What are we doing in the garden 2024

Pricked out some cornflowers and zinnias, moved the just-up runner beans to the "potting shed". Put the overwintered salvia Amistads outside for the day to begin hardening off, might risk leaving them in the ground this year, they have huge rootballs escaping from their pots. Admired the first rose bloom - Warm Welcome....and it is!

 

I've got one of those plastic kneelers but it's quite sturdy to sit on as long as the ground is level. When you put it upright you can open the seat and keep things inside it.
It's about 30 yrs old. I don't use it much though.

I've been in the garden all afternoon and cut back some plants on a trellis and tied in some climbers.
Pruned a Euonymus and a Forsythia to within an inch of their lives and gave the 'Chelsea Chop' to some Clematises.

 

Finally got my potatoes planted this pm altho OH had only turned over enough bed for the Désirée and the 4 "sprouted in the pantry" spuds. Found the earth soft enough in th etop half of the rhubarb bed to plant my Domreines with 5 left over and now in small pots. Like @noisette47 and @Busy-Lizzie beds which were weeded and prepped earlier have developed crusts.

The potatoes are now all netted to keep the chooks off and I've potted on rooted cuttings from last year including a Lark Ascending, Breathless Charm and 2 other roses who've lost their labels.

Found my yellow Butterflies magnolia has decided to grow after all so gave it a drink. I'll re-pot that and tend to the cannas and fuchsias tomorrow. Some pesky slimester has eaten the tops off one whole pot of cannas!

I have new knees but no kneeler as yet as I can bed very well but I'm planning to make them a soft cushion and maybe ge a kneeler from OH for Belgian or French Mothers' Days.

 

I'm going to Scotland for a week, on Friday, so I've been getting things a bit more ship-shape in the garden. OH is willing but clueless when it comes to watering etc. Planted out some herbaceous things in the newly-weeded front bed, and given them lots of water, in the hope they'll survive even if it continues dry here.

 

@Obelix-Vendée, I find the memory foam kneelers absolutely brilliant and so comfortable.
I use two, one to kneel on, with the other just in front of it, so I can just move from one to the other without having to get up and down all the time. Then I just pick up the one I just left and place it in front of the other one, working along the side of the bed (if that makes sense!).

 

A lot of old Cornish folk use a long handled miners shovel for digging. Shaped like a spade on a playing card they are great for earthing up potatoes turning over soil and shifting piles of manure. I grew up thinking there was nothing else!

 

Cut the Grass and planted another Potato Bag, now have 11.
The Sky looking very dark.

 

@Liriodendron mine's hopeless too when it comes to watering, as I discovered when I had my first knee op and it was 43C for a month.......

I'm about to go and pot on PSB seedlings and re-pot my yellow magnolia and a few other things waiting for OH to dig my new bed so they can go in the ground permanently. Then I need to see if there are any signs of life in the dahlia bed which is full of their old stalks and mulch from the hen house to protect from winter frosts. Lots of nettles too so nettle tea coming up.

@lizzie27 getting up and down is OK. It's just being down that's a problem. I can kneel on our bed but not on hard surfaces.

 

I have moved some Phalaris to make room for a little Heuchera Helen Dillon, grown as a cutting over winter, and taken up a tall Veronica that was in the wrong place.

Doesn't sound like a morning's work, but every job tackled is a tick on the list!

 

Another day mainly of greenhouse tasks. Visit to the local nursery to get some bags of compost and one of farmyard manure, then mixing up planting medium with perlite, aquagel and slow-release feed, and filling and planting up hanging baskets and wall planters so the little plants can establish before they go out sometime next month. Pricked out yet more cosmos, I have no idea what I'm going to do with them all! Planted out some limnanthes into the big pot the standard rose is in, they may or may not survive a drop in temperature but I have so many of the damn things flopping all over the cold frame that I can always replace them.... Watered the pots outside as we've not had more than a sprinkle of rain for several days....the ground is beginning to crack! Still no sign of the agastaches or heliopsis, or the replanted monardas that I thought I saw life in.....maybe I did for them digging them up!
I'm eagerly awaiting a delivery of bare root perennials from Farmer Gracy (more monardas, actaeas, astrantias) and plug plants from Suttons (aquilegias and a collection of others that were a free Gardeners World offer....not so convinced about the quality of these....). They will all be potted up and grown on for a bit. As if I don't already have enough plants growing on around the place.....

 

Went into our "Med" area. Had to remove vast amounts of moss growing over the pebbles (not all as moss very good for wildlife). Dug up primroses that shouldn't be there and replanted them into a special area for us. Carried on after coffee and then rain stopped all! Still need to finish but will have to wait hopefully tomorrow.

 

Finally got into the garden at about 4pm and went to play in the polytunnel out of that nasty wind. Pricked out 29 ivory escholzia and 13 PSB that the snails hadn't got. Potted on some bigger plants too but then had to come back in and make a lasagna for dinner.

OH has finally rotavated the paths in the veg plot. I always wanted grass but he laid down weed membrane instead and, of course, it grew weeds like nobody's business. All lifted now and the soil is ready to rake and sow. It'll be much more interesting for the chooks too when it's grassy. Should get enough rain on Saturday to bed the seeds in nicely.

 

Cleared the remaining leeks, the now flowering winter brassicas and the remnants of last years winter roots. Then dug most of that area over and carted the rubbish up to the compost heap and chopped the lot up.

 

Spent the morning in the garden yesterday, chilly but some sunny spells. OH dug out an extension to a small seating area we have under some hazel trees whilst I scavenged suitable bits of paving and bricks from our salvage pile. All stuff we’ve found whilst doing the garden and very satisfying to use. We’ve been quite lucky as we’ve found a real mix of lovely Staffordshire blue engineering bricks, home-made pebble concrete “slabs”, real stone and quite a few old fashioned kerb stones. We’ve managed to create three short paths (through a border or into seating areas) plus the above “paved” seating area. It’s an old cottage and all these materials are used on one or other of the main paths so it all adds to the cottage garden atmosphere.

We simply bed the patchwork paving straight onto a levelled soil base with extra soil tightly packed as grouting to keep it all stable. Has worked very well so far and as this area is in shade we don’t get too much (unacceptable) weed growth coming through. Just moss and the odd self seeded violet or primrose, which all add to the feeling of having always been there.

The soil we dig out is fabulous, must be almost pure leaf mould so have filled a couple of tubs to use as part of the mix for my pots.