What are we doing in the garden 2024

A bit of watering and picking fruit, hubby cutting the grass.

 

I am so frustrated! When I checked the only veg. I have growing in the garden, after planting them out a few days ago, my runner bean plants have almost disappeared. I put slug pellets around them when I planted them and again after the deluge but they are still steadily disappearing.
The tomatoes in the greenhouse I potted on seem to be surviving, so far.

 

Well trying to do the impossible again. Sowed yet more swiss chard outdoors as very few germinated. Then in the polytunnel sowed different carrots, pak choi and kohl rabi. Sowed yet more dwarf french beans in pots and peas. This time we mixed the compost with some of our own garden soil to see if that would help.
Our cucs look like cornichons. Maybe the packets were mixed up.
Harvested the shallots, not a great return as some of them were only 2 instead of usually 4/5.
Cut back the American poke weed which has decided (like most of our plants except veg!) to spread like mad. Then this has become the next project. We have so much ivy growing that it has to be removed to allow light into other plants and areas
and now it is raining but we did a good morning!

 

I'm yet to be convinced that these new slug pellets are anything more than a placebo, if fact more likely an aphrodisiac.

 

Watered the hanging baskets, picked some more white and red currants, potted on the rest of the wallflowers.

 

Yeah a complete fire bug.
Just say it was a barque that got out of hand.

 

You could have barbequed that chicken while you were at it!

 

I have just opened the door to the garden, checking if the foxes are around. I could hear the hedgehog that found a place in my shed, trying to get once more into the compost. He can probably smell the slugs and would give everything to get in there. He has tried to make a tunnel underneath for days now. I counted around 20 slugs in the compost yesterday.
My calendula don't look good. They have like rost or mould. I made the decision that I will no longer grow tomatoes in the garden. I have neither the soil nor the weather to get them properly through.
Apart from filling the holes that little hogy makes daily all over the garden, I'm not doing much. I may find time tomorrow morning to do gardening. The strawberries need to come out, they are now in their 5th year. I have to buy new plants next year.

 

The only thing I'll be doing today is picking ripened tomatoes to freeze. I then wait till I have enough in the freezer to start bottling! "one of my favourite jobs "

 

Tomatoes into the freezer? Never heard of that, Grandma Sue.

 

I was pottering about out there yesterday. It was very still ... but I noticed a little pile of already-fallen oak leaves moving all on their own. What's under there, I wondered, but left it in peace. Too small to be a rat or anything worrisome. A bit later, I noticed the pile had been scattered ... and sitting motionless nearby, staring at me intently, was one of my little frogs. Beautiful markings in olive and black.

 

Do you not have runners you can take off them @simone_in_wiltshire ? That will save buying plants.
This is why we grow tomatoes undercover up here. The climate is too unreliable, in any year, for a good crop. I only grow a handful of plants, which is plenty for us, and I bring the last ones inside to finish ripening, as it's usually too late for that. I see any outdoor ones as a bonus if they manage.
Hoping to get a few things done today as it's to be decent in the afternoon. There's plants that need planting out, and all sorts of bits and pieces, as well as some more concreting. I've altered the edging around the bit of bed at the shed corner to enclose it all, but I'm thinking of putting the wee water butt there instead of round the other side. Can't decide....
The shed is looking pretty good now, but it's all the small jobs that take time, and I've also been helping daughter with doing up the other bedroom now that her sister's moved out. That's been soul destroying. Dark paint along with white always causes problems!

Is that fire still going @shiney?