Me too @Bullfinch. Perhaps the biggest single thing, for me.
I love my Hotbin too. (Winner of Chelsea RHS product of the year). Without turning or other interventions, it composts food waste and some fine garden waste as fast as I add it*, so I haven't had to buy compost hardly this year and the box never fills up. Some kind of magic. (One person household, small garden, little space for bins). It pretty much sits at around 40oC, though it can go up to 70oC if you layer the whole thing at once.
One downside is that the bin gets so warm that worms don't like it. I run my regular sealed compost bins as co-worm farms too, so I have had to change things around a bit. I have some regular sealed bins now for just coarse garden waste - which the worms enjoy.
......
*that's not a very clear way of putting it, but I add the waste and use the soil at about the same speed and the box never fills up or empties.
Started using what we call a soaker hose on my new perimeter trees at our getaway rural cabin property. We only drive down there (1 hr. away) ever 10-14 days, and the young plants were struggling in our scorching summer heat in Texas. But hooking the soaker hose (tiny holes along the length) up to the well on a slow drip, laying it along ground at the base of all those young trees has made all the difference in the world. Now, instead of seeing wilted leaves and plants that look like they are on death's doorstep, they are perky, growing like crazy and my 4' Duranta erecta 'Sweet Memories' has even started blooming!
I believe they are native to Mexico and South America. They truly are beautiful when established. I had two of the solid purple ones flanking my driveway entrance at my last house. I don't have room for one at this new house I'm in. The Master Gardener that preceded me here planted up most of the available bed space. My lawn spaces are quite small.
This time I went for the frilly white-edged cultivar of Duranta. The flowers turn to pretty golden berries in the fall/winter and are lovely on the cascading branches. The plants are evergreen up until the first very hard freeze (but always come back after a total prune the next spring, just as large as the previous year in 1 season). They can get quite large, up to 6' x 6' (some people train them to be erect trees, but that is not natural for this plant). Their branches reach up and then drop down to the ground like umbrella spokes. They will kill out the lawn underneath, but that's not a problem down at our rural cabin, as there is little grass in the yard anyway (mostly native grasses and weeds really). They tolerate heat, drought and die back in a freeze, but are reliable to come back next season. In as we only visit the cabin every 2 weeks in the summer (less in the winter) it's a perfect choice for that setting.
This year I divided the garden into three zones and work on them in rotation so that no one area gets all the attention. It seems to work and each area now has an almost tidy appearance. It's all too easy to concentrate on one aspect of the garden while the rest goes mad so this keeps me focused.
I weeded thoroughly and laid a thick layer of wood chip over my friend's borders early last year and it has made a huge difference to the weed level over 2019. I put in more ground cover plants like woodruff also, so there is much less bare soil. He's amazed at the difference it has made.
Recognising weed seedlings from plant seedlings.......this year I have loads of self seeded plants, which are more hardy and longer lasting than pot grown plants.
Posts
I hope that each minute spent dead-heading my three big buddleias will save two minutes pulling up seedlings.
I hope that not using grass clippings to mulch my soft fruit border will save me having to weed out bagfulls of couch grass.