What have you done today in the Garden?

Today I made a raised bed (7 ft x 2.5 ft x 1 ft deep) out of treated deck boards and 2 x 4s. Had to take crash course in Egyptian pyramid building to get it moved into the green house. Thing weighs a ton !

 

I finally cropped down enough to load.

 

very nice!

 

I picked up sticks from the storms and made a burn pile. I piled sticks for years but they compost so slow. I raked and used the blower mainly.

 

Marlin, I'm only slightly envious. (I lie, I'm totally envious! ) Not a faint hint of Asparagus. We do have lettuce, garlic, spinach growing. JUst when I prepare to plant, cold returns.

Riley, you're one busy person. Those solar lights are great. Night lights without running up a utility bill. We have a few.

 

I was able to cut away a small strip of turf with roots about two to three inches wide from this edge where it had grown over the flags.



I used it to patch this area under this acer palmatum. It's always a problem as the lack of sunlight getting through it, encourages moss. I removed the moss and banged down the bits of turf with my lump hammer. Then banged in a few golf tees to stop the birds from pulling them up. It looks a bit of a mess, but it will soon blend in.




You could buy a roll of turf for patching lawns, but the grass is never the same and will show even years later.....Well you'll know even if no one else notices.




It's getting quite warm now.

The fifteen roses collected over the years we put in ceramic pots on our two patios, can get very warm and dry out quite quickly.









They sit on plastic pot movers, it makes it easy to rearrange them and move them when the patios need sweeping
I drilled a hole in the bottom of each of them to let out surplus water when it rains a lot in the winter.

Today as I do every year, I put a dab of silicone over each hole so the pot mover can retain about half an inch of water. This will either be drawn up into the pot if it's a bit dry, or evaporate if it isn't.

In the autumn I remove the silicone.

 

"In the never ending quest for looking for something to do," I did a bit of "plumbing" ready for the new hose reel that's going to go on the back of the shed that should be delivered on Saturday.

Unfortunately, my"friendly local plumber's merchants," is closed, so I had to use what I've got.

Ideally I want a "T" connector to attach to the speed-fit pipe that supplies this tap, then connect the tap to it so I can have more pipe going to the left from the connector.



(Digressing the bit of pipe attached to the connector to the right I use to fill watering cans. It stops the water going all over your feet if you're next to the tap when you stand the can on the ground).

The hose reel will be going above this tap. What I need is some speed-fit connectors, a 90 degree bend, etc., and a bit of pipe but it'll have to wait. I'll have to swop over the pipes for now if I want to use a watering can.



Other than that it was just a case of a check round.

The "lollypop acer" will soon be out, it'll need regular checking and a spray as greenfly love it.

ray as

We love the early leaves which will be salmon pink.



The wisterias are nearly in bloom.






These are always the last as they are quite young, but plwnty of blooms to come, blue at each end white in the middle.



The acer palmatums are in full leaf, the smaller one is more or less behaving itself.



The big one is a bit all over the place. I'll leave it for a couple of weeks until the weight of the foliage makes some of the branches droop more, then I'll give it a haircut to a narrower "dome shape, " but I have to avoid the, "giant cocktail umbrella look."



The lawn's doing well and always looks better when the sun is behind my camera. I'll cut it again tomorrow.


I gave the giant lilies a spray. I've only seen one lily beetle, that was a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't get at it as the lilies are up against the side fence and I'd have had to fight my way through some rodos to get near it.

 

This signals your best results ever. Given how nice everything in pictures has been to this point I wish you an insect free luck in your fungus free effort to create your beautiful garden.

 

Thanks for that.

I take a lot of pictures, it's easy enough and I file them away by month on my laptop. I've been doing it since 2003 when I bought my first digital camera. They're in files for, Home, Family, Garden and Koi Pool, (no more of the latter now)

I've also got files of earlier transparencies of my family since the kids were small, that I converted to JPG files and hard copies on my old Epson scanner/printer for albums for my wife (she doesn't like looking at them on the laptop or even from a stick in the TV).
The garden ones are a useful guide as to how the garden and individual plants do from year to year. It is quite evident that some plants do better some years than others.
It doesn't take long.

I used to have one of those huge video cameras and I've had a tape or two converted to hard disc, as I did some old super 8mm film that I took when we were in our twenties.

 

I am glad I am not the lonely one to keep plant pictures. The garden can change dramatically, especially as the environment changes and memory changes too so hard copy is more useful than I realized 10 years ago. I have started some new areas to plant for example, here they are bare, just started from the leaf mould of last years droppings and the trimmings from the removal of several mast trees.

 

Planted half the onion sets, got the first row of peas in. Cleaned up the community garden plot.
The veggie gardening season has begun!!!

 

Yes, I am telling you all to grow and harvest everything you can whether you are canning, dehydrating, freezing or root cellar storage, but I think food shortages and costs will rise significantly in the coming months and years. stock up on anything you can if its a good price.

 

of jobs to do.

We've two low voltage Blagdon halogen spotlights. They weren't cheap, best part of £40 each, but you do get a wall bracket, a stake and four different coloured lenses.We've had them for at least ten years.

The spotlight that shines on the rockery and fountain, didn't work when I switched it on last night.
This one.





It appeared that there was no power to the socket, so it was a case of tracing it from the transformer which was working. In the end it proved to be a dodgy socket although it looked OK.
These are ceramic and set in mica or whatever as they get hot and the casing is only plastic. They aren't designed to be replaced. It went a few years ago so I drilled out the socket and replaced it with one of a pack of six sockets I bought cheaply on e-Bay. I also bought two five packs of halogen lamps at the same time, they cost a fraction of those available from Blagdon. It's working again.
So me, "1" Blagdon "0"

I've a Hoselock hosereel on the back wall of the house, but it's outside the high fence between the corner of the house and the garage. It hangs on the wall on two brackets and is kept there securely by a tab that passes over the handle and slots into the top bracket. So they're easy enough to take down and use like a portable hose reel. It's been there for six months and anyone could remove it if they walked up our drive although it can't be seen from the road.

Anyway I got round to fixing an "L" shaped bracket to the wall and the reel's casing.

 

Pulled bindweed encroaching along fence line this AM and am taking a rest for today. Yesterday I finally traced the last bamboo runner to its little pointy end (in my yard). Pulling pavers and shoveling/hauling dirt for a week entitles me to a day off.