What have you done today in the Garden?

Dirt Mechanic, such a tidy garden. Mine looks unkempt alongside it.
Today I planted more lettuce, spinach, and dropped 4 Black Krim seeds
in the dirt, just to see if they grow. I have more plans for tomorrow.

Jewell, will you be posting a photo of the window garden shelf?

 

I pruned the Lady Hillingdon rose (the way she grows, she ain't no lady!) then planted two more rows of green beans, thinned the new lettuce, and put yet more shavings in the hens' nest boxes.

 

Marlin, when you thin lettuce, you do eat what you take out, right?

 

Growingpains, yes we eat every little leaf! As you know, lettuce seed is really small, and I've never managed to space the seed correctly. I just go in when the leaves are at about 2-3" and pull out enough to give the remaining plants space to grow. I bill the salad as "gourmet baby lettuce" and pass it off as intentional!

 

Watered our sambucus and our mimosa. Both these are in large tubs in which they've been for years, so the roots are pretty solid. At this time of the year I use a 10cm metal rod to drive half a dozen deep holes into the root ball a few inches away from the rim of the tub. It meets quite a bit of resistance from the compacted roots. But this ensures that when I water them the water doesn't drain around the outside of the root ball and out the bottom of the tub.

I topped up the two tree azalea tubs with some ericaceous compost and added more around the roots of the two acer palmatums. Then gave everything a good water.
Then cleaned the car and the front door of our house.

 

jane... if you miss I leaf I forgive you.

 

Toni, You're brave to even be out in the garden.

Marlin, just as I do as to scattering the fine seed. As for thinning,
I just carefully grab a handful here and there.. Salads for our table and
sometimes for neighbors too.
Riley, the car and door do not count as garden work !

I planted a few more Red onions, some more lettuce and spinach. Scattered some Wildflower mix. I'm slowly getting back into the gardening groove.

 

I trans planted 100 red onions and bought 6 cabbage plants from Home Depot. The onion raised bed has 8" of dirt in it .I've never planted in a raised bed before , so I don't know what I'm doing. They are Charleston Wakefield plants. Supposed to be heat tolerant. We'll see.

 

Don Perry, my motto ha become, "Live and learn gardening."

Today I potted 8 Black Krim tomato seeds, actually at least two seeds per pot. This leads me to believe I will have plenty of luscious, juicy tomatoes this summer.

 

I raised up by 4" the other cupboard in the garage, the one in the corner. I did the other one yesterday.
This would if not under the present self-isolation circumstances, have seemed necessary, even for me.
But it does allow me to have two rows of polystyrene boxes on top of the racking and still leave some space on top of the cupboards for "other stuff." These boxes are excellent for storage as they keep the damp out, as the garage being a simple concrete post and panel with an asbestos roof is quite drafty.







I'm very pleased with the £7.99 rhodos I bought from Aldi. They look quite at home in the space that originally featured an azalea that died.





They wiil probably all be pink like this one that is already starting to flower.




I've dumped the blueberry bush we bought last year, we had in this ceramic pot as it didn't survive the winter.



So I promoted one of the roses in plastic tubs we have against the fence to the side of our drive. It is a patio rose called "Peachy." but it was only a cheap one.

It originally lost its place on the patio when the five bare root roses we got from David Austin arrived in November.

Our azalea "hedge" in the front garden will have a really good showing of blooms this year. The number tends to go up and down a bit each year.

This is the one my wife bought thirty years ago for 50p in the reduced to clear bin on a stall on Altrincham Market. She also managed to split the stem when she brought it home on the bus in one of several carrier bags of shopping she was carrying (I was at work). We wrapped the stem in some Sellotape and it survived.

I've layered it several times over the years.



It won't be long before it's in bloom, there's hundreds of flower buds. But it will still be some time before our "lollypop acer" is in leaf, or the grass under the azaleas recovers.



We've never been able to identify it. Nor could the owner of the local nursery we often visited, whose stall it was, on the market.



The lawn is finally responding to feeding and regular watering.
The low sun is causing the blades of grass to cast shadows, it actuall looks better than this from the other direction.



I confess to taking a lot of photos in the garden, but it's the only way my wife can often see, the parts not visible from her chair in the lounge.

 

My nemesis bed is weeded from buttercups. One more bed to complete. Trenching and terracing continues. Time to finish barking the paths....tomorrow.

 

WOW Riley, your yard is beautiful.

Jewell, weeding from Buttercups? Does that mean you pulled Buttercups out? But they're such pretty flowers?
All I did today was a tiny bit of watering lettuce and spinach.

 

Took the last asparagus cutting of the season for Easter dinner tomorrow, picked a few more sugar peas for the same dinner, admired how well the potato patch is doing, and saw the first planting of green beans coming up. The squash seeds I planted just aren't germinating, so I trashed those seeds and will get new ones from a different supplier. Thank heavens it's early enough in the season to re-plant!

 

"Looking for something to do," I sorted out the solar lights.
These (taken last year)



Ours are just the cheap ones, glass globes on steel tubes.

I keep them in polystyrene boxes during the winter having taken out the batteries. But despite giving the contacts a spray with switch cleaner before they go away. They still need a bit of "fettling" to get them working. On a few I have to use bits of copper wire, to connect the positive terminals of the battery.



One of the problems is that they leak. So stuff rusts inside. I run a band of black insulating tape around and over the join between the globe and metal cup it sits in, where rain water running off the globe can get inside.

Anyway, job done. We only use nine of them. So I've a few spares.