What are we doing in the garden 2024

We've been out garden centre shopping this morning. You know how it is, go out looking to price some things up and see what's available and come back with a car full of stuff!

Five ferns, nine cyclamens, two 100 litre bags of bark chippings and a pumpkin for my daughter to get arty with.

EDIT - All now planted and the bark spread along my woodland path.

 

Thanks @fairygirl, I have never grown dahlias before so worrying a bit about them.
Today I assembled and moved into position a new wooden storage box to replace the tatty old plastic one by the back door. It was very heavy and awkward to put together but it's done now and looks so much better.

 

I have just been out in the front garden cleaning up 5 big, wet, stinky cat poops from the grass. I don't own any cats.

 

Not much today i just got my grow house ready for winter by taking all of the seed trays out that i just threw in at the time. Put the fuchsias and tender geraniums in there for the winter, it's going to get colder next week.

 

Ehhh...think I'm a bit far away @shiney.....
Not sure what I'll do today. Got quite a bit done yesterday as it stayed dry apart from a couple of short spells of smirr. Concreted the last post, and covered it as there was rain forecast. Hopefully get a couple of bits of hedging planted today in between the spells of rain, if I can be bothered. Not much to do apart from that - just the rest of the front border to clear and maybe lift the potentilla and plant it there if possible. I've got some alliums to plant too.
Got the aster lifted that was slugified to oblivion earlier this year, and have put the new lilies I had [Henryi] in there. Also divided the astrantia next to that while I was at it. The soil is perfect in there - a raised bed. The aster will go in the new bed under my bedroom window. No idea where the astrantia will go - maybe a front garden bed.

 

Today I:

• Moved two flowering quinces from the ground into pots. One is to be gifted.
• Moved two different flowering quinces from large pots to the spots in the ground where the other two flowering quinces were
• Planted 2 pieris in those two large pots.
• Did a bit of light pruning & deadheading (the latter of roses).
• Did some cleanup after that but my lawn has hated the whole process .. I will need to give it some attention, but not today as it got dark and my lower back is hating me as much as the lawn after today...

 

Garlic planted, planted out (finally) wall flowers and sweet williams.
Broad beans placed on damp kitchen towel to germinate.

 

Back to GMT and the sun setting before 5pm . Nice to see preparations in hand for 2025 but the days will be short for anything worthwhile and yet theres still plenty to do. Looking back over the year to date there seems to be so much that i intended to do that remains undone and this year i seem to have done a lot without much to show for it. That said it wont be long before getting seed potatoes to chit and the sowing of early seeds and we start again with the new garden year much to the chagrin of our bad backs and dodgy knees. Looking forward to pottering around the garden today and continuing to prepare the garden for winter.

 

Had a look at your Pieris @CostasK - looking good. It's always a pain when you have to shift things, at any time of year, but I've had a similar process this year as I've been removing an existing hedge and replacing it all, so my grass looks pretty dire too. Just grass though, so I can't get too bothered about it. It can get a bit of attention next year.
I tidied all the outer boundary yesterday, including the little bit at the back corner of my garden where it meets the access road. Sieved it all out as it's mainly debris from under the trees [conifer and pine] so there's lots of needles and broken down material in with the gravel. It'll come in handy. Planted some hedging into gaps, and I have a couple more cuttings that can go in there as well. Planted the knapweed I lifted, where it was getting hidden, and planted it where I took out the aster, and turned the compost into the empty bin, using a bit of it for adding to the new bed where the aster will go. A few other bits and pieces.
Rain's to come in again in early afternoon, so I'll try and do a few bits and bobs after my walk etc. It's that time of year when it's all getting ready to go to sleep, so it's largely just tidying and planning now.

 

Finish emptying dumpy bag of leaf mould on flower beds, then start raking up the leaves and refilling dumpy bag.
Check greenhouse, dead head dahlia, tidy front garden.

 

A question about leafmould, I’m still quite a newbie to gardening, I hear lots of different methods about about spreading Leafmould. My garden is surrounded by a lot of trees and so I naturally have a lot of leaves everywhere, can these just be left to rot down on the flowerbed or does it have to be well rotted leafmould ?

 

Glorious sunshine today and really warm in the front garden. I've enlarged the only flower bed (actually created by accident when the hypericum sprawled all over the garden and killed the grass - I'm now keeping that much smaller). I also planted out my two newest shrubs and some muscari bulbs.

Yesterday I started looking at the dead box hedge on the side boundary. It really does seem to be planted perfectly on the boundary with big stumps underneath the post-and-rail style fence. So I've decided to cut back everything on my side and then grow a climber - maybe a rambling rose? It will get plenty of sunshine. Cutting it back will give me a nice extra border on the side too.

 

@BrennaBee . I am not sure there is a right or wrong way , it may hinge on what you plan to do with it. What i would say is that if your neighbours dont want the leaves then gather the lot for your own use. I have mixed mine in the past with general compost and kept a seperate stack which , given time, turn into a fine coffee grounds consistency. If you leave them on the flower beds they will rot down in time , but is that what you want see in the flower bed in the summer? I think it depends on what you want and there are likely some really good composters on this thread who can provide best practical advice.

 

Interesting. I am not a composter myself so I can't really advise but what I am trying this year is gathering all fallen leaves from my plants, putting them in the beds, and then I plan to mulch on top of them, so that the plants benefit from the extra nutrients while keeping the beds a bit more tidy.