What have you done in the garden today? Part 9

[Jimmyneutronsforehead]

Welcome to part 9.

We love hearing about all of your gardening adventures, purchases, tips and tricks and very worthy boasts about what has gone well for you, as well as all of the behind the scenes bloopers.

We're well into the growing season, after a long wet and windy start to the year and a fast and hot spring.

We also love hearing about what you've made from your garden forage.

We are just about out of peony season, but this recipe was beautiful especially in a sponge cake, mixed in with a glass of lemonade and with my morning yoghurt and oats.

Wipeywipey's peony jam (soft set, syrupy) recipe:

I removed the petals and steeped overnight with 1 mug water per flower head, squashed the petals through muslin in the morning (no longer than 12hrs). I did a rough recipe of 1 good mug of sugar to every 2 medium heads, and 3 tablespoons of lemon. It is a wonderful golden magenta colour and tastes a lot better than it smelled when steeping and cooking (quite woody).

for a firmer set

per 1 head of petals, 1 cup of water
Steeped in freshly boiled water for 10 minutes- a large French press works
Brought back up to a boil on the hob
Add 1 cup of sugar per head of petals (or a full bag if you use 4 petals), reduce to a simmer and gently mix in the sugar until dissolved
Add 2 Tbsp lemon juice
Add 2 Tbsp pectin powder, seived in slowly
Bring to a boil again for a minute or 2
Let cool just enough to jar up safely without burning your hands.

We are also out of magnolia season, but if I can find the magnolia syrup recipe for drinks, mead and wine, I shall post that once I've found where I got the recipe from or the book I wrote it down in. It's very similar to Wipey's peony recipe, with optional additions like ginger and spices.

Please feel free to share any of your garden favourites ❤️

The hosepipe ban is really messing up my year. Just before the ban I added three more water butts but they will all be empty eventually.

Everything is still alive, even the Atlantic Giants (but just two, a deer or something chomped on the third and it gave up). But it means carting watering cans about endlessly. Yesterday brought the wind which broke off many zinnia stems. They are quite fragile and stupidly I did not support them.

Foot still healing! What a year. My only real success has been the onions because they were planted last October? November? so were almost ready to harvest before the really damaging heat started. Lots did go to seed but I planted three beds of them, lost maybe 30 or so. I do love the fresh crisp sound of chopping into a home grown onion.

But the zinnias! Amazing. And they are cut and come again so I am 'forced' to fill jugs full of flowers regularly. And they love the heat.

I can really recommend those drip irrigation solar pumps for ease of use. They're £30 ish and require some assembly but they come with a timer and it means no lugging heavy cans to different parts of the garden, just filling a bucket up every few days.

Caveat to say mine died but the panel unit has had quite a few knocks.

Also not in MY garden but from the backs of other people's gardens, on the public footpath, we have been blackberry picking for the past 2 days.

Going to start making my christmas jams soon.

Still waiting for my thornless blackberries to give me fruit, then they'll be getting dug up and relocated

Your Zinnias are stunning @ILikeDungs

Loads of blackberries here in the hot dry south. I've been out picking already and will be making blackberry jelly and blackberry liquor. Anyone have any other exciting long storage blackberry ideas? Also lots of plums. After a bumper crop of apples last year, looks like it is going to be a minimal year this year.

I can get half my plants watered from what I collect each time we use the shower. It is giving me strong arm muscles and it is time consuming but it makes me feel very virtuous! We are very bad at reusing grey water in this country, I guess because we mostly don't need to, but I think it is something we should consider more.

I took all the flowered heads off my hydrangea back in early July. I gather this is a bit controversial and some say you should leave them on to protect the plant in winter. There has been lots of new growth on the plant, so if it doesn't die over the winter, then it should be in good shape next year.

My acer is starting to change colour, which is exciting. I planted it last year and it was very feeble, so I didn't really get to experience it in all its fiery glory. Looking forward to seeing it now it is more established.

My lawn is almost completely brown. Just a few tufts of green left. There are some patches that are mostly dust now. I cannot see how the dusty bits will recover without help.

I think the lawns will mostly be fine once the rain returns. Grass has an amazing ability to grow back. Maybe a few handfuls of grass seed in the worst places might help. To think in a previous life we used to water our lawns 😮and now I don't really care that much about the lawn. For me now it's all about the beds, the trees, the veg.

If I could easily stop grass from growing into my beds I might have a care to it's fragility. I can't so I don't 😆

Took advantage of the grass being dead to rip up some huge mats of it that had grown onto the weed membrane that also needs pulling up.

My tomatoes have not only come back from the brink of death but have absolutely shot up and that is still with me neglecting them. They got a few buckets of pool water a few weeks ago during the last heatwave and they're pushing out fruit like crazy.

Bamboo wanker is currently stacking up piles of fire hazards.

A few months ago he had a small contained fire that like an idiot he decided to pour petrol on and the canister combusted as well as the fence catching fire, managed to contain it between himself and another neighbour.

I've never seen him stack so much up like this though.

Last week we had a fire on the field opposite our house. Not sure if it was a wildfire or if some of the local kids decided to go and start a BBQ in the dry brush land part of the field.

What I do know is that if you have compostable material and you don't flip it, the inside can get really hot as it decomposed, on top of the hot, dry weather we are having this seems like a recipe for disaster.

On top of that I can't stop thinking what if a hedgehog has made it's way in, or worse, rats. I do not want a repeat of the 2023-24 rat infestation that cost us £2000 and 6 months to sort out.

Delurking to say, can you sneak out at dead of night and chuck a bucket of water or 5 onto it?

I'm not sure I can get in. His garden is a weird shape and that bit backs on to NDN garden. It would have to be a hosepipe job, but that is a good idea. I just know that whether he starts the fire or it catches alight some other way it is a recipe for disaster.

Scary😕

My most reliable crop has become my most problematic this year. The sweetcorn struggled to germinate, I started three types and replanted more than once for all of them. The Goldcrest has grown, but many of them have not developed ears at all, while their tassels are out and trying to do their job. Some have silks but no ear. That might just be the dry year, and they will develop more slowly.

But this morning when I went into the garden a muntjac was walking off and looking at my corn I think she ate the silks and top leaves of some of my cobs 😢About six of them are munched. Very dispiriting. Although I know it's a hard season for the wildlife too.

We have rain 🙌, heavy rain after weeks. East of England.

We had 20 minutes of rain in central south east yesterday evening! I stood outside and watched it fall. The smell was amazing.

Picked three of my San Marzano tomatoes yesterday and so disappointed to see they all have a brown patch on the bottom.

I've watered them constantly but I know that the excessive heat has been hard to keep up with making sure the compost doesn't dry out too much.

I'll have to cut off the ends, hopefully the rest will be usable but it's really putting me off ever growing them again now.

I have another lot of tomatoes, at the moment they seem perfectly ok but still green, they are supposed to be cherry tomatoes but are definitely not going by the size of them. They are pretty large.

If they actually ripen and do not have any blight on them, be interesting to see what they taste like.

My dwarf beans have lots of flowers, am hoping that I've watered them enough to get a crop of beans, I'm not too optimistic though.

My onions have finished curing!

Not a bountiful harvest, but they did well to say they were persistently parched by the sun, many fell to pest pressure, but there's enough for a bolognese or 2.

We've somehow ended up with another dog. Not permanently, I hope, but this appears to be the way it goes. This dog is not food motivated at all in the slightest, I am both jealous and grateful my tomatoes might make it indoors this year.

Going to spend the rest of the morning thinking of how I can best utilise these delicious sweet onions.

Hooray! I have some dwarf beans! I'm taking that as a result of my regular watering and constant attention. There's not that many at the moment but I am feeling more optimistic that I might get a couple of meals out of them at least.

It's a plus after my disappointing San Marzano tomatoes.

Having a soaker hose installed in flower beds this very moment 😀

This morning’s garden gorgeousness was a flock of about 10-15 long-tailed tits that flew into my hawthorn while I was at the window a few feet away. They’re so tiny and cute, I stood and watched them for a good ten minutes while they bobbed from branch to branch hunting aphids.

Gorgeous. They are so cute.

Our wildlife has not been so cute, a rat under the bird feeder catching crumbs from the fat balls. I’ve been banned from putting more out.

I did see a hummingbird hawk moth last week on some verbena boniarensis. It’s a good year for them apparently.

We’re forecast rain tonight! Although it’s been a sunny day here the light has somehow been autumnal as if the sun is much lower in the sky suddenly.

Picked a handful of my beans yesterday but forgot I was having salad for tea so put them in the fridge to have tonight.

I was surprised at how many I found when I moved the leaves around, I've got a pretty decent sized crop to have later on. Hopefully, will get at least a few more decent sized amounts for future meals, am happy to say the beans have been a success.

I keep checking the rest of the San Marzano tomatoes, so far, they don't seem to have the brown blight the first ones I picked had. The cherry tomatoes that are massive and obviously not cherry ones, are still green and also have no signs of the blight. I have been watering them all like mad to make sure they don't all dry out.

I'm seriously considering whether to bother with tomatoes next year though, I know enough people who do grow them who pass lots on so wouldn't miss out but they're proving to be a bit troublesome so I may have to think carefully about whether to do it in future.

Hooray for the beans though! 😆

I found the very hot weather a few weeks ago so difficult. I stopped everything. Then my ds came and proper told me off. So I’ve been watering daily- we don’t have a hosepipe ban. We go away on Friday so I’m trying to get the whole garden pruned, weeded, watered and mulched so that it can survive a weeks neglect. We are currently tackling the shrubbery which got completely out of hand. Why did I plant such prickly things? My Dh “helped” for 2 hours but then disappeared, and came back, showered and in fresh clothes so it’s back to 67 year old me with my 2 dodgy hips. Trying not to hate him. I reckon there’s another hour of weeding before I can water it and lay the mulch. I think we may have to move house.

Just reading this thread is therapeutic! it is good to know of everyone's successes and struggles.

It is still like a roasting oven in the central south. Other than the 20 minute shower the other night, we have yet to see another drop of rain. There was a mention of some showers today, but on the weather radar, it looks as though they will be going to the south and north of where I am. My arms have taken on a whole new level of tone with the lugging of watering cans.

I have gone through the lawn like a forensic detective and removed every weed, as they seem to be the only things growing! 😂 I honestly don't know what they are living on, because there is not an iota of moisture to be found in the ground when I dig them out.

I planted some Erigeron (fleabane) and a small rosemary bush in the small beds out the front. I'm looking for fairly hardy ground cover that can manage dry conditions and poor soil, so I'm hoping they will do the job. I know it isn't really the best time to plant, but I'm watering every day anyway, so thought it wasn't really much of a hardship to add 3 more plants to the rosta!

Oh @Zebracat I feel for you. I am sort of in the same boat. I have an injury making the carting of watering cans very tiresome and hurty. We DO have a hosepipe ban, though, so I win (or lose, rather).

Yesterday my saintly son installed a system of soaker hoses through my many flower beds in the front garden. There is a timer that can be set for say, an hour at dusk and an hour at dawn. I don't have to do a thing. And it is all legal under the ban. Wish I had done it sooner, and uses so much less water than sprinkling because the water goes straight to the plant roots not over the leaves first.

My DH does not help in the garden usually either but by mutual consent. He carts out the chainsaw when needed!

The garden survived us being away for a week even though a few things looked rather wilted. A good feed and water has perked everything back up again.

DH has been on bindweed duty and I’ve been deadheading. I’m making mental plans for what needs moving over the autumn/winter; the rhubarb is far too big again even though I gave a few crowns away last winter so that needs chopping at least in half.

I have ordered some seeds and bulbs so once August is out it’s proper planning time. The garden is currently a riot of colour but I can see where we will have some blank spaces soon so they need sorting.

We have had less than 1mm of rain since the 11th June and are officially in a drought. None forecast for the next 10 days either. Considering more water butts for next year (already have 5 and it’s a very small garden!)