WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2022

Watered the polyanthus, marigolds and some of the pots, also the hanging baskets. Those black birds had been at it, pulling out the labels for the different coloured wallflowers.

 

Just came back in from watering my seedlings/rootings and directing T'other Half cutting back the Iochroma by a third as it was tall and straggly. I was looking directly into the sun so not fun! So that's that till I water my seedlings/rootings this evening.

 

Decided to stop procrastinating and get the squirrel causeway to the roof cut down. That is, saw off some of the crabapple branches. I needed to get rid of about 15 feet of length on three of them. Chainsaw Lori. It was pretty easy but cutting up all the twigs and small branches after was tedious. It's only up to 87f so at least I did it before it got too hot.

Although why I bothered today, I don't know. The squirrels don't come near when I've got my giant curlers in!

 

I spent the morning hand weeding some borders and then gave them a top dressing of manure. We also put up some plastic mesh around the half arch for the Clematis and Rose to scramble over. I am now going out to take a soil sample of the area of the garden that is concerning me.

 

I only watered a few pots & troughs & the hanging baskets, nothing more I can do at present but wait & see how my tomatoes, Fuchsias & other plants respond to the roasting they got with yesterday's extremely hot winds.
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Yesterday I ordered another Adenium obesum from Spain ... and it arrived today!!!! So I potted it up and watered all my seedlings/plantlets again . T'other Half bought a new don't kink hose today so will water later.

 

I spent hours re-potting a Poundland climbing rose that is growing well and needed a bigger pot, and ending up clearing out the other things that had been growing with it, sacrificing some nice Love-in-a-Mist heads and other things that just looked straggly. Then I tidied up the garden generally, cutting back Erigeron karvinskianus and Alyssum, etc.. It just seemed to take ages because I was thinking what needed to be done as I went along, and moved a lot of pots around. There is still a lot of tidying to do. It just seems to be that time of year when everything was luxuriantly flowering a few weeks ago but has now gone over and needs chopping back. I ended up losing some things that I would have liked to keep, like the seedheads.

As some flowers have gone over, others are starting to flower so maybe I shouldn't be so bothered about having to cut things back.

If I have learnt anything from reading Sarah Raven's email newsletters it is to cut things back. My garden was looking very straggly and tatty because I wasn't accepting that the luxuriant flowering of a few weeks ago was over, for now.

 

That's a lot of work with so many stems! No wonder your back was sore!

 

Not done anything on the balcony today, not even watering! The temps have fallen so drastically I'll have to think about getting out the fleece!

 

I spread some Clay Breaker over a section of the garden, Horticultural Gypsum over another and pelletised Lime over another.
We put some mesh up for the Chocolate Vine, which we moved, to cling to. It is growing great guns in its new position.

 

I did a a lot of cutting back yesterday as well and it certainly makes for a much tidier looking garden.
I also potted on again all the Wallflower cuttings.
Like @shiney said in his earlier post the ground is way too solid to dig into at the moment so I've been just pulling on weeds in the hope that their roots come up as well ..it will have to do for now.

 

Done now ... walked around down the bottom dining area, just about everything okay and the peach Hibiscus is opening a double bloom but there is a pot of something not happy looking but I don't know what it is. Watered all my seedlings/plantlets and made a hasty retreat indoors as we are 28c already with no breeze.