What have you done today in the Garden?

Today we had a dry period so it was off to the lottie. We harvested all of the parsnips, the remainder of the toms and took an enormous cart full of bush and tree prunings up to the front parking lot where it will be chipped in a couple of days.

My Bride and I are so stiff as fenceposts. Ouch.

 

Oh dear! Time for a hot bath and a break.

Today my husband & I took a break from the yard work & hiked up a local mountain with another couple. Beautiful fall day, yellows, oranges & red against the green of conifers. Beautiful views at the top.
We'll sleep well tonight.

 

Wow, it seem s like forever since I've been here. I've been harvesting zucchini, four (4) pie pumpkins from my volunteer. My son made some soup in one, then took another to make soup again. I roasted two (2) then froze the meat for pies later. I have five (5) left on the vines. I brought all the green tomatoes in, because we've had frost. I did plant garlic. I've never grown garlic, does anyone have any tips? I know it needs to be established before the first frost (maybe 3 or 4 inches at the most), and you harvest on 4th of July. These are hard neck, I thought being in Wisconsin, hard neck is better. I think I have two (2) parsnips coming up (ninja squirrels love to mess around in my garden). But they haven't bothered the bok choy. That's all the fall veggies that I planted. And I have never grown any of them, before.

 

Hiking—- how nice that would be. Those colours sound gorgeous. I hope that our colours will soon come too.

 

Wow sounds like quite a garden ! My stepdaughter takes the small pumpkins and cuts the top and removes the seed and bakes beef stew in them ! Have never tried it myself but its an idea !

 

More winterizing in the lottie. Another plot is tucked-in with a thick layer of mulch.
It was so sunny and fair that we took an extended break. It was so nice sitting there in the sun sipping tea and playing the odd game on the fone. We remarked to ourselves how unlikely it was that we’d be sitting in the our t-shirt sleeves at this time of year out at the lottie. Another sign of climate change. It is unheard of here.
Also my bees were out and flying . They were on the flowers og the green manure at our feet and en masse infront of the hives. They were out for a sanitary flight and new bees getting to know the area around the hives.

 

I went back to Aldi on Friday to see if I could some more cyclamen. But as I suspected, they'd sold out. Plants aren't a "running line" for them, so they get one delivery and that's it. Actually there were only 4 for £2.99, not six. Wilko didn't have any and I couldn't be bothered to go to a garden centre to look for more, which would have been expensive anyway. But shopping in the village this morning I found some more in the hardware/DIY shop and bought two trays of six for £4.99 each.


So I've arranged them, alternate pink and white around the base of our big acer palmatum.




Those left over I added to our cyclamen bed below the kitchen window. Most of these we brought back from a garden centre in Cornwall when we were on holiday, over ten years ago and they've spread. Plus there's a couple that came as presents last month from friends for my wife's birthday.



The roll of wire came yesterday and I've put it in. It was a bit of a struggle with the overhanging azaleas, so some pruning was necessary. I prune them every year anyway, as they branch out over the patio. I'll use wires to bend a few branches to fill up that bit of a gap on the right. Once they've "re-set" I'll remove the wire later next year.






This should stop any cats when they hide in the azaleas from darting out and attacking the birds and the squirrel. I made it a "dogleg" around the end of the azalea bed before the rockery, right up to the fence, so cats will have difficulty getting in there. I had some green sturdy plant "canes" to stiffen the wire in places as it's quite pliable. Like the wire fence, you can hardly see them.

 

Good idea Dog, re protecting the birds from cats. You are lucky that cyclamen grow year round in your climate.

Sjoerd, glad you two are making headway on the winter to-bed process.

Hubbie & I did more work on the terrace today, refitting bricks. It is looking good but it is definitely backbreaking work.

 

Today we did a total clean out of the greenhouse. My Bride also came up with a luninous idea: two Tonkin sticks wall to wall, front to back in the greenhouse. Between the two sticks I hung brood frames until the summer. Hopefully this way, fungus will not form and because of the sunlight — the wax moths will stay away.
We are hoping that the dry weather will hold out another couple of days so that we can finish the clean-up. Of course all the metres of clematis will have to be pulled down from all the arches, but I shall wait untol they are dead brown because they are easier to remove that way.

 

Your bride's idea to suspend the brood frames in the greenhouse until next summer sounds great. I hope it works out well.

I continued with my closing down of the garden. I have a bunch of herbs and summer annuals in pots that I hope to over winter. We shall see how it goes. They are now added to my houseplant collection or safely under lights in the basement.
I also got a start on the bulb planting: mini narcissus that I tucked into nooks and cranies where they can be seen come spring, and the blue hyacynths. The hyacynths are a very gaudy bulb in my opinion, but they are so pretty nonetheless!

 

Thanks Cayu. I shall tell her that you liked the sound of her solution. It really does work perfectly.

 

Yesterday, I gave the "lollypop" tree in the front garden, its annual prune.



I take up to a foot off it all the way round and off the top. Easy enough with my Barnel telescopic pruner. I've a Fiskars lopper (the one with a pull cord) that I have added an extra eight feet of tubing to the handle for anything too thick for the Barnel to handle.So no need for a ladder or steps.

It doesn't look much different, but I filled the green been with what I took off, plus the leaves which had fallen during the last week..



I've been doing it each year for well over a decade and if I didn't it would be twice the size that it is now, which is about fifteen feet. It comes to more than half way above the front bedroom window.

The problem is that it doesn't all grow at the same rate, some branches bolt.
It's not quite symetrical yet, I'll do a bit more tomorrow.

 

Today it was more clean-up and pruning of bushes.
We also had to solve the problem of where the water would go once we took the rain water butt away. We were thinking that too much rain might cause the corner of the greenhouse to sink in.
Here’s what we came up with:


A closer look:


This is what we call, “houtje-touwtje”, or in english, jury rigging. The Bride especially was proud of this saying that she likes making something out of nothing.

Thing two— i was fooling around over by the garden house and this caught my eye:


Cor, who says that dying hosta’s can’t be pretty.

 

Ingenious!
And oh my, those textures are gorgeous!

I am preparing for our end of the year zoom call tomorrow night with the Community Garden membership. You know what it's like to have a meeting with gardeners, right? We are a thoroughly delightful group, very capable of talking of this, that, and everything under the sun!

It'll be my job to keep us moving. Wish me luck! I think I'll need a safety belt. Or maybe a glass of wine.