What are we doing in the garden 2024

Just spent a peaceful hour cutting down brambles on my slope, using my new long-handled pruners to reach them. Spotted my first snowdrop emerging!

 

Just had a bonfire, a rare occasion when nobody hanging out washing and it was dry.

 

After the strong winds yesterday l did a bit of clearing up this afternoon. I cut back all the Hakonechloa alongside my steps as they had reached the shedding stage and become a threat to the tidiness of my borders and paving . I removed some more fallen leaves, gave the birdbath a clean and refill and I also watered the tree fern’s trunk and crown. There are already signs of new fronds forming .

 

This afternoon I planted 50 Tête à Tête daffodil bulbs and cleared a lot of dead leaves and birch brash from the paths.

 

General tidying up and dead heading.
Dug a couple of parsnips for Christmas dinner.
Then tidied garage to achieve access to the heated and lit propagator; cleaned out and checked it still functioned. Ready for February sowings.

 

The nearest to gardening today will be picking the sprouts off the stems shown above. Rest of the day is preparing for the invasion tomorrow.
Happy Christmas .

 

I've just been out to the compost bin with the veg peelings.

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

Put in 50 muscari and 10 daffs this morning. That's all the bulbs now. Then did an hour tackling brambles. My green bin was collected yesterday but I've got enough to fill it already.

 

We did manage a quick walk round our little patch before lunch. Two salvias, one of the big lobelias, a white Rose and a carnation all have flowers on them. ---Mad

 

I noticed today that we have some new crocus bulbs starting to pop through the soil . No sign of the snowdrops yet but am happy to see tulips, tete e tete daffs and the crocuses coming through. Also abit of new growth appearing on some perennials.

Grass is about a mile high though….

Happy Christmas!

 

After not doing anything in the garden for months now, I'll try to tidy up a bit today but always looking for wildlife that is seeking shelter. I can't just sit around and wait until Spring arrives. There must be a balance between my and nature's well-being.

 

I put some stuff in the compost bin to @katecat58. Mostly peelings from making a big pot of soup, but I also cut back some clatty foliage on a couple of perennials, especially the toadflax, which has been terrific this year, and has some newer shoots lower down.

 

I just snipped some bits off a neighbour's conifer on the quiet and some sprigs with berries from my variegated holly bush in order to craft a table decoration for Xmas lunch. I was also able to pick two white flowers from a creeping plant whose name escapes me (too many glasses of fizz!)
some white heather and white winter flowering lonicera to add in. Looks good with a fat white candle in the middle.

 

I did the garden for an hour yesterday with something that was on the list since summer: All my beds are well prepared, but the left bed along the middle way needed to be topped up.
I took the top layer of the compost out into the wheelbarrow, and dug a hole going deeper down for that nice soil. I topped up the row on the left and the raised beds.
I filled the hole with leaves from the wildlife corner, I sorted out the broken bricks and replaced them (from the brick collection inherited with the garden). Then I sorted the remaining bricks to have them tidy and still wildlife friendly.
I moved the soil/leave mix back from the wheelbarrow and covered the compost with cardboard that ideally fits exactly.
Good, just what I needed.

 

Bulb planting today started at 2pm and got 90% of all these in by 4pm still got some allium - muscari and 3 hyacinth to plant.


Might plant the rest tomorrow but I have another project to attended to finishing off the stone flagging round the back of the house . Managed to scrounge some york stone to finish it off , the are not proper stone flags like 2-5inch thick but york roof tiles around a inch thick or less , I'll treat them like indian stone and give them a full bed of mortar should look fine you probably wouldn't be able to tell , they need cutting shaping up first.