WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2022

Your windfall apples remind me of the time I had an allotment & of the windfalls all around the field! I shared one with a friend from church & he had a big apple tree, a cooker, that some years produced so many apples we couldn't use them - or give them away! The same thing was happening to other plot holders as well! One particular tree was on a plot alongside ours & there was a small shed with a corrugated metal roof underneath it. When the apples started to ripen & fall off the tree you could hear the clanging sound on the shed roof!

 

Did this and at the bottom of the hole was still very dry, despite recent rain and the soil being recently cultivated.

 

It stayed dry today although slightly damp. Front lawns have been mowed, the mower cleaned, and it's now in hibernation for the winter.

 

@shiney What are you going to do with so many containers of apple puree? By the time winter is over you will be sick of the sight of apple puree!

 

@Balc I've been rooting fuchsia cuttings in water a few years now, in compost they just rot. Get new growth cuttings about 5in, i change the water often. Then when i pot them up be careful not to damage the roots and as @pete said keep them wet for a few days and slowly get them dryer. Geranium cuttings i put in compost without rooting hormone, water them once and then leave them until rooted well.
@pete can always use a fungicide spray for cuttings.

 

Started cutting out the fruited canes of the loganberry plants.

 

This is what I've been doing
Wallflowers around the path just behind the polyanthus.

This is a close up

This border i widened a bit so that i could plant some foxgloves, not many wallflowers because of the spring bulbs.

A cosmos that decided to flower late so i left it, the frost will get it next month anyway.

 

It's similar to what I do as well! The Fuchsia cuttings in compost just dry out after a few days & after a week I have to throw them away. The ones that root in water die a couple of weeks after potting up even though they start out with lots of roots!

As for Geranium cuttings I rarely lose any. I never use rooting hormone at all & haven't done so since before I left home at 22 years old. In the 50 years since I've never used anything &, generally, I've had quite a bit of success at whatever I've tried to root! Just that the last few years I seem to have lost my "magical" touch! I can't see where I'm going wrong; I think I'm still doing what I've always done with plenty of success. I've never used fungicide spray on my cuttings - ever!

 

Perhaps you have to keep the fuchsia cuttings more moist for longer after potting them up,they don't mind being a bit wet, that's what i do.

 

.
Idem!

 

This morning I spent about 1 1/2 hours on the balcony. I cut down a couple of pots with Dahlias in them. They have done very badly this year with no more than 3 or 4 flowers between them! I'm not keeping them for another year!

I also cut back hard a pot of Geraniums but didn't take any cuttings from them. Another pots with 3 Geraniums in it that were old & almost out of the compost I threw away, again without taking any cuttings.

I also emptied out 3 pots on the balcony floor that I wasn't sure was in them. Well one I did know what was supposed to have been in it, a lovely pink lily, but it had rotted away during the summer! My son & daughter-in-law gave me it for my birthday 2 or 3 years ago. One of the other pots was completely empty! I have no idea what I had put in it! So I just put the compost back into the pot for now. I did the same with the lily pot. The 3rd pot had Hyacinths in it - well 3 small bulbs where there should have been at least 6! I took them out & put the compost back in the pot till I can decide what to do with them. The 3 pots were then shoved under the table in the corner of the balcony - out of sight, out of mind!

The 3 Hyacinth bulbs were then planted again but in a square tub that doesn't seem to have much else other than Grape Hyacinths in it!

I want to get some more Pansies or Violas this week & plant them in some of the pots. But I shall have to wait till I can get some to really see what I can do.

I then reorganized the pots that were left on the balcony floor & put them up against the balcony windows. I also put two pots of Fuchsia 'Beacon' in the same place. Unless we get a very hard winter like in 2009/10 they should resist the winter well. I have some fleece I can put over the if the weather gets really cold but practically nothing will survive if we have a very hard winter. Not even the Geraniums & Fuchsias that are in the mini-greenhouse in the most sheltered corner of the balcony, even though I have put it inside an old mattress bag that I have kept for a couple of years just for this purpose.

 

Not sure what I'm doing today, but a few days ago a fox dug up 2 wallflowers around the path. I had to plant the one, the other had hardly any roots left, so it's converlacing in some water. I know that it doesn't matter but i thought that i would give it a go. It might grow some more roots or might not. It's picked up from how it was.

 

We actually went out in the garden this morning for a potter about. I had a hanging basket of Begonia Semperflorens which were lovely but had gone over. I cut it back and stuck it in the cold frame to see if they will overwinter. I will definitely be buying more of the same next season. "Organdy" is the variety and they grew in the shade outside my north-facing kitchen window.