What have you done today in the Garden?

Trying to grow catgrass for the indoor freeloaders.

 

I love the black-eyed Susans (aka rudbeckias)... I have loads of them, and need to get out there and collect seed heads from the spent ones. I have wild ones, and planted tame ones a few years ago, and they are all mixed together. I also dug up some wild mini black eyed Susans from nearby. They seem to behave themselves and only come up in a few places. I need to collect seeds from my cosmos, echinaceas, and zinnias also.

Yesterday, I canned some more tomatoes with onions and bell peppers. And I harvested a lot of elderberries. I had a large tub full and it took me 2 days to take them off of the stems. I put 5 qts in the freezer for now. I want to make jam with them later. I need to get a few things, apparently elderberries have to be weighed and the sugar must be weighed before canning.

I want to learn water bath canning, and need to get a few things to start that. I usually do open kettle canning (with the lid on), but many things cannot be safely canned that way.

I did pull a few weeds and watered my garden today.

I have a lot of cucumbers in the fridge. I don't like pickles. Any ideas how to preserve them otherwise? I have more tomatoes. In the fall, I want to build a tunnel for tomatoes and cucumbers next season. They are much taller than my trellis efforts.

 

You've had quite the harvest! I'm very impressed!

 

@Sjoerd, coming from you, that's quite an honor. (Or coming from anyone else here!)

Today I spent a lot of time not doing much.

Thinned bean plants.
Cut off old iris leaves with remnants of leaf spot.
Planted a lavender plant in the border. Did a fair amount of spreading mulch. A little better each day.
It was cool and overcast, so I didn't water much.

This little creature was on a zinnia leaf-



"Parking for frogs only! All others will be toad"

 

Daniel—Don’t exaggerate. Haha.
That was a great shot of the little froggie on your Zinnia. Is it a Spring Peeper or something?

 

Warning..distressing images .......





This is the area in all it's embarrassing glory!!




Ending on a positive note, we have a lovely self seeded Tomato plant growing in one of our open compost bins..and it has some lovely looking fruits too.



Made a start on clearing out my Summer dumping area.....eh...hmmmm... sorry I mean our greenhouse. As it's not used in the Summer months, pots and trays used for Spring sowings just seem to magically accumulate in there, and I swear they must breed in there too!!

I have also started to sieve the spent compost from the trays used to germinate the seedlings. This gets reused to cover dormant tender plants that require frost free storage throughout the Winter months. My arms are aching now so I will carry on tomorrow with that particular task.

That area ( I refer to it as my nursery area...a bit of a joke as it's really just the messy area that is hidden from general view) gets the full on brunt of the sunshine and by early afternoon it's nigh impossible ( well for whimpy me that is) to work there for any lenght of time. I keeping having to either take breaks or find jobs in other areas of the garden, that too is in full sun by late morning but at least a breeze ( if there is any) blows across it.

I've just laid out another batch of spent compost to dry off and will continue sieving and filling bags tomorrow morning. I must remember to put them undercover as I think we could be in for some rain tomorrow.

Now to deadhead the Dahlias.

 

Oops nearly forgot... Hubs is giving the Cherry tree a good spruce up ,it's got quite big and we rarely get any fruit for ourselves we allowthe birds to get first pickings.

 

Oreti looks familiar… greenhouses do tend to gather all the garden supplies left from seasonal plantings, such a nice working station. Looks like you’ve been super buzzzy . Don’t ya like the smell of fresh compost?
Also nice peek at your garden sun shinning thru.ah that is a nice looking cherry tree. I see elec tool sitting out? More projects in the garden and ferns shinning in the sun rays.

 

Yes you can't beat fresh compost,there's no comparison is there.

I do love our Cherry tree, as I said we don't get a look in when the fruits are ripening. We really don't mind the birds nabbing them, it's a small price to pay for the enjoyment it gives us when it's in full blossom.

Electric tools are for Hubs use only....they scare me!!

 

Oreti elec tools are heavy, and noisy . They are helpful for repairs / building projects. I have switched to battery op clippers, pruners, small chain saws, drills so much lighter and easier to use . No carting around extension cords . I do have to make a sweep of the garden every now and then for lost or misplaced tools. I think I have a pretty good collection of lost sunglasses, gloves and hand clippers out there somewhere. My garden gloves are like socks never match and I swear the shrubs eat them just to discourage me from clipping off branches. And oh boy I have a bunch of trimming to do …. Eventually…and an Italian cypress tree that just swooned across the landscape from the extreme heat these past few summers. It’s always something.

 

Pacific Tree Frog. I find them now and then, usually in the rainwater barrels. I think they are a good sign of something. Their other name is "chorus frog". I enjoy hearing them sing together at night.

That just looks like a "real gardener's" zone to me. You have such a beautiful garden. It needs a work area too.

You reminded me, though. I still have quite a few seedling pots to wash and stack more neatly.

I have a question for you Oreti. I seem to recall, you dig your dahlias in the fall? Do you wait for a frost? I was thinking of doing that with my seed-grown dahlias. How do you store them?

 

No @Daniel W I leave all mine in the borders if I can. I do have some in pots this year but only because I can't resist pulling off a piece of tuber and growing in on in a pot......this year I did this several times and then couldn't find a space in the borders for them. I really must stop this habbit. I usually find that I do have a handful to overwinter though...they say that you should wait until the first frost had blacken the leaves ,but I have done mine before this and they have been fine.
Most info says to dig them up and clean of the tubers ,checking them over as you do so. Then allow them to dry out on the greenhouse staging. This bit I always do too. Then most say to wrap them in newspaper and store in a box/ crate in a cool dark place. Check on them occasionally to see if any parts have gone soft/ rotten ..if so remove said parts. Some suggest you dust the tubers with some sort of fungicide, I don't.

When I have tried this way I found some of the tubers had rotted. So what I find works best for me is to p!ace the dried tubers in ( spent) dry compost and then store the pots under the greenhouse staging, if temps get to below freezing I place horticultural fleece over them.
I must point out that my greenhouse is unheated. One half of it has a frame that my Hubs made several years ago that allows us to screw in place bubblewrap frames that serve to close up half the greenhouse. These are easily remove to gain access and check things over and also on warmer days too.

Then about March I carefully uncover the tubers to check / discard any dodgy bits. Then lay them on top of some compost ,either in pots or trays depending on their size and lightly cover them with more compost . I then water them , not soaking them though!!. This will be the only watering they receive until I see shoots appearing. I also tend to place them up on the staging at this point to get more daylight.
I leave them to get quite big, I find the slugs don't cause as much damage, and then plant them out in May.

Hope this helps, as I said there are several ways to overwinter them and for me this works best.
If at all possible though I prefer to leave them in the borders but only because I'm a bit lazy .

 

Me too.

I use them, but sometimes...

 

Yes! Thank you very much, Oreti.

A lot of web sites and youtube articles just quote previous websites, that quote previous websites. Sometimes, they are not good. It's better to read someone's real experience.

Last year, I had some giant dahlias and two mini dahlias that I grew in containers. I just let them dry out and stored in the attached but unheated garage for the winter. I was surprised, they all did fine. Two were just tiny grocery store plants. They made good tubers. I divided them and repotted. They flourished this year. The other was in-ground. I just stored it in the open, dry, in the garage. It did fine, too. But I forget if I let it get frosted, and I've been wondering.

If I leave them in the ground, voles eat them, 100%, every time.

The reason it matters now is, I want to label them while blooming.