What have you done today in the Garden?

Too wet to do anything today.
But my wife made me smile yesterday. She called me into the lounge saying "Quick! There's some huge birds flying around the garden!"
I managed to grab my camera and quickly caught one as it settled on the chimney of a house over the back, before it flew off.






When I enlarged it, I could see it was a bog-standard seagull!








That chimney could do with a bit of re-pointing.

 

I absolutely love that wall, creates so much ambiance

 

Potted up 40 gladioli corms and labelled them.

 

I wasn't going to anything today, but it dried and warmed up, so I gave the roses a spray.
I've had to order some more of this,

 

Picked my purple carrots and found two with slug damage. The short fat one had 3 slugs feasting on it, or "in" it, I should say. I cut off the bad parts and gave the good parts, (not much was good) to Rags. She lovvvvves carrots !!

 

I moved a couple of geraniums out of the garage. No water, all winter, but most have some green leaves. Not many.



I trimmed two plants, cut dead branches and leaves, watered. They are in the sunroom.



It will be fun if they grow. Maybe I should prune it shorter. More need cleaning up, too.

The turnip and radish seeds have started to germinate. I haven't tried to pre-grow them before, but maybe this method will protect them from jays.



I planted some more seeds, a few more tomatoes, some dwarf dahlias, and a few others.




We bought a new food processor, so now the old one is mine to grind eggshells for soil calcium supplement.I spread those on the raised beds. Soil here tends to be calcium deficient, so I hope these help.



I planted a few more summer flowering bulbs. Bought on a whim at the grocery store.

 

Popped on a layer of warm clothing and rain gear - out mowing , preventing ground critters from damaging the garden and pastures. I don’t mind the light rain with a little breeze. I do it every day at least 3x’s a day now . It’s very important to discourage gophers, moles, voles and ground squirrels. Along with setting traps. I prefer to eliminate wild-food /bate than attract the near by bob cats. It’s important to protect my animals from harm. The deer and antelope have rarely been thru. I occasionally see hove prints and zero scat. It’s later in spring when the quail eggs hatch , they attract predators and not much I can do about quail presence. They frequent my ponds and water features in the garden, so funny to watch how fast they run. I never get tired of it.

In less than a year I have put 186 miles on my small garden tractor, clearing out weeds , spraying pastures, maintaining perimeters, mowing, blocking the wild blackberries, holly seedlings ,alder seedlings , wild cherry seedlings, and the small Doug fir tree seedlings sprouting everywhere. Not to mention the acer seedlings.

Also limbing up the perimeter trees from the 100’ Doug fir which makes it easier to keep my head on while mowing under them at the property line. And acres of trimming back the longer heavier tree limbs of the 100’ trees encroaching onto the pastures. When wet the limbs sag down lower than dry . I’m not fond of the 8-12” thick limb whiplash while passing by on the tractor. So off they go. Clip, clip.

Mileage of over 115 miles put on the large diesel maintenance tractor last year . I also use the front bucket to turn the non-burning - burn pile which is essentially a compost pile and great for mowing larger widths of the pastures in the flat areas. Also the use the front bucket is great to mash down the blackberry canes . These canes are huge forcing another monster to manage 60’ long by 14’ wide. Hope to get a rain break soon to spray some of those blackberry offenders. There’s a slow leak on the right front tire. Need to remove the tire and take to the tire shop soon. Until then I keep filling it with air. Just need time to do it.

Right now a pond has formed in the northwest pasture filled with 4” of rain because the ground is so saturated the clay soil has very little drainage in a concave section of the pasture. It’s always something. Tomarrow’s another day.

 

Wow!! That's a lot of mowing!! I had a herd of deer come through my property every night right after dusk when I was on the farm with my horses and other livestock. They didn't bother anything save my Appy Mule, Millie. She would stand in her pasture as far from them as possible and blow !! Really loudly.!! I always knew when the herd was coming and could spot them jumping the fence to go to the salt licks in the west pasture.

My kooky Haflinger was fascinated by the deer so he would go as close to them as possible and just stare !!

 

After several years of using a lithium battery powered lawnmower, the battery isn't charging at all well. It hardly works at all in cold weather and when it does work it'll only do a few yards before cutting out. It costs a fortune for a new battery so today, after visiting some friends, we now are the proud owners of this...



A good old petrol driven Mountfield

 

Sorry I have not showed up for a few days or so.

We had a lot of tornadoes the 14th here in Missouri. I think the news said we had about 19 tornadoes? And 6 were on the ground at the same time in southern MO and northern AR, they were kind of overlapping on the map picture. I did not have any tornadoes though and am fine. Some of my friends were near those tornadoes and had some damages. We have had very high winds of 50+ mph for about two weeks here, and lots of branches down to clean up. My porch took some wind damage, not sure when it will get fixed. The wind did die down a bit over the weekend, but it is back already.

I have been fighting my new printer to get a project printed for my church. I did get the cover printed using a work around. The software would not move the information from the left column to the right column no matter what I tried. So, I printed it out, and folded it, and taped it to the right side of a sheet of paper and scanned it in how I wanted it. It looks fine. The right side is the front of a booklet. I did share my file for the contents to a friend, and his printer printed it perfectly. I don't know why it wont print my document to landscape view when it prints other documents to landscape view. I have reinstalled it on my computer...

I have tried to work on the ditchwork some. And today I was trying to clean up storm debris...

My one rhubarb root has a couple of tiny leaves so far. I think a couple of rhubarb seeds have sprouted.

 

What brand was the electric mower?? I bought one couple years ago that I love, but now you have me worried.

 

I've had a Flymo Ultraglide for about ten years. It's the best mower I've ever had.
It stopped working last year. I checked it out and found the problem was a faulty switch. I ordered one on-line for about £5, it was dead easy to change and it's been perfect ever since.
Obviously, being such an excellent machine, they don't make them any more.

 

Cut back the old flowering stems of the lavender plants, did some weeding.

 

I bought one five years ago. I got an EGO 21" self propelled one. Still working but the batteries pooped out last year so I had to buy two more.
But, now, with half acre to mow and I have developed a hitch in my get-along. It is too much for me to walk that long. So, I got a 42" Greenworks rider. I should've got the EGO rider but it was $ 1500. more than the Greenworks and the greenworks batteries are half the price of the EGO batteries. It has cruise control !!

It is a bit glitchy in that you have to let it warm up for about 5 minutes or it stalls why? I don't know. All in all I like it, it has double blades, is very quiet, cup holder and charger for your phone, moves very fast and turns ok. I drove it home, a mile from Tractor Supply. You should've seen the Looks I got !! .

I can't do a gas mower because I can't pull the cord hard enough to start it, plus, gas and they're loud and stink.

 

As this week is is starting off cold and rainy not much outside. @Zigs my strawberries just started to show signs of coming alive. @Daniel W I did Swiss Chard starts this morning along red and green Kale.