What are we doing in the garden 2025

I have put in a new raised bed in my new corner of garden (gained from fence falling over in the storms).
I managed to fill it from my homemade compost which I’m very pleased about. I had bought a couple of bags to help fill it when out buying weed cover fabric, but can now use them for other things.
I have treated the wood with preservative I already had and lined it with the weed fabric. I have bark chips to put around it, but I’m concerned they might blow away without the fence there to protect from wind!
it has been a very inexpensive project compared to my high beds, which is good as it may be fairly temporary.

 

When you’ve laid your bark chips @SuzFlowers, if there’s no rain for a while, water them, they will become heavier and bind together reducing the risk of blowing away. Blackbirds may still play with them though .

 

Cut the spent hellebore flowers off.
Dug out reams of bindweed roots in about a sq m of flower bed, watered the soil well then covered it with bark mulch to try and keep the bindweed at bay, or at least easily identifiable when it next pops up. There is a Penstemon 'Garnet' in the middle of this bit which grows quite large and sprawly so I figured the bark mulch might help to keep the weeds down.

 

Over past couple of days I've rearranged my pots a bit. I had a couple of large pots to fill, so I removed the new Hebe from the wooden container and put it in one pot and planted the newly bought Penstemon in the other. Removed spent Daffodils from a smaller pot and put them in with the Penstemon. The smaller pot now has an Ivy in it. Back filled the wooden planter with 2 summer annuals and Ivy.

Yesterday I planted the 2 new grasses into one of the lawn borders. Might have to move them if they get too big. Had another close look at the inherited Hebe. Still not looking too happy. I'm thinking it's maybe not getting enough sun. Although the garden is south facing the high fences block some of the light and that particular side of the garden seems worst affected, getting 4 hours of sunlight when sunny. I think I'm going to remove the Hebe and it needs fresh soil/ compost as the original was so dry and degraded it crumbles to dust when touched. Undecided as whether to put it back or put it into a pot and put it somewhere else ( probably the latter ).

 

It could be the inherited Hebe is quite old and just past its best, @luciusmaximus. In my experience, they look lovely when young, but do get leggy and bare-stemmed after about the 5 yr mark.

 

Yesterday I bought 3 more hardy fuchsias at Morrisons - a Delta Sarah, a Dollar Princess and a Shrimp Cocktail. This morning I cleared some ground at the bottom of my slope (ivy, creeping buttercup, celandine and the invasive variety of yellow archangel) and planted them out.

I can't access all of the slope for planting. The bits I can't reach have to be left to do their own thing, though I do have a very good long-handled pruning tool for cutting back the brambles.

Then I planted out 3 lupins (from a blue and white mix), 3 white hardy geraniums and 6 French marigold plugs. Lots of weeding was needed first, and it was properly raining by the time I finished.

I disturbed the fox in the middle of all this - coming up from the bottom of the garden, she was feeding on the grass at the top and left in a hurry. She has discovered the in-the-shell peanuts I put out for the magpies (the idea being that the magpies will carry them away to a nearby roof top and leave the blackbirds in peace to eat the mealworms). I was watching her eat some of these yesterday - she crunches up the shell, then spits it out and very delicately picks out the nuts.

 

Nothing yet, it's actually been raining! Indoor planning today probably.

 

I did hang some washing out, does this count

 

It’s time to use the compost bin from last year! I am half way through giving it a loose sieve and the fine part is for my potting mix and the course part is used as a mulch. It’s really crumbly and looks good. Found worms go into current compost so they can have a feast.

 

I potted on over 60 cosmos seedlings for OH this morning.( He’s not too grand at the moment). Coupled with the silence in the greenhouse, the silence in my ears,( have an ear problem at the moment and am completely deaf in one ear with some sound getting through other ear). I truly was in a world of my own We have now run out of small pots ( where’ve have all last years pots gone??) and we still have over 50 seedlings left to pot on. My dahlia plants are rubbish. Not a single sighting yet of anything growing. Normally by now, the first leaves are through an d growing away. I’ve told them off this morning.

 

My dahlias are still dormant too. With Cosmos I've never done well sowing them in pots/trays, I just chuck out a load of seed where I want them in May.

 

I finally got 10 cosmos seedlings. Not impressed!! So I've sown another batch - but not as many as you @Songbird
If I actually get any more, they will be a few weeks late!

 

I cut last year’s fronds off my tree fern and tidied up all the smaller ferns nearby, most well advanced with new fronds unfurling, unlike the tree fern which is still contemplating .

 

We didn't have any more rain so went out about midday to dig up as much bindweed roots as I could in the wall sleeper bed. It tends to creep right along the base of the wall - yards of it. Then I emptied a bag of bark mulch under a Trachelospermum at the end of the bed but could do with another 3 or 4 bags. This gardening lark is getting so expensive.

 

So we have a wee problem with the last fencepost.

After two weeks of digging, kicking, breaking off the hefty concrete boot, banging with a hammer (which broke- I never knew hammers could break! ) we decided to soften the clay with a bucketful of water.

This is the situation 24 hours later :



This might hint or gently suggest considering a tad of drainage improvement before I start planting

On a more positive note, planted the lovely, strong perennial Welsh onions and the over- enthusiastic celery seedlings ("free seeds with every issue"- worth chucking into fruit trays for some micro greens but the germination rate was around 150% so plenty to go around ) in the new raised bed and sowed various carrots, radishes and lettuces too.

The frosts are probably over so things might be ok.



Raided the seedbox and sowed cucumbers ( two small varieties), ornamental Gourds, Tromboncinos from saved seed from a stolen fruit , turnips (the seed pouch was there and I was too lazy to lift the fleece from the raised bed so pots it is ), Pak Choi and something else I forget in pots in the greenhouse.

(Off topic- The Child tells me that nobody serious says "greenhouse", apparently its "glasshouse". Learning new things every day! )

This year I'm going for diversity rather than quantity so sowed just two potfuls of each variety, we'll see what comes up and does well.

Tomatoes are making wooshing noises in my home office, several are earmarked to go for donations and swaps. Chillies are flowering, in particular those I forgot to label.