it’s the TT, so it’s pouring down. Very often practice week is blazing hot, and race week is rubbish, and that has been the case this year. Last week I barely went outside, it was so hot, and the sun was so bright it gave me headaches. I was watering in the evenings, around 9pm.

I put some zinnia seedlings out a while back, but they don’t look great, possibly slug nibbled. Being scorched hasn’t helped them.

I threw a load of mixed wildflower seeds down, and they are all leafy and green, but I don’t know what’s weeds and what will be pretty. I suppose the bees will be happy either way. I hope that with all this rain, they will soon burst into flower.

Today is one of the best of the year each year.

The local to us organic plant growers, who only grow edibles for trade, basically offer up all their end of season plants to the general public for 'pay what you want'.

I wasnt expecting them to do it this year as they'd opened up to everyone in April and May on a weekend morning and given each pot a price, but it was literally €1.80 per plant. So I was half expecting them to knock this paying what you want malarkey on the head.

I'm not gonna lie, I'd be digging a trench and putting paving slabs vertically between mine and theirs if it were me.

its a brilliant diagram. It’s definitely bamboo. Vertical slabs would work, or you could explain you will maintain in exchange for the use of it, then take down the fence on your side and fill your boots. In between your garden , your partners garden and other assorted relatives, you may feel you have quite enough todo already. My gardens massive, too big for me, but in your situation, I would still be getting a gleam in my eye…

@Shedmistress , so jealous of your organic growers offer, don’t suppose that’s East Midlands?

I suspect this is what I'm going to have to do.

My goal for the garden this year was to automate as much as I could. Grass cutting with the robots, watering with the solar irrigation pumps, water butts to immerse the pumps in, because of my CFS, and hypermobile shoulders and feet dislocating.

We definitely can't afford to get someone in to do the work for us, and digging this trench is going to be very physically demanding.

I'm going to talk to him again today if I can catch him, and I'll ask if there's any way we can collaborate on a solution but I've a feeling it'll go down the same way it did last time, like an unstoppable force meeting an unmoveable object.

Ahh @Jimmyneutronsforehead It just occurred to me that I was in this situation until last year. My gardens massive is long and thin, with a gated veg patch at the end. Ndns, who are lovely, but basic gardeners, had ignored their veg patch for years and it was a mass of brambles elder and giant leylandii. Last year I told them that I could only grow lettuce and spinach because my patch was completely shaded, and they got all of it sorted and planted a wildflower meadow, I did tell him he needed to reduce the fertility first but he didn’t listen, so it’s very green with the odd cornflower, but my patch is productive again, or would be if it wasn’t for the slugs and my inability to remove self seeded flowers. I’m sure you have told him that the bamboo is invasive but maybe if you emphasise your anxiety about it running rampant in a fenced off space, he will come to a less avoidant solution. Or threaten him with the council.

If this is the case that you are unable to put the slabs in, I'd get hold of some glyphosate and keep it for when it pops up on your path and use it by cutting the plant and dribbling some glyphosate into the stem each time.

Also this

Plant Alert survey form

Just realised I know one of the two people involved in this!

@Castlerigg it's such a shame isn't it - hopefully they'll get some racing in tomorrow. Town is full on damp men in leathers....

And the garden doesn't even really need the rain.

In between the rain showers I’ve managed an hour outside. Have staked some large rose bushes that have flopped under the weight of all the rain. Also planted a few bits I bought on Monday so I’m happy.

I really must go out in the garden and sort out the perennial sweet peas, they have overwhelmed a daphne and a clematis, but every time I put my shoes on the heavens open!
Still have my last few bedding plants to put in too (peers at sky….)

Not seen the neighbour today to catch him but it is definitely bamboo.

Don't be fooled by the gate like structure, it is nailed shut from his side because the wind kept blowing it open when he first put it up.

I've got some to hand fortunately. I'm not afraid to use it but I did want to let him know if it looks like it's made it's way over I will be using it and it may kill off his clump so if he wants to keep his well pruned clump we'd best bump our heads together and come up with a plan.

Have done a bit of weeding and have planted some more pansies in the left-hand border of my driveway, in a bid to make it obvious that it's not a toilet for passing dogs.

Have made a start on underplanting the roses on the right hand side with bronze-leaved begonias sourced from Maryfield Nurseries in Cardenden (Fife). Heartily recommended to anyone who happens to be passing through Fife.

They were selling pre-planted baskets the other day. I don't usually go for petunias, but they had a basket where the petunias all looked so velvety that I couldn't resist.

Admired my first (and only) sweet pea flower!
planted some Kabocha squash/pumpkin seeds in greenhouse, along with catnip and cat grass, have never had success from seed as it gets lain on/eaten as it emerges, so hoping the greenhouse is the trick until it is established

put nets on my blackcurrant crop as I lost 75% to birds last year

Dh cut the lawn so I edged it. The beds are chaos but that neat edge makes them look intentional. But then I tackled the worst bed. Got really gung ho, pulled out armfuls of Briza, and another grass which may have been planted or may just be a really big lawn variety, or couch grass. Also pulled up quite a lot of knautia by accident. The bed now looks crazily full but with ugly gashes in it.

Is there anything that can be done when wind and rain has everything lying flat?
I know I should have put supports in , but the beds looked empty in April and the baby plants peeping out looked so pretty and well behaved, impossible to imagine them as teenage thugs getting legless and procreating.

Just been round to a friend’s house. She is downsizing later in the year and a non gardener is moving in so she’s passing on a load of plants. So kind!

I’ve cut back the camellia today, and planted a hydrangea near it, and what I think is a leucothoe firestar, that DS bought me for Mother’s Day, but he took the label off because it had the price on. I also moved a ceanothus that I bought recently that as unhappy where I had put it - I hadn’t realised they prefer acidic soil, and the tag didn’t say anything about it! Hopefully it will be happier now.

I repotted my pepper plants too. I was going to assemble the Aldi plastic greenhouse and put them in there, but they’re doing so well in my porch, I’m reluctant to move them.

Just pulled some rogue weeds from some pots today and did some more wisteria training.

Someone on a local gardening group was asking for plants to liven up a communal garden area by some flats.
I invited them round and foisted a carload of plants on them. I think they were a bit overwhelmed, but the garden is full to bursting at this time of year so there aren’t really even any noticeable gaps from all the plants I dug up.
I invited them to come back in autumn/winter for stuff like raspberry canes and bulbs, hope they take me up on it.

Just going to lower the tone a bit - the fucking fox cubs have stolen ALL of the mulch mats from around my strawberries (six of them, pinned down, and I have no idea where they have taken them to), and also dug up a rosebush! And had a play in DS’s paddling pool.

Little blighters. It is lucky they are so adorable.

Aww @Tigerbalmshark . I would be thrilled by fox cubs. Honestly I’d set up a ballpool and other activities, and a camera.. I can’t find my strawberry mats because my sheds a total mess, so I’ve improvised with comfrey leaves. Thinking I should go and buy straw or strulch or something. Feel pleased it’s raining because I can sit on my arse instead of the endless jobs in the garden.

I've got into the habit of tidying the front every Saturday morning. Today I wore a rain coat and did a bit of weeding and gave my floppy geums a chelsea chop.

Yesterday I trimmed the lawn edges at the back, planted a pot of chives from Marks food section in the garden and weeded. One of my roses has got tall and is flopping over, so I'll probably stake it

The chives are to add to potato salad 😋