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 ❤️

I have considered going through our lawn and getting all of our weeds but I'd have a lot of holes to fill if I did.

I'm not after a perfect lawn though, but my uncle whom I live with has reached that stage in life where he watches other men his age explain how grass grows.

Our new foster dog/dog time share is an intact male, and any patches of grass that were growing back have reversed that decision.

It hasn't been terribly hot up here but we are absolutely begging for some rain. We drove past a stream one day and it was fairly full and the next day it was sludge. The clouds are teasing us.

Thanks @ILikeDungs . We had WORDS, and he changed back into gardening clothes, but then my friend came so I sat with her and let him get on with it. He’s a very good Dh in many ways, cooks more than me, does laundry , even irons, but the garden is big, and I have been working at it solidly for 10 days while he saw friends, played golf and watched every scrap of sport he could find on the tv, and then smiled indulgently when I staggered in with twigs in my hair. I like a bit of gardening but this has been hard labour, not wafting around deadheading and cutting pretty flowers for the house. If I wasn’t so knackered I’d be planning a new patio…

I don't know how you've done it, Zebra. It has been so hot that most days I could hardly keep up with just the watering. Success was keeping plants alive, no actual gardening. Not possible. The ground is so dried out I can barely push in the soaker hose pins. But hey, no mowing 😄

We’ve had more rain! We haven’t had the extremes of heat over the last month, it’s been about 22c but so dry. Nothing much is growing but I haven’t lost anything. The one good thing is that I haven’t had to mow the lawn for a month. Hurray.

I had to plant some things yesterday in the project where I volunteer - it was a case of they’d been grown by the propagation team and were going to be thrown out if they weren’t planted. The soil (which is normally incredible because it used to be the kitchen garden for an old Manor House) was like dust at least six inches down.

At the garden centre yesterday I noticed a few trays of Cyclamen plants, a sure sign that autumn is on the way despite still seeing lots of summer plants available to buy. They also had quite a few trays of pansies.

They had lots of empty stands though so I expect they will be filled fairly soon with more bedding plants and the inside will have all the bulbs, some you can fill a bag yourself and others already pre-packed.

Looking at the riot of assorted colours in my garden with the sun shining down, it's hard to get too excited about buying autumn and winter plants right now when it still looks so beautifully summery out there.

Didn't go to our garden centre but my nan did today and she says the shelves were bare.

I think I am going to plant some bulbs this autumn but I'll probably have to order some online as our garden centre seems to predominantly stock tulips, tulips, the odd allium and more tulips.

I really want some pink daffodils. We've quite a few daffodils already although at this time of year I couldn't say exactly where they're planted, but I keep saying each year I'll get some pink ones and then I never do.

Now I want pink daffodils… My telescopic loppers have died, so I went to B&Q for more, and picked up some half price coreopsis. Didn’t see any cyclamen tho.

Spoke too soon, new dog also likes ripping my unripe tomatoes off the plant.

Been ill with a sickness bug the past few days so I haven't watered anything in the garden and the things that had survived and bounced back are once again failing but I am holding out hope that they've been resilient.

I can't see us having much more good pool weather so I will just be dunking my watering can into the pool when I am able to. It was chlorinated water, but I doubt there's any chlorine left in it by now.

My tomatoes seemed to love it last time.

Last year I did runner beans, first time for quite a while but thought I'd give them another try. Absolutely nothing, loads of flowers but no beans. Hot weather was blamed last year for the beans not setting. So disappointing.

This year I went back to dwarf beans, Polka, they have been really good, I only planted around 10 beans into a large tub and have been picking the beans for the last five to six days.

The weather has been exceptionally blisteringly hot this year but the dwarf beans have been brilliant so I think I will not bother at all with runners again and just stick to what works.

Were they bush beans or climbing beans? I've had more success with bush beans than climbers because I think they do better at insulating their own patch of soil from the sun rather than the climbers, but I only got climbers this year and they are crispy.

My runner beans are a complete disaster this year, and the dwarf french beans are not much better. A really bad year for runner beans.

Cucumbers out the wazoo, though, and chillies loving it

Yes, they were bush ones, I did put canes in but they just bushed right out to about a foot or so high. They kept their shape pretty well too despite having some quite strong winds at times.

The beans were yellow rather than green but I will get the same ones next year as they have been really successful with just a handful of them to start with.

Clearing my sweetcorn at the allotment, will pick last 15 cobs this week for the freezer. Climbing french beans are nearly finished.

I’m out there for at least an hour every day and it just seems to be deadhead, pull up bindweed, water and repeat. But it does look pretty at the moment with lots of colour.

I am desperate to get to the garden centre for the plants I need to fill some gaps but it feels like it would be a suicide mission in this heat; we are forecast 34C tomorrow…I’ll hold off until next week!

We're at our caravan this week. My favourite garden centre is the reighton nurseries one, so we will make a trip but I also don't think there's much point in me buying anything because the heat is just baking everything.

I have to confess I’m loving not mowing the lawns. The grass on the back ones grows like crazy normally, about five inches in a week. I’ll be quite happy if it dies and I can get it re-turfed with a slow growing one. I’m thinking of getting rid of the smaller one anyway (it’s about 3m x 4m and just making a bigger border and a gravel path.

I pulled up all the spinach that bolted and went crispy, took off all the seeds and planted them.
They may not come to anything but if they do I’ll have windowledge baby spinach in September.
When it finally rains I’ll sprinkle some outside too, and plant out the supermarket herbs I bought to replace the bolted ones in the herb bed.

Today’s gardening: took the hosepipe around with me to fill the watering can as I went, rather than walking back and forth to the tap like I was doing laps in a prison yard for exercise. 😂

Chuffed to see a hummingbird hawk-moth in the garden yesterday and again this morning. I’ve seen one where I volunteer but never here. It’s an exceptional year for them apparently.

Looks like we’ve lost an acer to the drought. It must have been missed when watering. I’ve given it a good soaking but it’s very crispy.

I first saw a hummingbird hawk moth in Barcelona, and I was so confused by what it was.

We get them all the time because a lot of neighbours have buddleia but they seem to have exploded in population size this year, possibly because of the heat and buddleia being absolutely immune to being killed.

It seemed to be loving the salvias.

@Jimmyneutronsforehead we killed a Buddleia! I cut it back as usual in autumn, and asked DH to cut the thicker branches back with the saw (I’m not good with saws). By the time he got round to it there was a frost soon after, and the at least 10-year-old Buddleia that usually grew to 8ft tall had no buds at all this year.
I used it as a teachable moment about doing tasks when I ask not months later.

I have just planted a rose (Emma Bridgewater) in my new garden, next to my seating area. It smells wonderful.

It's 35 C here today. I went out to deal with the cosmos and came back inside hot, sweaty and exhausted.

Aha, but did he actually learn from it?