What have you done in the garden today?

That's good! My hens won't eat caterpillars - they turn up their beaks at them. They like worms though.

Dandelion wrote:That's good! My hens won't eat caterpillars - they turn up their beaks at them. They like worms though.

Mine used to eat the little green caterpillars. Have you ever tried them with woodlice? If I turned up a brick or stone and found them running about, I would scoop them into a steep sided dish and put it into the hen pen. The birds loved them.

They seem to like all other insects, and happily scratch woodlice up - I lift the lids off the compost bins and put them on the ground for the hens to hoover up all the worms and spiders. They're not very keen on bigs slugs though, or caterpillars. Maybe they have a bitter taste? (I'm not volunteering to try one though)

lol DL....caterpillar muffin anyone?

mmmm - with a lovely juicy layer of slug trail on top!

I planted my garlic and overwintering onions at the weekend. Later than usual, but I've been busy, and until quite recently it has been too warm. Don't want a lot of lush growth, just a start and some good root development. But now it really is time, before my heavy clay gets too wet to work, and I had a spare morning to do it. Of course, it rained all the time I was out, then stopped when I got home.  

Oh, that's funny. I went out in the garden with the intention of planting my garlic. Ran out of time, though, as it took me ages to deal with all the couch grass that has infiltrated the plot over the last season. Hoping to do it tomorrow morning.

I've given up trying Autumn planting for overwintering stuff. It's never been successful - I might get a couple of miserable plants by the spring. I think it is just too wet here & also the mice eat anything that is below ground.

I got all enthusiastic about over-wintering plants a few years ago when I got a particularly colourful seed catalogue in September telling you what you could still plant. I tried all kinds of things - winter spring onions, caulis, chinese broccoli - as you say, Ploshkin, anything which did survive was really puny. Having said that, this autumn I accidentally sowed Hispi and April cabbage instead of more robust spring cabbage - apparently you can nurse it through the winter in a cold frame. I'll try most things once so the cold fram is in place - just in time for the predicted arctic weather next week!!

I don't overwinter anything at all, except garlic. I've had so many failures with garlic, and planting last November has given me the first proper success this season.

I always think I will have some winter veg or salads, but when it comes to it I miss the right planting time. Though actually, if I'm honest, once the main spring sowing and planting season is over, I've had enough and want to turn my attention to other parts of the garden.

Then there's the lazy aspect of thinking, I need a few salad leaves for dinner. It's dark already, and I have to get my wellies out, traipse down the end of the garden, failing torch in hand trying to avoid the accumulated dog poos hidden in the over-long grass, risk turning my ankle on other buried items that I meant to pick up and have also been covered in grass (usually bricks), find the aforementioned leaves and pick them, then do the whole journey in reverse. Get back indoors, wellies off, and find that the dog had followed me out and is capering around in my vegetable plots, and comes back in covered in mud. Sometimes it's just easier to get things from Tesco!

freebird wrote:Sometimes it's just easier to get things from Tesco!

Argh !  No need to use that kind of language in here.  Of course it is.  But - We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard*  

Garlic needs to be overwintered to multiply.  Some say that digging a slightly deeper hole and putting a bit of grit sand in the bottom with the clove sat on top of it improves sucess rate in heavy soil, but I've not found the need.  Onions I quite like to overwinter - it has a lower survival rate, but they are ready that bit earlier and it lessens the pressure in spring.  I have little joy from overwintered salads - few actually grow over winter - they just survive at best, and often tase bitter to me.  Overwintered brasicca are slug food !

*Almost but not quite what JFK said in '62 - but a quote I hold dear and often use to explain my lifestyle !

That reminds me - I must leave the trough of salad leaves where the chickens can help themselves tomorrow. They're the only members of the family who would appreciate tough leaves with yellow flowers!

I have stuck 2 Japanese maple seed's that I saved from the tree in my parents' front garden into the front garden here. I've been carrying them in my pocket for weeks. It's probably too later and i haven't stuck them deep enough, but I thought they had more chance of growing there than in my pocket.

I had a great tidy up on Saturday. Seemed like time to call it a day for the 2013 season, so cleared out the greenhouse of tomato remains, and cleared the garden vegetable plot to make way for a row of broad beans. My garden compost bin is overflowing, so wheeled all the waste round to the allotment to top up that heap, and clearred out the beans there whilst I was at it. Just a few celeriac, leeks, parsnip and sprouting broccoli left there now.

Damp and chilly here - we're expecting another deluge which will push the floods out a bit further. But on my muddy way up and down the garden this morning to clean the chickens out before the rain really started, I decided on the spur of the moment to prune the Jostaberry, which is sticking out over the path. I feel that the year's gardening work has begun now!

I've had a squelch round the garden looking for signs of snowdrops appearing. There are usually some tell tale white buds poking up early in the new year but not this year. I'm wondering if it's because they haven't had a decent cold spell. I'm sure they will put in an appearance eventually - one of the best sights of the year is seeing my bees collecting pollen from the snowdrops.

No snowdrops here either - a few bedraggled primroses I planted in the autumn, but that's all the colour there is (unless you like the colour of mud!!)

I shall have to look for ours -and for MiL's, she has lots and we transplanted a small bunch in the green a couple of years ago.

We have some snowdrops just showing, but I could only find them because I know where to look ! just the tips of leaves and flower buds visible.

On my look around the garden I also was pleased to see that I have a 100% showing on my broad beans, despite the deluges - I thought that they might rot in the ground.

Ooh, I missed seeing this thread. I've just popped out in the garden to look, and have emerging shoots of both snowdrops and tete-a-tete daffodils, though no sign of any flower buds.

The roundabout on the main road, about 10 miles south, drops down under the flyover, and the daffodils there are very nearly out. I think it provides a warmer microclimate for them as they are always really early, and a very welcome sight.

The man and I have just managed to take out a ginormous winter honeysuckle. It was hard to cut it all back in the autumn, knowing that I would miss the glorious scent in the winter and early spring. I dug up one of the suckers and planted it in another border - that has one little spike of flowers!

The big plant had to go, as it is, or rather was, in a prime growing spot, which it really doesn't need. I'm working on making a largish corner flower border, and have bought an arbour to go at the back of it. The winter honeysuckle was the last thing in the way, so now we can put the base down for the arbour.

Sounds like a job well done FB. I've been hacking at things in the garden this afternoon - we have to get a fence replaced this year, which was hammered by the winter storms and is on its very last legs. The current fence has probably been there for 40 years or so, and has two holly trees growing up against it which will have to go, and a hawthorn which has grown unnoticed inside one of the hollies. I'm just cutting off the bits I can manage until OH has time to deal with the big bits.

Today we have built a log store and unpacked all the wood into it!

Who needs the gym?

I spent most of the day at the lotty. Despite the wet winter, the over wintered onions and garlic look well. I just hope the garlic has had enough cold to split into seperate cloves.

Dug out the last of the leeks and parsnips. Replaced them with potatoes and onion sets. Then made a start on a new strawberry bed, which entailed digging out another compost heap. I'm now done in and ready to reach for the bottle !

I've only ever grown garlic once CH - what happens if you don't get enough cold - is it one big bulb instead of cloves then?

Cold but bright outside today. Carried on cutting back the holly trees which need to be removed in our back garden - that's holly, berebris and hawthorn cut down this year, all needing thick gloves to handle.