What have you done today in the Garden?

Potted on some more wallflowers yesterday, today some more fruit picking.

 

I went over to my bijenvader’s house and helped him sling honey. He is up in his 80’s and doesn’t move well. How he can continue to keep bees correctly, is a bit of a mystery. We all had Chinese food after. That was a good solution because no one felt like cooking. My Bride helped his bride solve computer probs.

 

Hoooray for your first tomato!!

 

Beautiful flowers Daniel! Huge and lovely.

Hello Handsome Rufus!

 

It has been a very busy week here, and now for a wee sit down before dinner.

Today was picking raspberries, harvesting and podding peas, harvesting and processing green beans, watering the greenhouse and the squash. It has been very hot and dry, so early mornings and busy afternoons. My sweet neighbour friend has been over the last five mornings for a few hours...to process veggies for zucchini relish, to make zucchini relish, for a hair cut, and for a visit. I take over dinner every couple of days. It has been very hot and dry, so we made time for a "cool tub" ( run the garden hose when we irrigate from the creek to an old commercial ice cream cooler and have a cool soak).

I have 6 five gallon pails of green apples in the mud room that will be juiced tomorrow. I'll try canning that for the first time. We have a one or two year old black bear hanging around. He's enjoyed the blueberries, and any raspberries he can reach. He is trying to eat the green apples, which are ripening two weeks ahead of schedule.

Our wildlife is going to have a terrible time this year. We had amazing wild roses in spring, but no rose hips for the "fall feed" of the bear and grouse. They have messages on the radio from conservation about the bears and their struggles. This bruin is not very plump, and obviously looking for what he can find. I'm harvesting everything of interest to try and discourage him. Angus has helped discourage him. He's staying close to the creek with the heat and drought, so I'm working hard at closing the buffet table.

 

Mel—Well done you. It is a busy-ness, but a good type of busy-ness.
I like how you do things for your neighbour.
Apple juice. How long does it keep?

 

Finished potting on the wallflowers, got 245 plants, some are small but they should be ok.

 

Watered the hanging baskets and tubs in the front. Deadheaded the roses, marigolds, cosmos, snapdragons and verbascum snowy spires.

 

I potted up this dwarf Alstroemeria. It was surviving the dry fencerow, but I think it will thrive in the container garden. Those roots are like daylily roots.



This is "The year of the Echinacea" LOL. These are the Cheyenne Spirit mix that I planted from seeds this Spring.
today, I weeded, cultivated them, and gave some fertilizer. It's odd that the seeds that I planted later are blooming earlier. The later planted seeds were stratified, but... ?



The lush leafy plant in there is a Rudbeckia, no flowers yet.

The ducks are looking for openings in the fencing to eat my bean plants. They already destroyed one row. Oh well, at least they became animal food. The finer mesh might help. I meant to do that earlier but did not.

 

Those darned ducks! Mate, you can’t trust those gobbling gardeners. Haha.
Nice plants you are showing today. For me, flowers are just as important as veg in a garden.

 

A few intensive hours today.
As I hadn't mowed either lawn for several days, I spent some time digging out some weeds, easier to spot before mowing. Then mowed the back lawn, ran the strimmer down the right-hand edge where the lawn meets the path and used the Grizzly garden vac to collect all the debris. Pruned off a lot of rose foliage which had black spot. We get it every year, despite several sprays of Sulphur Rose since March.
Then a job I hate. Scraped out the moss between the flags of the "rose patio." That's a hands and knees job, dodging between the dozen rose pots. When I come home from golf tomorrow I'll give it a spray of "Wet n' Forget" as I will the main patio. I'll also mow the front lawn.

 

Watered my raised beds and dead headed the mini roses I got at the end of the school year. I've never had mini roses before. I split them up earlier this summer and they loved being able to spread their roots. They produced a lot of buds after I did that. And now I'm dead heading.

 

Forgot the picture

 

Today was a town day, so once we were home it was even busier. I harvested, blanch and froze peas, picked green beans, and zucchini. I finished canning the rest of the apple juice yesterday, and Hubby began a batch of hard apple cider. A first for us. The bear is still busy, and is now just eating grass along the perimiter of the property where the irrigation can reach and keep green. No more apples for him.

 

From what I read Sjoerd, it will keep about 18 months. When it is fall and life is calmer, I will turn much of it into into apple jelly, pepper jelly and mint jelly.