What Jobs Are We Doing In The Garden Today 2019

I got a fair amount done yesterday but not all of it successfully.

Mrs Shiney wanted me to put up some framework for sweetpeas where a large 60 year old thornless rose has given up. It was a highly scented rose with tiny white flowers that bloomed only in May/June. There had been posts and wires to support it. The posts at either end are still solid, although one looks rather tatty, a pole in the middle was loose and the other poles disappeared years ago. I was going to stretch some plastic trellis between them. So I decided to hammer in the loose one and put another pole in that had come out from elsewhere. Seems simple .

I use the back of a 3ft axe as a sledgehammer and started to hammer the loose pole. The top part of the pole shattered but the pole became just a little bit more stable, so I left it there. I then used the axe to hammer in the other pole. The ground is rock hard and full of roots from other plants but I was pleased to see that it went it fairly easily - apart from not doing my back much good . I stepped back and then noticed the pole has gone in wonky. There's no way I can get it out again or straighten it up so it remains wonky.

More successfully, but quite hard work, I mowed the wild area. Either end of it there are no wild flowers. One end is where the compost heaps and the bonfire are and is about 40ft x 10ft with the fastest growing grass in the garden. The other end is about 40ft x 15ft and is ankle deep in moss. The mower has great difficulty mowing that end. The rest of the area, about 40ft x 60ft, is currently growing hundreds of cowslips, primroses and primulas with other wild flowers (including bee orchids) still to come up. I mow walking paths through it and mow around clumps of flowers. I'm sure they know that I don't like mowing them down so tend to produce new clumps just where I want the walking paths. This makes it very difficult to manoeuvre the mower so I'm apologising to them all the time as I mow some of them down. The area is full of fruit trees, 70+ years old) as well so I have to weave around them! There are some blackberry beds, planted 60 years ago and they take a bit of careful negotiating.

The ground is so dry here, only one hour of rain in the last six weeks that I've had to put the sprinkler on some beds of perennials.

 

Very busy day here yesterday - started with a dump run to get rid of the last of the stuff that got ruined in the leaky old shed, then the car got a blast with the pressure washer (at which point the shampoo bottle attachment broke!), then the patio was re-organised and pressure washed which given the size of our patio, this is no small job.

After a cuppa, the grass was cut (first of the year) and my new strimmer made short work of the edges. Finally, I decided I wanted to trim a spotted laurel at the back of the garden which had grown way out of hand. I say trim................. I ended up butchering the thing. In short, to get enough off it to get it back to size, we were right down to thick, bare trunk like branches, so I just went for it. It will either bounce back and I will be able to shape it, or I will have a new space to play with.

 

They certainly do charge a price but the quality is good - never bought anything there

Their display is laid out nicely in outdoor 'rooms' and they have a few walkways as garden that display the plants in their growing position, all labelled.




They have a veggie garden and sell the produce fairly cheaply.


They also have a private garden that they open for different charities a few times a year but, of course charge for it.


The owner is quite nice and said we can pick the seeds, when Mrs Shiney asked, from this Cornus kousa 'China Girl'. They've now germinated.

 

@Fat Controller That's a lot of work done . The laurel should come back with no trouble. In two year's time it won't even notice that you cut it - apart from being smaller.