What have you done today in the Garden?

@Sjoerd best wishes and healing thoughts for your bride.

 

You are a busy bee.
I am interested to see how those Burgess Buttercups look once they begin forming fruits. Those plants of yours are about the size of my three. I don’t know about you, but we had a bad beginning here.

You know, you are much more productive than I, even when you when you are tired.

Why, I could sit here and give you compliments all day but the great thing for our little gardening community here is your postings with helpful tips and examples. Thanks from my Bride and me.

 

Only spent a couple of hours in the garden today as I wanted to watch the tennis.
Changed the azalea in the pot by the front door for a rose from "the alley of shame." (those along the side fence of our drive you can see).





I've put the azalea on the patio where it will get more sun and thus aid its growth.

Got the ladder out and pruned off all the unwanted stringers from the wisterias on the pergolas. The one over the French windows always puts a lot of thick growth at the extreme right end, so I thined that out, so the left hand end will benefit.





Got up on the roof of the shed to prune off branches of next door's trees with my Barnel telescopic pruner, where they were hanging over it.







Did the same from the tea-house roof.






Just an observation. We often have trees that can overhang shed's etc., with felt roofs. It's important to check now and again that the tree's branches don't grow in such a way as they start to rub on the roof unnoticed, as this over time will wear a hole in the felt.


Gave this acer in the bed at the bottom of the garden, a severe prune as it was getting too big. Looks a bit thin at the moment but it'll soon put out more growth, it does so every year after pruning.





Went round everywhere with the garden vac.

Gave the main patio a scrub with hot soapy water around where the bird feeder and the hedgehog feeder are situated.

 

Picked more blackcurrants, redcurrants, pink currants and gooseberries, didn't have much time for anything else but hope to weed the back garden. There's a corner at the back that has a lot of brambles and it's been left and forgotten about, so hope to start that tomorrow.

 

More harvesting and cleaning. It was beans and spuds. Smartening-up the flower beds.

 

@Melody Mc. if your daughter and son in law run out of things to keep them occupied, you can send them down here. I have lots of stuff for them to do!

 

Wow....What you can get done in a couple of hours is very productive! I've never heard of a felt roof. We have mostly tin and some shingles. I can see why you would have to keep the branches off.

Hahahahaha. They'd probably love that Especially if you have figs! My daughter ate some while she went to school in Oregon and still talks about them.

Today I harvested a couple large heads of romaine lettuce for the kids to take to his parent's home today. I went on Lygus patrol - they are a little lethargic in the AM and easier to catch and squash. My daughter was able to eat the first of the cherry tomatoes from the Dwarf Red Robins when I was watering, and she loved them.

Today I seived out the comfrey tea and started another bucket. Pretty excited about this stuff @Sjoerd

Sorry I missed this @Logan ...I have a hard time knowing what to do with the gooseberries, and how/when to harvest them. Do you always have to pull the stems and blossoms? ( That sounds terribly lazy on my part...) Also Logan - everywhere the bush touches the ground it spreads. Do you keep your's pruned or tied up? I tried putting shingles and plastic around the large one that I gave away, and it helped a wee bit, but was not perfect by any means. My young smaller one is already trying to find the ground.

 

They are called felt roofs, it's a generic term, but they aren't actually made of felt.
Felt roofs are very common in the UK for garden buildings and for some flat-roofed house extensions.

Here's the one on our tea-house, ten years ago, I'd just finished changing it. It replaced the original one.
It has has a polymer backing and there's green sand stuck to the surface to make it fire resistant.

 

Yes i trim them after harvesting, it's a very boring thing to do but has to be done.
When the bushes are full of fruit they bend down and touch the ground but mine doesn't root. Here's a video on how to look after them.

 

Good news Mel. BTW—when you made the bew batch of tea, what did you do with the spent leaves? Did you add new leaves to them or chuck the old leaves onto your compost pile? I am happy that it worked for you. When you feel handy with the comfrey tea, you can look into using it as a foliar spray as a form of fertilising.

 

Picked more fruit and i had a little helper, a baby robin they don't have a red breast at that age.

 

Great foto, Loggie. It is the time of year for the young to be exploring.

 

Thanks Sjeord yes robins don't seem to be afraid of us humans and stay close.

 

Not doing much today.

Gave the lawn a feed.

Fought my way into the azaleas in the bed on the side of the patio, to remove some convulvulus that had grown through the fence from next door and was tangled up with a clematis.



These azaleas give a lot of shade for 'arry the hedgehog's house. It must get very warm in there in hot weather. This is his "summer house" as I drilled ventilation holes in one side just under the roof. He has a "winter house" with insulation, I'll change them over in September, before he hibernates.

I gave his patio a sweep this morning as he'd chucked out some unwanted hay.


The wire fence is to stop cats getting in there and pouncing on the birds feeding at the ground feeder on the patio. There are two gaps in the fence wide enough for him to get through but not a cat.







He has a regular routine. He comes out of his house about 9.00 pm and checks his feeding station to make sure his chicken dinner and pellets are there. He eats some of his chicken, then goes back to bed. We think he's just checking that the food is there so has no need "to go shopping." He then comes back to feed several times in the night.


Trail cam photo.

 

Potted on some more wallflowers and later some watering.