What have you done in the garden today?

I've emptied a lot of earthenware pots which had shrubs in - it's amazing how much died in the winter. Even hardy plants like ivies have had it. But the good thing is that I was trying to reduce the number of pots in the garden as they take too much watering in the summer.

Leek seeds are sown, some cabbages pricked out into modules and I'll be sowing tomatoes tomorrow.

That sounds lovely. I'm just heading out to find something to do outside - it's so beautiful that it seems a waste not to be out there. I'm sure I can find some weeding.....

Lots of activity on the big garden that is Rhomboid Acres. I will do a catchup post in teh RA thread shortly, when I have the fortitude. Walked the perimeter of the new field today. 4 1/2 acres. all of which needs fencing. My nack was cowering at the thought and my wallet shrivelling. Luckily the owners are very happy to largely pay for teh fencing materials if I put in the labour so that is good, and there is a water source (hooray) although it is metered (boo).
Borached the subject of keeping a flock of geese on the field with them, perhaps belatedly as the first batch of eggs go into the incubator on Sunday. they were not averse to it but said would think it over (their house adjoins the field).
Two rows of strawberries plants down, 79 raspberry canes, 2 rows of broad beans, a row of transplanted leeks. 40kg of sand dug into the bit where the carrots are going, sweetcorn patch prepared.
Tomorrow we will hopefully be able to prise up the pig ark and move the pigs onto their new patch and then can get the current pig area rotavated for planting. We really need rain. The ground is almost iron hard already and its only March. We don't seem to have had any rain at all this year.

I'm amazed how quickly it has dried out here. Normally my clay allotment would be much heavier digging. Last weekend I finished off potato planting fairly easily - I am absolutely amazed at how much the soil has improved over the time I've had it - then again, a few tonnes of organic matter probably helped !

Got 2 bags of rubbish out of the greenhouse.

Cleaned the birdfeeders & put new food out.

Took for ever & there is still a lot of rubbish to get out, but made a start.

2 buckets of potatoes showing above the surface, so will be able to top up on a couple of days.

Added a lot of vine weevil grubs to the bird table, too many of them about, I hope the birds like them.

BArrowed a load more compost around
Planted more seeds
Transplanted more tomatoes into bigger pots ( already on second upgrade!)
Scrubbed out a load of gravel trays
Cleaned up some recycled plant pots
Gathered up assorted stuff around the back of the pt and lean to and put it away or recycled it
Filled yet more bags with compost to store until needed
Dug some ground over
Hung out 3 loads of washing in the sunshine
Drank tea in the sun

Planted out my broad beans (having used Root-trainers for the first time I'm impressed with them.) My new rhubarb crowns arrived - annoyingly it was two 'Champagne' crowns rather than one 'Champagne' and one 'Victoria', as I liked the thought of having three different varieties. (We already have a Timperley Early.) Anyhow, despite my plans not exactly working out I enjoyed planting them and thinking nice crumble and pie thoughts!!

At last I finished with the onions.

Also planted some more lettuce & carrots.

As we have a small garden, I have decided to plant lots of what we actually eat, instead of a bit of this & a bit of that. Lots of toms, as I can cook & freeze them for cooking. Lots of carrots, though I do have a problem with them. Lettuce cos the OH likes sandwhiches with it. Also instead of big pots of radish & spring onions, I am using bean tins as again OH is the only one who actuall eats them.

Several peppers, a couple of cues & several gerkin as OH likes pickled ones as does the Sister in law. So far things are looking good.

polgara wrote:Lots of carrots, though I do have a problem with them.

Problem eating or growing?

Growing for some reason, really bad germination, but am trying a different way this year keeping them moist till they germinate & then planting, so we shall see.

I am also not a veggie person, so both options are relevant, but they are one of the very few vegs I tolerate. Use a lot in stews & soup in the winter.

Our soil is cold clay, and not much germinates in it until late Spring. I've been trying out growing carrots in a bucket in the cold frame - I grew a late variety in the autumn which were supposed to be for Christmas, but with the arctic conditions they were frozen into the bucket during the festive season! We had them as baby carrots in January. I'm growing some more now - they seem to be OK germinating in sieved peat-free compost with a bit of top soil and sand in, with the protection of the cold frame.

Planted last of the potatoes.

Cleaned up & planted some new thyme & sage.

Planted some carrots & beetroot & put in greenhouse to start off.

I did weed some of me beds, but I've decided to leave a few californian poppies growing among the onions, they should look really pretty.. Beautiful day again today, but everything is sooooo dry! my rhubarb is wilting... It is April isn't it????

Dug up some more dandelions, planted primulas in the front and started seriously reducing the size of our box hedge, which is supposed to be a border and has got horribly out of hand.

does anyone know if box sprouts from old wood if I hack it back about 18 inches?

Made another 2 x 3 m raised bed and filled it with soil, leaf mould and compost. Will plant the maincrop spuds in it tomorrow.


Also planted lots more shallots around where the carrots are.

Did a load of compost moving around and filling up of empty compost bins.

Lovely day here again, today

Weeding, watering, pricking out tomatoes. Cut some holly and fiendishly thorny berberis for my mother to put in her garden to keep the cats off her flowerbed. Chased a cat around our garden trying to scare it away, making throaty growling sounds. Haven't seen much of our new neighbours yet.....

I'd say yes! But I'd do it in stages if it really has got badly out of hand so it doesn't get too shocked and go into decline. But it should be fine. I'd also probably wait til about June so the new growth doesn't get frosted either. I love box hedging, my fav days are reshaping it

Ooooooo nearly forgot, treat it to a feed after so it ain't too cross with you....

Thank you Lottie.

so far I have trimmed it form the sides, so we can see how much lawns pace we have, but left the top as cutting that off will leave it bald. I'll wait a while now then. Perhaps should feed it now, to show I love it really.

Had a lovely, but back breaking, weekend with DW in the front plantings. Some help here and there from the youngs, lol. Nothing so fun as watching a 6 y.o. working with a crow bar and a full sized pick mattock!!!

We've got roughly 15 m x 2.5 m of street side that had been turned to planting by previous owners. The plants are OK, but there's hardly a cohesive design about it. When we first got the place, there were Yucca (full sun, high desert) next to Hostas (partial shade, under canopy). Huh?? Anyway, we've done some moving, deleting, additions, etc. and it's not too bad now. So, there was, of course, the annual pruning, and rejuvination to do. The plant that's the most of a devil to do is one I can't recall the name of. It's a deep burgundy colored bush with small, oval, smoth edged, single leaves along the branches (sometimes a bit lighter in the center of the leaf in younger growth, I believe). Leaves around 1 cm long? They produce little berries that look almost like oblong pommegranite berries (from the inside of the pomme). Best part is the WICKED spikes this bu**... beauty produces all over itself. They'll go right through your goves and dig in for the day. Evenings full of tweezing for the both of us. Rude little sod even got DW on the bum and the bossoms!! We've four of these delights, they're the ONLY bit I don't compost, and put to the city garden haul pick up.

Not whithstanding the bits that the city can have, we've taken over 1.5 cu m of compostables just from trimmings, weedings and leaf mould. THEN, we took off as much of the old cypress mulch as was still viable, another 1 cu m. THEN we've gone painstakingly and taken the broken down mulches, leafe mould, weedy bits, root mats, soil, et al from the top of the weed barrier and piled it up as well. At least another 2 cu m. Lots of digging, and carefull hand excavation. This then will be further screened and sorted for compost vs. direct reuse mulching. Ran the fingers through my old set of leather gloves, lol. All this work is because we're having, finally, to replace the lanscape timbers that border this area. The old ones were done in a single layer of 6" by 6" rounded lanscape timbers. They're rather old, at least ten years, have an unfortunate habit of rolling into the street at inoportune times, and, as we've discovered, some of them have been harboring termites, along side some of the more welcome invertebrate life. Banner day for the Robins, I'm sure!! (Oh, and a couple for the Cichlids as a treat )

So, all of the old timbers are up, and I've begun laying new. We're going with 4 x 4 since the price is right. $1.97 for an 8' length vs. $11.86 for the 6 x 6!!! We'll be doing a double layer, both for mulch retention as well as the fact that I can offset the ends to provide stability once I spike them together. There's a slight grade to the front way, so while the side facing the street will have it's bottom layer only an inch embedded, the side facing the side walk will have its lower layer nearly below grade. And there's still at least four inches of grade we take up with the sides. We've just begun the new framing, got about 40 feet of bottom layer in. There are evenings through the week ahead of me, I'm sure! Add to that, we've bought about a half a long ton of new cypress mulch, and it's busy busy me for a while!!

On the plus side, I've got some nice divisions from some of the non-thorny shrubs, tulips look lovely in the vase, we've turned up a volunteer blue bell we'll be transplanting, various other bits and bobs, and I'm sure we're improving the whole thing nicely. Since we've bought the place, we've iproved the soil quality in this bed so much. Need to work on the small patch by the porch next. It's just packed dust!

Well, time to nurse my back, lotion my hands, get another set of gloves, then onward and upward!!

Busy weekend here, catching up after missing the last one (cub camp !). Sown peas, beetroot, outdoor tomatoes, salads, melons ... Chilli-head Jnr sowed his sunflowers too.

Tidied up the allotment which was starting to look overgrown. Comfrey coming up everywhere. Which gave me an idea - I need to increase my compost production, and I have an almost unlimited supply of comfrey, and corrugated cardboard packaging. Surely layered together this will make something useful ?

It should be positively dynamic! (I saw somewhere the other day a recipe for potting compost which was made entirely with grass cutting and shredded cardboard). Have you tried comfrey tea for tomatoes etc - smelly but free!!
(You can download/buy a booklet about uses of comfrey from the Garden Organic website.)

Dandelion wrote:Have you tried comfrey tea for tomatoes etc - smelly but free!!

I have. My god did it stink. Even repeated washings could not get the smell off my hands. Mind you, I did make it in a barrel that had previously been used to store pig slurrey samples !

Chilli-head wrote:Busy weekend here, catching up after missing the last one (cub camp !). Sown peas, beetroot, outdoor tomatoes, salads, melons ... Chilli-head Jnr sowed his sunflowers too.

Tidied up the allotment which was starting to look overgrown. Comfrey coming up everywhere. Which gave me an idea - I need to increase my compost production, and I have an almost unlimited supply of comfrey, and corrugated cardboard packaging. Surely layered together this will make something useful ?

I make my own potting compost from grass and cardboard, I have several dedicated bins for this. CAT call it "grassboarding " lol

I also do the same with comfrey and cardboard and it makes an excellent very rich compost which I use much like wormery compost ( as a top dressing , very sparingly!)

As Dandelion says, it will be dynamic!!

Had to water all my pots today, everything is very dry & me broad beans were begining to droop.