What have you done today in the Garden?

@harrylee those are some nice looking raised beds!
My newest is made from fencing cedar. I need to wait for dry weather to stain and seal the inside, then I plan to line with plastic and place large fabric pots into it.

I up-potted carnation seedlings in a different batch of potting mix. The last ones died. I don't know why, but I'm guessing their compost either contained fungal wilt diseases or the plants used to make the compost may have been contaminated with herbicides. These carnations will be my "canaries in the coal mine".

I also potted up some rosemary cuttings that rooted.

Raining so no outside work today.

 

Looking good @harrylee

 

Back into the "bamboo forest" at the bottom of our garden again today and pruned out a lot of dead canes.

I mean a lot, around 100.




I usually do it every year, but didn't last year.

Doesn't look much different, thinner than usual, but it should fill out during the year. Has for the last thirty years.






Not much left of the white quince after I chopped out the dead wood yesterday.





With all three quinces I prune them so the blosssom is restricted to along the top panel and above and the fence.The ptoblem for me is that in a "straight fight" quince will always beat rhodos and azaleas, So I keep the quince branches away from them.

The three wisterias (blue white blue) on the garage pergola have produced more branches that I've trained to cascade. Most are starting to fill out, but I expect one or two may have died off.





The roses are doing well, no sign of blackspot. Gave them all a light quick spray of Sulphur Rose.

 

Re done the edge of the lawn and took a bit more off when hubby wasn't looking.
and weeded as well.

 

I went out to my compost pile with my garden tractor. It is sloped a bit there and I got stuck on the slippery mud. Made a mess.....lol

 

You are a guerrilla gardener, Loggie.

 

He looked at what I done and said that it looked good, have to do these things in stages so that he doesn't mind.

 

Today I'm sterilizing some three inch pots for potting up tomatoes soon. Then in a few weeks they will go into 1 gallon pots until moving them to the green house.

I've had to decide to put the Ground Cherries and Belgian Endive/Chicory on hold for a year. I have to scale back to essentials and nothing in pots if possible. It looks like DH will be having some big medical stuff over the next six months to a year so I won't have the time to fuss over pots and new plants. Anything in the ground can be watered, mulched and hold their own for a time.

Something to look forward to next year.

Washed some remay fabric to cover the newly planted spinach in the greenhouse tonight as it is supposed to go -6.

 

I guess I was looking for something to do this afternoon after playing golf in the morning.

When we had the koi pool filled in and paved over to create our "rose patio" three years ago. I bought six David Austin roses and six green glazed ceramic pots for them. All the other roses are on plastic pot movers, I bought from Wyevale over a few years.
I wanted six more pot movers but by then they'd become, "made of unobtainium" so I lucked out.
I found six on eBay from China, they looked a better quality, had four castors instead of three, but only available in white. No problem, I could spray them green which I did.

Over time some of the paint had flaked and chipped off, so they looked a bit naff. So I'd decided to spray them green again. I gave them a good scrub and a rub down with wire wool and resprayed them. I looked at the plastic ones and they were a variety of shades of green, caused the action of the sun, depending on where they were on the patios. So I did those too, another eleven of them!

 

Wed.23/3/22. Beautiful day today. Greenhouse temp @ 1500 hrs was 84 deg. F. Real pleasure to be able to work without my jacket on.

Concentrated on watering. Gave the greenhouse (GH) stock a good soaking. Also sprayed inside as several Whitefly rose up.

Next I turned my attention to the garden. I grow my Liliums in 15Ltr. pots. Many of these are showing through, so I must keep a close eye out for bugs and most importantly, small snails. The latter really enjoy the tasty new shoots. These shoots usually are the flowering stems. So often the flowering buds get damaged by snails and of course the blooms if they survive are wasted. A good watering was given.

Now to my roses. I have to say a very big thank you to Tetters. It was she who put me onto, 'Cottage Memories' Roses purchased from them are really doing great. Once again these are growing in 15 Ltr. pots. These received a good soaking. Over the weeks, tending the roses takes much of my available time. Being potted, it makes it so much easier for me to tend them, hand weeding, manicuring and adding a top dressing etc. Tomorrow I hope to get out amongst them again and give them a liquid feed as well as a bit of pricking over of the top-soil.

I have to be honest. Just that couple of hours in the garden has made me feel so much better, medically.

 

Today I have been resting more due to vaccine booster effects. Hit me like a Mack truck LOL. I think tomorrow I can do more. I did -

Re-cover the sides of the big planter box I built, using plastic sheets and paving blocks, so the rains won't continually soak the wood. If it seems dry enough in a few weeks, I'll stain and moisture-block the inside, at least, so I can start placing and filling the fabric containers inside the planter.

Planted a few crocosmia "Lucifer" corms in the hell-strip (seems appropriate LOL).

Planted radish and carrot seeds to fill in blank spots in the rows.

Scattered slug bait for peas, rhubarb, sweetpeas, onions, rudbeckias.

Planted some Echinacea bare root plants I bought on whim. They look about as dead as anything I've ever planted. Probably a complete mistake. Oh well.

Mostly walked around looking at fruit tree flower buds and inhaling hyacinth fragrances.

 

Potted on 3 fuchsias that I'm growing into standards and 1 verbena bonarencess rooted cutting, might have to water the blueberries that are in pots.

 

Seventeen years ago at the age of 65, on my own, (my wife said I was daft to do it then, but I enjoy a challenge) I errected a run of concrete posts and six, six ft tall panel fence, between the side of the shed and the end of the garden between our garden and next door's. Over time some panels has been "attacked and eaten" by next door's ivy. It was forever growing through thwe panels. So several panels had rotted and one was in very poor condition. My neighbour had purchased one panel this week but was unable to put it in.

Anyway, I've got him to agree for us to replace all six panels, share the cost and he get rid of the ivy. I wouldn't have wanted to know if he weren't going to get rid of the ivy.

I've a system for putting these panels in, which requires two people, but no ladders.
You do need at least a six foot space in front of the panel. Not possible from his side because of his trees.
Our wisteria is seven feet tall in place and I didn't want it damaged, but as it's supported by rows of lateral wires stretched between the concrete posts, I was able to lower the tops to below six feet.

To errect the panel, you need to screw a big "eye" into the middle of the top rail of the new panel and have a six foot stout pole with a hook in the end. You attach the pole to the eye in the panel. The pair of you then lift the panel horizontally and rest the bottom end on the top of the slots. The pole will then support the panel in the horizontal position. One person then steadies one side of the panel keeping the end corner above the slot on that side. The other person can then start to raise the panel with the pole until it's nearly vertical. At this time the bottom will start to slide down the slots. As it's attached to the pole it shouldn't fall into the other garden (unless you let go). The nearer vertical you get it the faster it will slide down the slots.
It's important to make sure the panel will fit in the slots, as over time some times the posts will move slightly. This is what has happened here as the roots of the trees, next door has raised a couple of the posts about two inches. But in our case a crowbar between the panel and the top of a slot and my lump hammer was enough to get it to slide in.



The other five panels are coming tomorrow or Friday.

We can only put two more panels in that way as our summer house is in the way for two at one end and our shed, in the way of one at the other end. But we can manage those, as I can stand on the roofs of each and my neighbour can push the panels up to me using the pole method. The panels are not that heavy.

Once finished I can re-hang the wisteria.

 

@Doghouse Riley - Wow, that is very creative and a clever method for installation. It is good that the neighbour is pitching in. As Robert Frost would say in Mending Fences- "Good fences make good neighbours". I had to look up what a Wisteria is.....oh my. So beautiful - I haven't quite seen anything like it before. Does it have a scent?

Today, after unexpectedly having to pot up tomatoes yesterday, is an enjoy outside afternoon. I can see a bit of ground under a large Spruce Tree in my tiered garden beside the house.....and I'm going to darn well rake it!!!! It will take all of three minutes, but it will feel very good. And, in the process I'm hoping to find the nose and eye that fell off of my Tree Face ornament over the winter ( Mother's Day gift from my kids 15 years ago) . So, I guess I'm raking but also face hunting.

 

Thanks for the kind words.

The wisteria looks a bit bare at the moment as every little branch has been pruned right back to between two and four buds.

By May it will look like this. It does have a perfume.



We've half a dozen in our garden.



The new white one on the garage pergola I've trained to cascade. It'll be even better this year.