What are we doing in the garden 2024

Yesterday we took ourselves to a relatively local nursery, came home with a rhodanthemum Zagora Yellow, which I'd wanted but not expected to find, a yellow-flowered daphne for a pot on the patio, and a good-sized hydrangea aspera Hot Chocolate, to replace a paniculata that didn't make it through the winter. Planted them all, and moved a couple of foxgloves around, and generally poked things a bit....
So far today I've put the tomatoes, cucumbers and zinnias out into the greenhouse for the day, shuffled things around a bit between greenhouse, cold frame and "potting shed", given all the pots a feed with weak seaweed, and I'm about to go dig up one of the possibly-dead monardas to see if there's any sign of life.....worried as there's no sign of growth at all on four, yet one next door to a "dead" one is growing well, so it's not just that they're slow.... If they've definitely had it, I need to figure out what to replace them with, along with some miserable-looking achilleas, for our fairly heavy soil that gets very wet in winter but dries to rock in summer.
Trying to decide if it's too early to plant out the limnanthes and ammi Green Mist plantlets, it would give me a bit more room in the cold frame.....but there's a risk of frosts forecast for the next few nights so maybe I'll just have to be patient....
And oh! but I want to hack the daffodil leaves back! Yes I know I can't yet, but they look so untidy and they're swamping emerging perennials!

 

So I dug up the monardas, confirmed they looked dead, chucked them in the trug, then noticed a tiny bit of green on the surface.....some teeny tiny leafy shoots along with some side shoots...runners?....coming off the otherwise dead-looking roots. Of course, now I have no idea which colour is which, so I've replanted and watered and hope they're in the right places! And that they grow, given the disturbance!!

 

I weeded and mulched the shrub bed today. Quite a big job. The mulch was rotted wood chips from the tree and hedge work I had done in 2021. Took a trailer and a half, pulled by the garden tractor.

Then I did a bit of strimming. I really like my Stihl battery strimmer, quite light weight but powerful.

 

It has been a lovely day here, sunny and quite warm out of the chilly breeze.
Planted a Eupatorium "Chocolate" and a couple of hardy geraniums. OH cut the grass and trimmed the edges.
Dug up a load of comfrey that was running rampant, and trimmed back the Sarcococca to expose the Princess Diana clematis shoots. I thought it was dead, so very pleased .

 

I did a bit this morning and evening, had to go shopping for Bella's food this afternoon.

I cut away some whispy branches of a Holly bush, gave a Viburnum tinus a haircut (so now it looks like one of those modern men with shaved head )
Planted my new Mahonia 'Sweet Winter' and a patio rose purchased recently.
And did a few other menial tasks ...

It was nice to be out in the warm sunshine

 

Did the jobs not done yesterday and then weeded, trimmed some edges and strimmed.

 

It warmed up this afternoon, so I managed to plant out my little Iberis Sempervirons Tahoe cutting. Sounds like a quick task, but the soil here is very stony, so excavating a hole requires a bit of effort and then sieving the stuff to go back in, washing the smaller stones to use as top dressing, etc.

 

I planted the 10 Heleniums that arrived yesterday in the sunny border next to my sitting area which already contains several grasses, some Lythrum, a Clematis on an obelisk, a shy looking Achillea, a Fuchsia and three other Heleniums - yes they are my favourite perennial! I’ve planted them quite densely as I don’t like to see bare soil and the plants will take a couple of years to fill out and then be divided. I also filled some gaps in the small bed at the bottom of the steps with some Geums and planted three red Pelargoniums in a container to cheer on summer. It was a warm afternoon so I sat in the sun for a while listening to the bees buzzing on the Nepeta and the birds singing. Plus, all the neighbours were out (or very quiet!) - bliss !

 

Got up early to go to B&Q to get some more landscape bark and finished that job off although it didn't have the happiest of endings. I always water the beds before putting the bark on it so there's already some moisture and just as I was yanking the hose over, it lopped off one of my Campanula Wedding Bells, clean at the base. I have no idea whether it's salvageable, for now the root's still in the ground and the plant is sitting in water. My guess is that it's a lost cause. I planted another geum which is doing nicely although I can't say as much for one of the geranium bare roots I bought. I bought three, two are doing fine, the other seems quite content to sit there and do nothing.

On the edibles front, the purple sprouting broccoli I sowed now has a number of seedlings and I found an unexpected stash of potatoes. I planted some Charlottes in August, to have for Christmas although something went icky with the foliage and with other things going on, I just left it. I was pulling up one of the shoots in what I thought had been the planter I had grown beans in and it turned out to have a potato on the end of it. Thanks to my rubbish memory, I have some home grown potatoes I didn't expect. I absolutely must get my chitted potatoes planted tomorrow.

 

I weed killered inside the greenhouse, around the outside, the steps up to my parking area and some of the paths around the garden as well as the brambles along each side of the garden where they come in from the fields next door.
Then I was bushed.
My onion seed have begun showing and another Ipomea has pushed its nose through.

 

Planted out 14 tomatoe plants. Weeded underneath the bird feeders. Why do goldfinches drop so many niger seeds? 100s of seedlings but if I try to grow them none germinate only under the feeders! Watered the onion and leek seedlings.

 

Looks fantastic @Fat Controller .