Taken all the indoor stuff outside for a bit of sun and a drink, watered all the flowers, repotted my blood orange, lime and Medlar trees and planted sweet peas, cosmos a few more peas and tomatoes for the mother in law
Just cleaned and refreshed some of my bigger pots. Sowed some Nigel a and some sunflower, old seed so thought I may as well see what happens. Also planning on moving a hydrangea to a bigger pot but need to motivate hubby to help me with that.
Marne la vallée, basically just outside Paris 🇫🇷, but definitely Scottish at heart.
Spent the weekend cleaning up the greenhouse ready for the tomatoes and cucumbers. Planted Apache spring onions, and put some of last year's plants ( hardy Penstemon and a echinacea parrot that was too late to plant last year) into the garden. Then while out popped into a small farm shop ( just past your allotment @GWRS ) and some plants just jumped into my basket Gaziania and two types of lobelia. 😊
Dug up and chopped up the useless celeriac. Dug two trenches and lined the bottoms with this and some soil improver. Raked it all over and erected the bean poles either side of the trenches to create my frame for climbing beans and sweet peas. Accompanied all the while by my friend the lady blackbird who got lots of worms for her children. At one point I sat down for a cup of tea, she hopped right up to me and looked me straight in the eye as if to say - get back to it, I need more worms!
Cosmos l sowed 4 days ago have started to appear. Pricked out Pepper "Razzamatazz" and basil seedlings. Washed umpteen pots. OH fed and watered box hedge in front garden. Everything is so dry, and l seem to be way behind with various garden jobs. Looking at my diary for this time last year, my tulip pots had gone over and l was emptying them. This year they haven't started flowering yet. Embarrassed by the state of the smaller front garden beds, l have been proactive and made a list of jobs 😊. Start tomorrow, honest. Think l might bite the bullet and cut back the Penstemon and Gaura and the hydrangeas. Trouble is, one minute Tomasz Schafernaker is forecasting an Arctic blast, then someone else says no need to worry about frost 🤪.
More tidying up. No gardening done in the year or so before the estate of the previous owner sold it to us. So we've had a fair bit of tidying up. What looked like fully covered border now has bare soil and space for things to spread. That probably means bluebells. Removing a lot of dead matter. A bit rough but we're really only damaging bluebells which we have too much of anyway.
We've removed green plants and soil to show missing paths. There's a modest apple tree and we found a ring of stone flags. Only small ones but more than but enough to act as a path. There's literally paths everywhere. It feels like archeology the way we find them. Many just go into a border and then ends.
In the month we've been here we've chopped a few things down. A couple of trees/shrubs that have gone has a path down under where they were that implies a former path down to the patio. Long since hidden by a retaining wall. Now it kind of ends in the border with a series of stones in arcs retaining soil or forming steps. Not worked which. There's a stump I had a little poke at with a mattock and pruning saw. Found a fair few large stones under inch or more of soil. Fished them out and put to one side. Stump is not going to be taken out for awhile. Not sure whether you do it myself or leave it to a tree surgeon we'll get b in for other stumps and trees we can't get rid of. Safer getting a pro in.
So as I'm one armed due to injury we're really only doing clearing out work. Apart from clearing and thinning out dead matter or excess plants we're also cutting out shrubs that grow into each other. The healthiest and nicest stays the others get cut out. Usually there's a ragged cotoneaster growing through a box or Mahonia IIRC the names. The cotoneaster goes. There's a dividing line made by a Mahonia with a cotoneaster at the end. There's also a third shrub growing too. All growing into the Mahonia. So the n other two got cut to the ground. It now clears the end of that border so nothing is growing out into the v path. I've done similar elsewhere. That now frees up space for nice border plants, annuals or others for a low height planting with colour.
Gosh, you have been busy @JoeX, even with one arm! I've cleaned most of our paving with Patio Magic but need some more, 5 litres even diluted is not enough. I've also dug up and potted lots of Scabious Butterfly Blue.
Yesterday: potted on/up
and pricked out at least 40 plants/seedlings. Sowed seeds in about 30 9cm pots.
Today: I did some organizing (pots with spent
bulbs taken down the garden, large plants, including blueberries that need
potting on lined up with compost ready to do), hauled 6 bags of compost from the
front to the back of the house, pulled up old flowering kale after harvesting
what's edible (currently in a pan with last year's home grown tomato passata,
garlic, onion, cannellini beans, herbs, spices and vegetarian sausage etc.)
made another onslaught on the slate-in-soil issue (thanks, former occupants)
potted up 40 sweet peas and 3 tomato plugs, watered my (too?) many pots of
flowering bulbs. I am shattered. (And a tiny bit red from the sun.)
Posts
Planted Apache spring onions, and put some of last year's plants ( hardy Penstemon and a echinacea parrot that was too late to plant last year) into the garden.
Then while out popped into a small farm shop ( just past your allotment @GWRS ) and some plants just jumped into my basket Gaziania and two types of lobelia. 😊
Then watered the whole lawn for the first time ever.
Will moss/weed/seed/feed after the girls go indoors.
Also watered the pots and beds and clipped some daffodils - late tulips are starting to come through.
Pricked out Pepper "Razzamatazz" and basil seedlings. Washed umpteen pots. OH fed and watered box hedge in front garden. Everything is so dry, and l seem to be way behind with various garden jobs. Looking at my diary for this time last year, my tulip pots had gone over and l was emptying them. This year they haven't started flowering yet.
Embarrassed by the state of the smaller front garden beds, l have been proactive and made a list of jobs 😊. Start tomorrow, honest. Think l might bite the bullet and cut back the Penstemon and Gaura and the hydrangeas. Trouble is, one minute Tomasz Schafernaker is forecasting an Arctic blast, then someone else says no need to worry about frost 🤪.
We've removed green plants and soil to show missing paths. There's a modest apple tree and we found a ring of stone flags. Only small ones but more than but enough to act as a path. There's literally paths everywhere. It feels like archeology the way we find them. Many just go into a border and then ends.
In the month we've been here we've chopped a few things down. A couple of trees/shrubs that have gone has a path down under where they were that implies a former path down to the patio. Long since hidden by a retaining wall. Now it kind of ends in the border with a series of stones in arcs retaining soil or forming steps. Not worked which. There's a stump I had a little poke at with a mattock and pruning saw. Found a fair few large stones under inch or more of soil. Fished them out and put to one side. Stump is not going to be taken out for awhile. Not sure whether you do it myself or leave it to a tree surgeon we'll get b in for other stumps and trees we can't get rid of. Safer getting a pro in.
So as I'm one armed due to injury we're really only doing clearing out work. Apart from clearing and thinning out dead matter or excess plants we're also cutting out shrubs that grow into each other. The healthiest and nicest stays the others get cut out. Usually there's a ragged cotoneaster growing through a box or Mahonia IIRC the names. The cotoneaster goes. There's a dividing line made by a Mahonia with a cotoneaster at the end. There's also a third shrub growing too. All growing into the Mahonia. So the n other two got cut to the ground. It now clears the end of that border so nothing is growing out into the v path. I've done similar elsewhere. That now frees up space for nice border plants, annuals or others for a low height planting with colour.
I've cleaned most of our paving with Patio Magic but need some more, 5 litres even diluted is not enough.
I've also dug up and potted lots of Scabious Butterfly Blue.
Yesterday: potted on/up and pricked out at least 40 plants/seedlings. Sowed seeds in about 30 9cm pots.
Today: I did some organizing (pots with spent bulbs taken down the garden, large plants, including blueberries that need potting on lined up with compost ready to do), hauled 6 bags of compost from the front to the back of the house, pulled up old flowering kale after harvesting what's edible (currently in a pan with last year's home grown tomato passata, garlic, onion, cannellini beans, herbs, spices and vegetarian sausage etc.) made another onslaught on the slate-in-soil issue (thanks, former occupants) potted up 40 sweet peas and 3 tomato plugs, watered my (too?) many pots of flowering bulbs. I am shattered. (And a tiny bit red from the sun.)