What have you done today in the Garden?

We haven’t had any snow for three day’s …fingers crossed….

 

We moved the potted herbs to their pottery containers. We pot them in 1 gallon plastic pots, put a catch tray in the pottery container, and plunk the herbs in. They are outside, enjoying (?) the overcast day and getting used to their new home.
Husband tilled up the lettuce bed and we'll plant the three kinds of lettuce and the spinach this afternoon, in anticipation of the predicted rain tonight. We'll water the seeds in when planted, but there's nothing like a good rain to help things along.

 

That is fantastic news! You've really had a tough go of winter this year. Hopefully your poor plants all do okay, they're not used to this either are they.

 

Got quite as bit done today.

Tied up a lot of clematis. There's a couple on the side of the garage that definitely haven't survived, I may replace them.. But I may not, as there's five others, along its side.

Got the "weather side" and the front of the tea-house, rubbed down and painted. Those aren't "pin joints," there's a big screw under a 1" piece of dowl hammered in on top of them, to give that effect.








Over its lifetime it must have had a more than a dozen coats. But I like it to be a bit shiny, the rain drips of it more easily.


I did the same with the pergola over the French windows, well, just the posts and the front beam.

It was a pain as I had to remove the bird/squirrel feeders, clean up behind them, rub the post down, paint it and when it had dried put them back again.

"Make sure you put them back in the same place as the squirrel likes to sit on that branch and lean in to the feeder for some food!"

"Yes dear."





I also put a new bead of silicone round where the posts enter the concrete feet.





We're going to have a bumper show of wisteria blooms as usual.






There must be about three hundred on this pergola.





Same here along the fence.





Not so many on the pergola next to the garage at the moment, but it's always slow. . It'll need a bit of a sort out once the blooms have set. At the moment, I've a strong wire around the branches that I want to "cascade." Once I've taken that off, I can spread them out as the bends will have"set."


>

I may give the balustrade a rub down and a coat of paint tomorrow, when I come home from golf..

 

Rain and hail again today!

I repotted tomato seedlings.



Spritzed aphids on pepper plants. They are starting to perk up.



This Serrano pepper was looking dead but maybe it will recover. I'm starting to be hopeful about this one too. Two weeks ago, there were no green leaves after the bug killer episode. Lesson learned.



If it's really starting to grow, it might take off quickly now. That would be nice. I like hot sauce made with Serrano peppers. There are some Serrano seedlings too, just in case.

More seedlings, just for fun. Dusty Miller, Verbascum, Stocks, Tigridia. Why did one cell with Verbascum germinate nicely, while the other didn't at all? Did I not plant that cell?



Rudbeckia seedlings. Home-saved seeds, stratified in the fridge for 2 1/2 months. Planted yesterday.



I think I'll only keep six or ten Rudbeckia plants, assuming they continue to grow. I love the flowers, but they can be a bit large and floppy by fall. There should be plenty of room for them, along with zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, in the meditation garden.

 

That's going to look amazing!

 

Dog haven’t any buds yet on my wisterias yet. It looks like your will have amazing blooms .
Working on a few seedlings
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Daniel seedlings looking good.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one staring at an empty spot in my seedlings wondering if I missed one.

Can I ask - are your Echinacea and Rudbeckia perenials there Daniel? I can't seem to find a straight answer about the zone for Echinacea...some say 3 ( which gives me a chance sheltered by a big rock) and others say four.

 

Whatcha got growin there Pac?

 

sweetpeas, cosmos, nicotiana, nasturtium. Sweet William, borage.

 

Mel, my older Echinacea plants have survived for several years. I think the main challenge here is slugs, more than weather. If slugs like something, they will completely destroy it. Our slugs are as big as my thumb, but longer. And I have fat thumbs. With a long, chilly Spring, things that are tasty to slugs but grow slowly, don't survive a long time.

Rudbeckias are weird. Some are annual, some are perennial, some are biennial. Last year I grew seeds from five different varieties. They all bloomed the first year. Maybe it's because I started them in January. I saved seeds from the earliest, which were Gloriosa daisies and one that was just Rudbeckia I think. WSU says they are grown as annuals but other sites say perennial. I had a Goldstrum variety that survived a few years.

http://www.pnwplants.wsu.edu/PlantDisplay.aspx?PlantID=55

I've grown wild type Echinacea several times from seeds. Mine always need a second year to bloom, then they live several years.
This year I'm growing a hybrid variety so who knows?

For a few years, I had an Echibeckia, a hybrid between Echinacea and Rudbeckia. It survived about 5 years and may still be there, I don't look at that spot much any more.

 

When I came home from golf this afternoon, I had a quick coffee and got straight on with repainting the balustrade between the garage and the "rose patio" (formally our koi pool).

Job done!




If the rondels don't all look quite symmetrical, it's because they aren't, each is slightly different as I cut them out more or less freehand with a jigsaw.

This balustrade has always been a pain. I made the original in 1986, as my wife said that without it, she would be too frightened to go down to the bottom of the garden as with her MS, if she fell in the pool the water would cover her head. A week after I made it, I came home from work to find her standing on the rockery on the other side of the pool tying stuff up to the party fence!






This is the original pergola and balustrade in 1986.
That's our eighteen year-old daughter. It was a few weeks before she started nurse's training at Great Ormond Street.





The problem has always been the decorative panels I made. They were plywood and no matter how often I painted them, the laminations on one or more have separated and they've rotted. Cutting with a jigsaw causes them to vibrate so the laminations start to come unstuck, though you don't notice..
A stronger pergola, down the line, to take the weight of the increasingly heavy wisteria we had at the time and about three lots of these panels which all started to rot, I called it a day two years ago and made these rondels out of hardwood.
I hade to make new frames for them and I couldn't get hardwood wide enough to fill the frames, so I had to do a bit of, "fettling," there's a short piece of dowel top and bottom of each rondel. No one notices.

 

up potted the foxgloves.

 

Started cutting the old flower stems of the lavender. Hubby decided to cut the grass in the front garden so i helped him.
The cosmos seedlings that i pricked out last week looks like 30 out of the 60 have died, it sometimes happens so i sowed another packet but a different colour, but they will be fine in another place.

 

Not much to do here yet. I am so far behind. It’s way too wet to mow on soggy lawns. I have a lot of tree branches from storms in piles spread thruout the garden and pastures that need to be put in one pile. UGH. The tractor bucket will help with all that as soon as I get both lawn riding tractor and large tractor back from the shop , they are both in for a tune up . Lots of shrub trimming and scooping up pine needles .