What have you done today in the Garden?

New seeds being sorted today. Squash varieties I've never tried before. I'm not going to worry about cross pollination next year - it will be a fun squash year. The following year I will decide which seeds to save.



I spoiled myself with a tiny order of Gigantomo tomato seeds. It was through a company in the UK. They are a hybrid, but it will be for fun.

This Canadian seed company is top notch in my books. A small family business in the Maritimes called the Incredible Seed Company. They only sell heirloom and have a limited inventory, but it is growing every year. I'm paying $2,99 for a pack of seeds that would cost $5.99 to $8.99 at the other companies. And it is free shipping. The competition has flat shipping rates of $10 and $20, even for just a single package of seeds.

 

They look great Melody, which seed company in the UK did you order from?

 

Re-fixed the tea-house guttering drainpipe this morning, whilst my car was away for its service and MOT. It came back with a clean bill of health, despite the fact I bought it now eighteen years ago.
My attitude is always, "if something needs doing, do it." But nothing did.

The replacement of the concrete fence post, (when it's done), presents a problem.

You can see a white line between the wooden fence panel and the concrete base panel. (summer photo).That's light shining through.




Below it, I had two cables between the bamboo and the fence, suspended on rings attached to the base panels.
Over 20-odd years, the roots of the bamboo have built up, (it doesn't creep much, less than six inches in all this time). So the cables "disappeared."
The lights have never failed to work since I installed them, they and others are controlled by four switches behind the lounge curtains, via a multi-strand armoured cable between the house and the garage, buried below the concrete base of the patio,


One provides power for the two "stone" lanterns, the other for the 30w spotlight behind the pagoda. The 12v transformers are on the ceiling of the tea-house and the cables travel down the white conduit to the base panel behind the drainpipe of the guttering.





When the post is replaced the cables could get damaged, or buried in concrete, so I turned off the supply from the consumer unit in the garage and I cut the cables at the tea-house end and dragged them through. Once the fence is repaired, I'll put them back but I'll put them in conduit.

I might get some new cable and conduit tomorrow, so I'll be able to get it done as soon as the fence is repaired.

 

I was out yesterday, but I got to a thrift store and found another x-large flower pot for one more rose bush for $2. I moved my climbing burgundy tea rose today. It needed some pruning, so I made cuttings with the pieces I pruned off. I put them in some of my chips. I had found a dead birdie today, so I buried him in one of the pots with rose cuttings. I still have to transplant my Queen of Sweden rose, the Fairie Rose bush--it is HUGE, and that one I forgot the name of, but that also spreads out considerably. I am tempted to leave those two in ground, but will likely try to move them. The fairy rose looks pretty bad, but I will cut it way back and see what I can do with it. The other bush looks okay, but needs some pruning. That one needs 6 feet of spread out room... ! I need to look for that tag, and learn more about it.

I did some other putzing around the garden today, and transplanted some spiderwort that was in the rose bed. I did not want to lose it either. It should be happy in its new flower bed, and has lots of room to spread out. This one gets lavender flowers.

That climbing burgundy tea rose is a start I made from my first burgundy tea rose a long time ago. That is the one that died from injuries in a tornado we had back in '20. I posted pics of it in another thread. I hope the cuttings I made from its 'baby' will take root and grow.

We had a wildfire in our area yesterday. I thought it was a controlled burn because the Forest Service always picks the driest windiest day they can to do a controlled burn. And it is bone dry and windy here. A neighbor told me today that it was really a wildfire, so I looked it up, and they said it was caused by humans, but did not give more info. That fire burned around 450+ acres, and was considered "contained" as of this evening. You could see the smoke billows and plumes many miles away. I managed to get a few pictures coming home from errands.

 

Lovely seeng all those sed packs, know you can’t wait to get started. That is quite a variety.

I know what you mean bout the high shipping costs. I dislike that very much and refuse to use companies ho price shipping like that. Absolutely done with them. I mean, maximum price for one pack of seeds…!??
I have mailed seeds to folks here and it was only cents more than the cost of a stamp (it all goes by weight here).
It comes over, greedy.

 

It's dry today and sunny, but I didn't fancy playing golf as the course would be very wet as it rained all night. There's a puddle on the patio, it would normally have drained away by now so the ground must be saturated. I may clear some more leaves this afternoon and strip these on the side of the house. It will at least keep the drive clear.





I may have a problem when this fence post gets replaced.




I might lose some of the bamboo. Fortunately there's a lot of growth further away from the fence, but the roots tend to" bunch" and are hard to separate. I'll try replanting any that are disturbed and see how it recovers.
My "plan B" is to cut out some out from the left-hand end to replace any that don't take.
The cable is just the low voltage feed for the trailcam, from a socket in the tea-house.

 

This is the problem I'll have, reconnecting the two Japanese lanterns and the spotlight behind the pagoda. Although it's only 12v, but I don't really like using connectors when they'll be exposed to the elements.





The adapters for them are here on the ceiling of the tea-house. There's also sockets for fairy lights, they are all controlled by the switches in the lounge.





The switches by the door are for the ceiling downlighters and a mains isolator.
I want to run new low voltage cables from the tea-house down to a connection box in the opposite corner of the garden, behind the hedgehog house.
It'd be a pain to try to connect them and run them through the ceiling panel above the transformers. So I needed to see where they went above the ceiling. Thirty years or so, is a long time to remember "what you did where."
I needed to have a look in the ceiling void.
When I changed the illumination in here to downlighters twenty years ago, I cut this inspection hatch. The TV aerial and the roof vent which I store on hooks here during the winter are to the left.




I found that I'd left plenty of slack in both cables so I can connect them from here by the hatch, without removing a ceiling panel. After 36 years it's still bone dry here under the roof.







There's a lot of power sockets in this building. It comes in via an alkathene pipe, buried deep in the border between the tea-house and the garage. The timers are for the 60w heaters in the jukeboxes.











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Plus two more you can't see.

As well as a double pole isolator by the door, the tea-house and the shed share a consumer unit in the shed.






This is independent of the consumer unit that powers the garage and our freezer room at the back of it. Everything is identified so I know what's going where.





Plus of course this big RCCB that protects everything.





You can't be too careful

 

I got a bit done this afternoon.

Stripped the leaves off this wisteria and pruned off a few branches that had bolted. It's an easy enough job, so is collecting the leaves. The real pain is the spines of the leaves as the vac won't suck them up, I have to sweep them into piles and pick them up by hand. Still the jobs done now until the main prune between Christmas and New Year.





Did a bit of "housekeeping." Stuck the vacuum cleaner I use for the car down the tumble dryer vent. Never get much out but worth checking, some bits do stick to the side of the pipe.




Cleared a load more leaves that had fallen from the big acer. This may be the last collection, the rest I'll probably let rot down. I'll take six to nine inches off it all round as I do every year in a few week's time.

 

Finished this border, planted the tulip bulbs now there's 2 rows instead of 1 and the polyanthus, the soil is good now that I've been putting a lot of compost on it.


Cut off the old leaves of the hellebores to plant the hyacinth bulbs and the rest of the polyanthus. The edge of the lawn hadn't been cut all year so i had to trim that back. The rhubarb is growing again.

 

Wow, everyone is working so hard!

@mel, you have some nice seeds there. I've grown a couple of them.

My great aunt Emma gave me seeds for Pink Banana Squash in about 1960. I eventually lost them, then bought about 15 years ago and saved my own seeds each year. They are a nice mild squash, and grow huge, at least here. I haven't grown them for a couple of years, opting for some smaller types.

Roma VF is a big fav for me. They grow true each year from saved seeds, too. Great flavored sauce or salsa tomato. Very productive. They produce heavily, and all over a few weeks, which is great for canning and freezing. The plants are sprawling bush type.

@AAnightowl stay safe from those fires! They are scary. Good luck with your container roses. I have one in a container, it does pretty well. Vanessa Bell, a David Austin English rose.

@Doghouse Riley you work so hard! You are right, you can't be too careful.

As for me, I finished distributing that first truckload of leaves, mostly in my mini- orchard and around the rest of the blackberries. The blackberries are cleaned up, and soil removed from beside the shed, so that's a completed task now. With the leaf mulch renewed, these will be very low maintenance until berry harvest in July / August. I don't chop the leaves, because that's more work, plus I want the mulch to last until next fall.



That peeled paint has been like that since I bought the place 12 years ago. I was going to tear the shed down, but it's still standing and no worse than before. If I had ambition, I'd scrape off the peeled paint and repair / paint the siding, but it doesn't matter right now. The soil and leaves are away from the base now so it can dry out.

Then I pruned another fig tree.





And got this one 3/4 pruned as well.



These fig varieties bear on the new wood that grows that season, as opposed to last year's wood. I want them to be easily reached, so pruned to 5 or 6 feet high. Also, the centers are open for sunlight. They needed more work, because missed pruning for a year or two.

Finish that 3rd one, then one more, and I move on to the next fall project. I can do most of the fruit trees throughout the winter. There are still lots of leaves to haul and mulch leaf carpets to renew.

 

I'm glad someone else has that problem, I thought it was me being not so tech savvy. If I've taken pictures with my phone I end up taking a picture, of the picture on my phone with my tablet.
I haven't done much in my garden. By the time we get home and I do a few indoor things it's well on the way to getting dark. I'm hoping to get my last bed finished up for the winter. We ran out of milk last night and I didn't feel like driving to the store that late. So when I go this morning I'll see if they have a few boxes. They look kinda weird mounded like they are, but I'm hoping they'll compress some and I won't need as much soil this spring when I put the next boards on top. I mentioned that I was going to raise the beds to my son and his wife. After I explained what I was doing, she said, "so it should be up to your waist?" Hmmm,,,, payback for the tall people jokes. I'm not that short!
I have some tongue oil, I may put it on the boards today. It's supposed to rain Monday and Tuesday then back down in the 30s. It hasn't been too bad since the snow on Halloween.

Hey Riley, what does MOT stand for? We have DOT here, which stands for Department of Transportation. So I would assume your "OT" is the same? But what's the M for?

 

It's, Ministry of Transport, I guess yours is, Department of Motor Vehicles.

 

Very nice work, Loggie and Daniel. You folks are really having fun, aren’t you.
I enjoyed seeing your postings. Well done.

 

I'm looking for Sweet Lightning Squash seeds. I may need to break my rule and buy from a bigger company. I try to only buy from smaller business people.

Yes, Riley. They are two different things, though. My motorcycle helmet is DoT certified/approved (my younger days). My kids all told me, they breathed a sigh of relief when I sold my bike. I never realized they were that worried. I never rode it that far and I took the safety course before I even bought it. DMV is something else.

 

Mowed,…mowed… mowed… yikes 4 hours to complete the pastures I have a pretty sore caboose. And no gophers got ‘em all so far knock on wood…

lot’s of mushrooms everywhere.
Awesome sunset
Found this guy beautiful moth
Cleaned out all the hummer feeders