What have you done today in the Garden?

Thank you @Daniel W , yes we consider ourselves very fortunate indeed. We have the best of both worlds, living in a beautiful rural area but with 2 cities bursting with history just a few miles away.

 

@Sjoerd great that you have seed pods on your hellebore and i agree with @Oreti on what to do with them, i hope that you get through the frost threat with your strawbs.

 

Sjoerd enjoyed all your pics and showing all the garden projects up to date. You have a lot going at once. Take time to rest a few days is good to keep the ole bones from over reacting .
The carp in the reeds was huge. They are air suckers and will do a good job of keeping mosquitoes out.
Your hellebores have a nice seed head. You will have a lot of new seedlings popping up next spring. Many of mine have spread across the garden area all on their own sprouting new seedlings yearly.

Daniel good no insulation is needed, the side vents will help a great deal. And you know how the summers go here in the PNW. It’s like 99 projects have so little time to get done outside before the rainy season and winter. It’s such a short window. Take time for yourself… it’s overwhelming sometimes maybe plan a weekend or two day trip to relax . I know it helps me a lot when I get overwhelmed . Helps change my perspective on everything.
I did get all the fence posts cleared and used the tractor bucket to level out the area, took me 4 days.

Oreti you have a beautiful garden bursting with spring flowers and many more plants. So many nice shrubs all is so well done. Anxious to see more as the season progresses. Trees in the background of your garden frame your garden so nicely.

Riley hanging on waiting to see the wisterias. Mine have popped a bit. Hope to see more of your garden soon.

 

Haven't done much today but i did a bit more weeding. I've got a idea of making a bit of a bluebell wood under the plum trees, it will be ideal for them.
Got a lot of celendine to pull up before that, I've already got some English bluebells that i planted years ago.

 

Beautiful photos everyone. I love seeing the green

Yesterday was a big day of potting up my dwarf nasturtiums into planters, as well as the canary creeper vine and the 4 Rhodochriton. Two are in coir pots, and two were potted up regularly. It will be interesting to see how they fair.

It is so tempting to try and leave everyone out in the greenhouse with heat lamps, but we are just not quite there yet with lows of -4.

Yesterday everyone in the baby plant party needed watering, most was bottom watering which is time consuming.

The spinach and lettuce sprouted in the garden so off came the clear plastic and on went the remay. It will still hold the heat ( but not cook the seedlings) and help keep the little birds from scratching around in there.

Angus and I went to the creek with a scythe and cut armloads of this dead/dry tall hollow grass that grows there. It gets about five feet tall - I can't remember the name of it. It spreads by rhizomes - no seeds pods. This will act as my straw over the asparagus.

Today was supposed to be asparagus day - but the deer found the tiny daffodil sproinks in my Dad's memory garden - so instead I will be staking some netting around the memory garden and cleaning it up. I hope to also do a soil test on the Northern Blueberries and treat them as needed for their PH. I still don't have the water hooked up, so the plan is to get the Quad and trailer to pack some jugs of water down to them. Everything is tinder dry.

 

Melody you got a lot done. So many different projects at the moment. The deer are back here too. So I’m armed and ready with all the different deer deterrents I can use. They are so ornery this time of year and sneaky. Great way to deter them with a netting cover I have done that over the hydrangeas .

Memory garden is a really good way to keep those we lost in our every day lives. I made stepping stones to honor those new to this earth and those who have left us. It’s always a special memory.

 

Thank you so much for your kind comments @Pacnorwest .

@Melody Mc. and @Pacnorwest , I so agree with creating ways to keep the memory alive of our sadly departed loved ones.
We don't have a specific memory garden as such but nevertheless we have links to my parents in our garden. We have an Apple Tree that my parents bought us as an anniversary gift and my Dad actually planted it. We have a potted Lemon tree that my Mum gave my Dad , not too sure how old it is as Mum passed away 18 years ago and I inherited it 4 years ago when we lost Dad. It's not the most healthiest specimen and we never had any viable lemons from it.....but it's hanging in there.

When we closed up and sold my parents house I took absolutely loads of cuttings and divisions as they had created such a beautiful garden during the 50 years that they were there, Dahlias, Plox, Hydrangeas, Irisis, Ferns , Ophiopogons, Fuchsias...and many more.
I also removed the little waterfall statue that was in the smaller pond ( they had 2) .It's not a working one any more but on special occasions linked to my parents, like last week when it was the 77th anniversary of them getting engaged I place a couple of blooms in the water spout. My parents named her Donna and she really is a strong link to my lovely parents.

Our garden is also the resting place for all our pets too.

 

Cheers Oreti. I will follow that procedure, although, I don’t really have any more room for them. Haha.

 

They are going to look very nice indeed! How do those coir pots work for you?

@Oreti and @Pacnorwest and @Melody Mc. I have memory plants. I planted a Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia) for Charlie, my dog before Rufus. Charlie had a dog, Baigou Mandarin for White Dog). Both are buried among its roots. Rufus likes to snoop around there too. Maybe he is talking to their spirits. I imagine the tree's strength and vitality are one and the same as my beloved companions. I also have Sempervivum and Garlic Chive from my parents' yard, and rose garden because my mom loved roses. I recalled her growing rose moss, so am growing that this year. They had a Bloodgood maple, and mine brings me closer to them.

@Sjoerd I imagine those are European strawberry varieties. I look forward to salivating over your images of them at harvest time.

Today I pruned the last of the overwintered deck plants, a big Kalanchoe. It was covered with flowers for a while. Doesn't look like much now. It blooms in waves.



A week or so ago, I soaked some Morning Glory seeds to see if they were viable. They were sort of back shelf, and after 3 days soaking, they were floating in the water with little roots hanging down. So I planted them. Here they are now.



I started thinning pears.

Before



After


I use a kitchen shears for that.

I cut the wood and started assembling my new rolling garden stool. Separate post.

Have a great day tomorrow Stewbies!

 

Oh I really, really know what you mean Sjoerd... ,every snippet I trim off from plants I just can't resist the urge to dip in rooting compound and pot up.

It's so impossible to throw healthy trimmings on the compost pile!
That's another reason why I'm determined to discard fading blooms this year before their seed heads develop..... I'm a compulsive seed collector too !

 

Today it was bad weather but a couple of things just had to be done. We planted some 64 climbing beans in root trainers. Also the greenhouse was de-weeded and warered in preparation to planting the toms.



Do you see those little buds? That’s what I have been waiting for. Let’s plant.

 

Beautiful photo. This is "Oh my!" day

Puttering, mostly. I planted four o'clocks by the mailbox. There are still a dozen to plant.

I made some coddling moth traps. Coddling moth larvae are the worms you find in apples Supposedly if you drill holes in plastic bottles and pour in a bit of equal parts molasses and water, the coddling moths will enter to find out what smells so delicious, and it turns into their Hotel California.



I need to find a few more bottles to make more traps. There are three, so far.

During Spring of 2020, I pollinated some flowers of the red flesh apple variety, Redlove Calypso, using pollen from the columnar apple variety, Golden Sentinel. I thought Calypso were too sour to eat but the red pigment seems to impart a sort of cranberry flavor, and Golden Sentinel has tasty sweet apples with the tree in columnar shape.

I collected the seeds and stratified them. Three seedlings resulted. One had rather red leaves, one had leaves intermediate between red and green, and one had green leaves.

Both red leafed types have a columnar growth habit. The green leaf one does not.

Today I was puttering and saw this -



The intermediate one has flower buds. Deep red. I wonder if it will bear fruit thus year?

Maybe I will pollinate using pollen from something extra good, and see if I can grow out some more!

 

Sjoerd your ‘Mighty Tom's’ are lookin good. Your garden is always fine tuned down to the last detail. I’m afraid my body put on the brakes today and can’t keep up with my garden as well as I used to. So planning on down sizing a bit more this year.

Daniel your talents are amazing not to mention your energy. Can’t wait to see more of your fruit trees loaded with fruit. So exciting isn’t it? I am going to use your idea using containers filled with molasses and water to keep the worms out of the apples, it’s the deer that munch on them too…don’t you have any deer where your located?

I set out to do some trimming and cleaning up needed to transplant plant 5 pots that are needing some tender lovin care. No luck there zero energy.
After drinking energy protein shakes I still had zero energy. Just blew off the driveway needles and petals from the cherry trees. It looked as though it snowed . I blame my energy level on the lack of sunshine it was terribly
overcast . I need sunshine to energize my batteries. No luck today but just managed to get the battery op clippers to trim some of the grape vines and trim the front hedges on driveway. And the tops of the trees are bloomin on the dogwood trees.


Grapevines purple and green.

 

I have been outdoors a bunch trying to weed some more of my flower beds. Chickweed and henbit and purple dead nettle and some others are hard to get rid of. I don't mind the purple dead nettle (it is not really a nettle) too much, as it is both edible and medicinal. I have not tried it yet, but maybe sometime. The chickens love all those weeds, and I just use an empty box of any kind to fill with weeds and take them to my chickens.

I finally found the tag for the mystery rose that I bought and could not remember its name. It is a purple pavement shrub rose, whatever that is. I want to get it some rose food next week, and maybe it will bloom again.

The mystery rose from my friend is full of flower buds, and I will post a few pictures as soon as it blooms and I hope to find out what kind it is.

My one fairy rose had a bloom open up today.... And my homerun knockout rose has a bud or two about to open. Irises are beginning to bloom, and the Dame's rockets are going gangbusters. The pollinators love those!

If the weather is okay tomorrow, I will mow grass again...

DS is due in early next week, so hopefully we will get the push mower fixed so I can do the trim work around here.

 

The rest of yesterday -

I replaced the filter casing on the drip irrigation system, after replacing the manifold a few days before. It all works, although now I see a crack in the back flow check valve. Only a tiny drip, but it's a Roseanne Roseannadanna thing - "It just goes to show you, if it's not one thing, it's another" . Still, I ran the irrigation, and have good water flow to the beds that I want to get working first. They need new drip lines, which I have ready to install.

I'm trying to decide where to plant the rest of the Mirabilis seedlings. I started extra because I doubted they would germinate well. I hate to throw away the extras. Maybe by in access road among the fig trees.