My neighbour's chickens are definitely not Peking bantams. Bantams yes. Obviously from their size and egg size. But they are rather lean, sleek birds, not round powder puffs like Pekings. Unless they are a crossbreed. I will have to ask my neighbour because she hatched them from eggs, in an incubator.
Storing seed. I bought myself 2 cardboard filing boxes, like shoe boxes but stronger, and made card dividers for each month of the year. I try to go through my seed packets each year, throwing away old packets. Most seeds I use a year or two past the use-by date except parsnips which I buy fresh each year. Any old seeds go on the compost heap and envelopes into recycling. I have one box for veg. and one for flowers.
Another rainy day today.. what an incredibly wet November! I'm trying not to moan, after whining about the drought for 5 months - we probably need a couple more months like this!
Not much doing in the garden in this weather, so I pottered around in the greenhouse this morning. I tidied up all my succulents and aeoniums, snipping or pinching off any dead material. Fed my lemon trees with some winter feed. And potted up the 10 or so dahlia tubers which I'd lifted last weekend and left to dry. They're now in MPC in plastic pots, tucked away under the greenhouse staging for their winter sleep.
That's about it, apart from lugging some firewood inside. A rainy day makes for a lazy Sunday.. not such a bad thing now and again!
A day of clearing leaves today, mowing them off my lawns and picking them off my beds. I know it's not necessary to clear leaves off the soil but I like to see what's going on down there. Did a bit of weeding and cut back a few perennials that are not providing winter interest or seedheads for the birds. I cut back and mulched some dahlias too.
It starts to look more like winter in the garden now, even though we haven't had a single night below 4 degrees yet. Leaves are just about off all the trees, except the oak which is always the last to lose them and always the last to come back into leaf. I stopped deadheading anything more than a month ago, so there's not much left in flower now - a few snapdragons, geranium rozeanne, a couple of roses, some straggly annual rudbeckias, some scabiosa, nerines and the bigger salvias. Lots of spring bulb shoots starting to appear above ground - snowdrops, early daffodils, iris reticulata, scillas and of course muscari.
Yes, wrapped my daleks with old duvet, cut up into panels and stuffed into big bags.
Then I bubblewrapped my big plastic camellia pot and moved other pots nearer the house in readiness for the forthcoming cold snap. I tend not to wrap my other pots anymore, we rarely get more than a week of frosts/snow here and the potted plants just have to sink or swim! Fortunately most of my pots are frost resistant or glazed terracotta ones.
Believed the weather forecast that the day was supposed to be dry and dug up about twenty sapling trees and moved them to a mixed hedge row I'm getting established nearby. Mixture of elderflower, oak, birch and a couple I'm not sure of the identity (?hazel) but good to get moved from where they self seeded anyway. Light rain most of the day made the work a bit less pleasant than expected but probably good for the young trees. Less gaps in the hedge than I expected so there's hope it will start to look like a better hedge next year and not many unwanted tree saplings to move from the garden now.
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I've also lifted and potted up 40 Salvias (farinacea victoria) to overwinter in the greenhouse.
Storing seed.
I bought myself 2 cardboard filing boxes, like shoe boxes but stronger, and made card dividers for each month of the year.
I try to go through my seed packets each year, throwing away old packets. Most seeds I use a year or two past the use-by date except parsnips which I buy fresh each year. Any old seeds go on the compost heap and envelopes into recycling.
I have one box for veg. and one for flowers.
Not much doing in the garden in this weather, so I pottered around in the greenhouse this morning. I tidied up all my succulents and aeoniums, snipping or pinching off any dead material. Fed my lemon trees with some winter feed. And potted up the 10 or so dahlia tubers which I'd lifted last weekend and left to dry. They're now in MPC in plastic pots, tucked away under the greenhouse staging for their winter sleep.
That's about it, apart from lugging some firewood inside. A rainy day makes for a lazy Sunday.. not such a bad thing now and again!
Had a Village Christmas Fare and pleased to say a nice day , even the sun popped out lunch time , been on a U3A stall most the day , a bit worn out
It starts to look more like winter in the garden now, even though we haven't had a single night below 4 degrees yet. Leaves are just about off all the trees, except the oak which is always the last to lose them and always the last to come back into leaf. I stopped deadheading anything more than a month ago, so there's not much left in flower now - a few snapdragons, geranium rozeanne, a couple of roses, some straggly annual rudbeckias, some scabiosa, nerines and the bigger salvias. Lots of spring bulb shoots starting to appear above ground - snowdrops, early daffodils, iris reticulata, scillas and of course muscari.
Then I bubblewrapped my big plastic camellia pot and moved other pots nearer the house in readiness for the forthcoming cold snap. I tend not to wrap my other pots anymore, we rarely get more than a week of frosts/snow here and the potted plants just have to sink or swim! Fortunately most of my pots are frost resistant or glazed terracotta ones.