What have you done today in the Garden?

Planted the white and rainbow swiss chard starts out along all my lettuces.

 

That sounds delicious. Swiss chard is a stapel in my freezer. That and beans I can the most of each year. I plant a couple of rows and that is more than ample for ourselves, family and friends. Good luck with yours.

 

Can't do any more patio re-pointing as it is starting to rain, so I'm watching the London Marathon on TV. There's golf, football, road cycling,cricket and tennis, from which to choose later.

I did have a check round.
It's going to be a bumper year for wisteria blooms.
The worst performer has always been the pink one under the kitchen rear window that I trained to grow over the fence and along the side of the house. It is really only this bit that gets a reasonable amount of sun. It took eight years before we got any blooms.
This was it in 2005, it had only reached as far as the kitchen side window. This up to now, has been its best performance.





I continued to let it grow until it reached the front corner of the house, then pinched it out a couple of years ago. So it's been "bulking itself up" instead.




There were no blooms last year.


My patience has been rewarded, it has produced a lot of blooms this year.





These are over the kitchen side window.





I can't tell if there will be many at the far end as due to the fact that they must be fifty feet away from the roots so the blooms or foliage is only starting to appear.


No problems with the others.

 

They are looking very good again. Mine are coming along, but behind yours. I have put an end to my plant’s expansion now and so it is bulking-up as well. Last year would have been a bumper year but for frost with wind. It killed-off about 2/3rds of the buds.
Anyway, you have done such a marvellous job with your Wisteria plants. The one up against the fence is textbook. Chapeau.

 

Ohhhh....so wide my face might break DM

Can I ask about your tomato weaving? Is this the "Florida Weave" I've been reading about? I was contemplating a weave for my four indeterminants this year. My green house is quite small, and it seems that any caging apparatus I try just gets in the way, and I still tie up to the beam above. Reaching in and behind any cage is a problem. I was wondering about "the weave". How do you find it? Do you do it a specific way?

 

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No and that is the beauty of it but it is more like espalier training than anything so it has a certain elongation for indeterminates. The sauce tomatoes are determinate so it should work fine. Here are my cages for the celebrity indeterminates we grow.

 

Thanks for sharing that - what a beautiful photo. I had to stare at the green for a while before I looked at the tomato garden. That is a great system DM. Looks very efficient and well built. You are ready for Toms

 

Looks like you’re gonna have a super bloom this season. Mine haven’t even started anything yet. Been to cold. The wisterias are a lot of prunning . And always worth it to see those marvelous spring blooms.
Gathering the spent fallen blooms makes great confetti for weddings.
I can’t tell if your wisteria is a Japanese or Chinese. Chinese wisteria twines counterclockwise while Japanese wisteria twines clockwise. Looking foreword to all the booms .

 

Very excited to see these in bloom again. I may make the bloom photos my screen saver DHR.

 

Just bringing out my patio planters. The lily bulbs are all up 5”. Moved them out to catch the rain. Not much with the dahlias or iris yet.

 

I did a bit of re-pointing on the patio behind the shed and a bit of the path. It's a pain. Ideally you need a cement mixer to mix mortar properly. Doing it in a bucket is not ideal. You can buy ready mixed mortar, but it's more expensive that way and they often use red sand, which isn't any good for me. I need yellow or silver sand.
I dry mix the cement, sand and yellow dye, dry. I keep tipping the lot from one bucket to another, it helps to get a better mix. Then add the plasticiser and a drop of water. I like it just damp, you make less of a mess and it dries more quickly.






I've still got quite a bit to do, down towards the summer house, so it will have to wait until we get another couple of rain free days.

The wisterias are doing nicely.

All blooms no foliage yet, leaves, will come later, from the same places.




For those unaware, this is for what you are looking. Growth where there's no flowers. The central stem here will "grow and grow" if you don't pinch out what you don't want. You'll be doing it all summer any way. but not as often "if you get in early."





This acer at the bottom of the garden is always a delight with its change of colour through the summer. It starts off this pale green and pink. It needed its first trim as it does of several through the year, as I don't want getting too big.




So it got one.




The sambucas is doing well.





There are lots of these tiny blossom heads on it.






I gave it a spray with Bayer "Bug spray." These plants are susceptible to black fly infestation. A few years ago it got covered with them overnight, so many the foliage was wilting. I had to train a hose on it and wipe it all down by hand. It was a real wilted mess, but It looked none the worse for it the following day it had fully recovered. I also sprayed the acers and the giant lilies. The pack says it should be used on the latter. I think the only thing that kills lily beetles is a hammer!

The phlox on the rockery is coming out, (there are more big rocks underneath all that).






Can't say the same for our mimosa we bought in March.






When I complained about it, the supplier said, "see how it goes." I'm going to send them this photo to show that it "ain't going."

Heathers "The plants that keep on giving."

 

Magnificent, Riley.
Those Wisterias are really going to town.

 

Riley Super garden. You are a pro. So many plants a sending signals of what the season will bring.
Your mimosa will start up slowly .. they require sun and heat. Mine don’t really show sigh. Of leafing out til June.then once it starts I have trained it to only one main branch. They do tend to break off which will leave the tree lopsided for ever. It’s normal for mimosas to start growing in June. By then you will have a beautiful new tree. See pic.

this tree is well over 25 yrs old. Trimmed of side branches they tend to break off easily from winter winds.
Even the top of the tree still has seed pods.

 

Did some weeding, got a lot of those cleavers and docks.

 

It was a golf day today. I was going to do some more path re-pointing when I got home, but I decided against it as it is going to rain in the morning.
I checked on the "lollypop acer " in the front garden. Despite some pretty severe pruning during the winter, the usual abundant growth is appearing.






Lots of blooms will be on it again this year they'll grow to three times this size. But they will be hard to see as they are pale green, like the pink leaves behind it.