What have you done today in the Garden?

I know my lawn would benefit from tining. I usually do this with a garden fork.
At my golf club they have a machine that hollow tines the greens. Hollow tining is far better as it allows more air to get to the grass roots.
So I found this on eBay and ordered it. I'm not sure if it will stand up to heavy use particularly if the ground is hard. But our soil is a bit sandy, it was formerly farmland. So it should be OK. It was only £14.85, post free.

 

Riley spiking the lawn with holes and pulled plugs is one thing I don’t have to do. Those automatic aeration machines I used to rent from the big box stores. They seemed to drag me around more than spiking the lawns.

I quickly leant that the moles and gophers do that for me now everywhere. Then just have to water the mole /gopher dirt hills back down the holes after setting traps in the active tunnels. It is a different sort of aeration system for the lawns and pastures. After all if it were not for the pocket gophers who brought seeds back up to the surface thru their elaborate tunnels after the volcano explosion in the 1980’s (Mt. Saint Helen’s), actually helped a totally decimated forest to grow back.

 

I have lots of moles and whatever ground critters here. I try to water down their mounds and run over them with the back wheels of my riding mower. I hope the snakes eat those moles. My cats kill them, but never eat them.

It is cold and windy today, and a lot of clouds.

But I did get out and put two fairy roses in the ground (they had been potted last fall) and moved the living cuttings into some larger containers for now. I took out that dead tame elderberry bush.

The good news is that my favorite large blueberry bush finally is putting out some leaves, so I pruned off some dead branches from it and my raspberries and blackberries. I don't think my one raspberry bush will be back though.

Those ostrich plume fern has a wee sprout, which is good... It is LABELED as a "hardy perennial"...

 

Well at least you don’t have gophers that love to eat garden plants. Sometimes while walking by the garden I’ll see a plant shaking out of the corner of my eye all on it’s own not from a breeze but like it’s have a shaking attack. Usually it’s a gopher.. moles eat worms like spaghetti noodles and the gophers devour underground plants. Sometimes it can quickly grab a shovel and dig the lil bigger up and the pop it with the shovel. Many of my plants have fainted / fallen over after all the underground roots have been eaten. The cats are good at herding them and help keep them at bay. They sit for hours just for that satisfying urge to hunt. Works better than traps.

 

My grandfather had those in his yard in Western Illinois. They spread for decades. I thought it was like being in the dinosaur era. I bet yours will survive!

Moles! Mine continuously work the soil. I think a lot of that is helpful. But sometimes it can be frustrating. I've also noticed that things tend to slowly sink into the ground, as they tunnel underneath. My paver sidewalk was an example.

Today...

I laid cardboard sheets around my smallest fig tree, and covered with arborist chips.





I emptied and cleaned the yellow jacket traps, reloaded with attractant, and re-installed. If this catches queens, that will mitigate the yellow jacket problem later in the fig grove.



The fig trees have started coming out of dormancy.



I repotted the last mini rose. I looked up the patents on the label. The best that I can tell, this one is called "Daniele Kordana".



I repotted the Hippeastrum from Christmas. I forgot to give it bone meal.



And planted some Caladium tubers in starter pots. They are on a seed warming mat.



Enough for today. I have to pace myself.

 

Hello RUFUS!!

 

Lookin good Daniel. You got a lot goin on there…. It’s good to hear you also pace yourself while gardening.
If I don’t stop for a break , then that’s when little accidents happen when I’m tired.

Today did a lot of ivy pullin off some of my trees and around my rose shrubs. The birds carry in the seeds from the forest next door . There’s a small section to clear. I put down a small tarp over it to rob them of sunlight and water. Ivy can strangle my trees if left unchecked. That stuff is like pulling on a long rope , it keeps goin and goin. Did the same with wild blackberry vines wildly running already thruout one small section of the back garden. They are sprouting up everywhere. The birds drop seeds everywhere. Pulled the new starts and lots more to go.

I trimmed a few evergreen shrubs with the battery op hedger, cut back a few limbs on the giant Hebe by the porch.
Last winter a heavy ice storm split it in half. It was to big anyway it grows like a weed. Then my shoulders said
“ OK that enough” ! ….and I listened.

Also discovered juniper web worms in my junipers , I cut the branches off and put them in a huge zip lock bag generally used for blankets. Put it out in the sun and they were cooked by the end of the day. Tiny lil worms.

Everything is covered with yellow pollen, even the porches and walkways are slippery and the red truck is ugly yellow red. The pollen tornados are just starting by next week everything will be covered in yellow pollen.

I\

 

It's a shopping day today and wet, so won't do much in the garden.
But yesterday I dug out this old hedgehog feeder from the shed. The previous night I'd left some water in a plastic saucer for it. It had one drink, then put its front feet on the rim of the saucer and tipped it over itself.
It obviously prefers this one.

 

Daniel— I admire your work. I especially like Caladiums. I hope that they will do well for you. I have seen them growing in the wild in Malaysia. What a sight that was!

Such lovely garden shots, Pac. The pollen-edos will soon begin here as well. It even sticks to the windows!

Riley— that hedgehog and his baptismal antics sound hilarious to me.

 

Just had a check around. It's reasonably warm with occasional sunny spells.

Our acer palmatums are coming into leaf.
This one we've had for nearly forty years. There will as usual, be some gaps in the canopy and some foliage which is not conforming to the "dome shape" I like. I'll wait until the leaves are fully out, then I'll do a bit of wiring to get it more intro shape.




This one is less of a problem. I'm hoping the grass will have grown before the canopy blocks out the light.



>

No problems with this one. It just needs a regular trim.







The wisterias are progressing well. There's a lot of strong garden wire attached to many branches on this one, to keep it tight to the fence.






The blooms should be out in a couple of weeks.





With the three on this pergola, that I've trained to cascade, I'm never sure if the trailing branches are going to produce new side shoots or blooms.





Fortunately it's blooms.





The roses are putting on more growth. No sign of black spot, of which we had a lot last year. I'll give them another spray of Sulphur Rose and repeat it every two weeks from now on. I need to repaint the pot movers.





The hollow tining tool I've ordered for the lawn has yet to arrive. It needs to be a very dry day to use it, as the earth it removes will need to be collected.

I've only one problem doing it, in that the speed-fit pipe that supplies my two pop-up lawn sprinklers are buried under the lawn. But fortunately a photo when I was installing them, so I know where it is.

 

Looking good there, Riley. Your Wisteria always looks so nice. Very smart.

 

Riley your garden is making nice progress. Lookin great.
I agree with Sjoerd on your bloomin wisterias, alway a nice full show blooms.

 

Ack! Blackberries!

My neighbor let them get way out of hand at their property's edge, bordering my property. Plus overhanging the road. I don't know them - incredibly antisocial and a bit scary. Anyway, now they've been going around at night with a Bobcat front end loader dragging the brambles out, piling them up, and burning them. I've tried to control my side but that isn't possible unless they eliminate their quarter acre or more thickets. I use a cordless hedge trimmer on my side. If they control theirs, regular mowing will do the job.

I found the baggie of Goldrush apple scion in the back of the fridge, so grafted the mid tier of one of the Redlove espaliers with those. Peaceful, meditative, mindful work. I tried different techniques, Now it's just wait and watch them. Goldrush is one of the last apples to ripen, and an excellent kerper.

I got out the container of mini mini dahlas. Turns out, they did make tubers, they survived dry storage in the containers that I grew them in last year, in the garage, and they have viable looking buds.



I replanted one group. The others to follow.

I have an accidental fig tree that I started two years ago as a cutting. It was a pruning that I used as a row marker stick, but it grew. I've found a home for it so dug it up and planted in a container of potting soil for transport.

Puttered a little in the garden too.

 

@Doghouse Riley your garden is incredible! You should have a garden series on the tele!

 

A friend took me for errands this afternoon, but I did get a few more rocks out of the grass this morning, and gave my hens some more weeds to eat. I don't know what to do with the rocks yet. So far, I am putting them in a few buckets. There are way more rocks. Maybe I can do some more tomorrow.

My fern has at least one sprout.

I bought another blueberry bush from Walmart, and two raspberry bushes from a friend. (she makes her living from gardening/farming). And my yarrow seeds arrived today. @Daniel W , how long to keep them in the fridge? I added a damp paper towel to them like the others. Yarrow seeds are extremely tiny. I just hope that towel is not too wet!