What are we doing in the garden 2024

Have a Happy Birthday @fairygirl

 

Thank you @Bluejayway. It'll be a day like any other though!

 

Go on!
do something you dare not do every other day....

 

Happy birthday @fairygirl

 

And from me too. Have an enjoyable day - eat more cake!

 

Happy birthday @fairygirl . Enjoy your cake, whenever it is served.

 

Happy Birthday @fairygirl ! I hope you have a super day.

I'm going to carry on getting ready for winter. Later. It's only 36f 2c right now. The good news is that the natural gas heater is still keeping the greenhouse in the 40'sF.

I keep looking at the slabs out front and I may just have a go at doing a little leveling now instead of waiting for the spring/more settling. It chafes to see the rise and dip across the length!

 

I'm off to plant some brassicas in the newly cleared pumpkin bed.

I know what you mean about levelling @CanadianLori, for looks as well as safety. We have a slight downward slope from east to west in our veg plot which means a step down to the entrance of the polytunnel. It's a slippery slope at the mo. I need a secure stone or breeze block step down onto a level surface so I don't risk slipping and breaking something.

 

Broccoli and kale planted out but beds not yet ready for pointy cabbages and Savoys so I've potted them all up onto 10cm pots to keep the growing for a week or two. I've also raked dusted diatomaceous erath over the smaller bed in the polytunnel and raked it in. Need to fix the edging beams on the other bed before I can do that one.

OH wants to grow leeks this year as well as garlic and onions or shallots so lots of bed clearing to do in the veg plot and 3 or 4 years of weeding and pruning to catch up in the other beds and I want to clear space round all the trees I've planted ready for bulbs and mulching.

 

Thanks for all the kind wishes for my birthday folks. I'm afraid I didn't do anything exciting at all @infradig, unless you count getting a haircut! Older daughter is the baker, and would normally have made something for me, but she hasn't been well for several days, so younger daughter brought some jammy doughnuts from the good bakery near us instead. Yumm....
I did do some planting of a few things in the front garden yesterday, and emptied the rest of the material from the oldest compost bin for a bit of mulch round those. I now have an empty one so the next load of stuff in the day to day bin can get put into that, and the other, almost full one, can maybe get turned.
I doubt much will be done today due to the weather though, but it's meant to clear up a bit later on in the day, so I'll see. My last order of bulbs arrived, so I could do those if it's dry enough.

 

Well its miserable and wet with no end in sight and i am off shortly for my flu and covid jabs. On the bright side , things should only improve from this point. Please .

 

Not a lot going on down here in the SW. Too wet.
Picked all of the blight damaged tomatoes yesterday. I ended up with 3 1/2 lbs of green tomatoes to make into chutney. I am going to try out an Indian recipe.
I also cut down the plants and got them out of the greenhouse. There are still a few plants left hanging on by their toenails to survive.
My first vermillion nerine is in flower, also a lovely species fuschia, it has very long tubes and has bright scarlet sepals, the foliage is an attractive bronze, purple, green. I am going to try getting some cuttings to root in water when it has finished flowering. No idea what its name is, my sister sent me a rooted runner from the Isle of Wight. It was in her garden when she moved in so no help there.It seems very hardy, no protection during the winter, at the foot of a South facing house wall, very wet in the winter, very hot in the summer. I think the roots are probably under a nearby cement path. The base is also almost submerged by an agapanthus. Hardly an ideal location.

 

Taken down the hanging baskets and gave all the plants a trim, just put them in the back garden at the moment. Can't do much else because it's raining.

 

Just got home , surface water everywhere and sat in the car for 10 minutes waiting for the deluge to lighten slightly. I had an interesting conversation with a friend last night. He is the greenkeeper on an 18 hole golf course nearby . He indicated that already in 2024 the course has measured double the rainfall compared to the whole of 2023 ! Furthermore the measured rainfall for 2023 was double that for 2022. The notion of going out to the garden today is just wishful thinking . Very frustrating as , garden wise , i have so much that i want to do and even more that needs to be done and a stack of jobs that have to be done. Hopefully you are having better fortune.

 

My back lawn is like a bog, but i haven't noticed if it's worse than last year. The front garden isn't so bad and the soil isn't saturated.