WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2021

The Contractor, who reduced the height of my back fence for me last week, is arriving tomorrow to take down the old Arbour for me. The Arbour, despite being built out of 2"X4" timber concreted into the ground has, because of the previous high winds, started to lean slightly to the South and is also showing it's age. When that is taken away I will be able to build a new base, for a new Arbour, on the same site and also paint the fence immediately behind the old Arbour.
To make it easier to take down the Arbour I've cut the training wire that went across the front of the Arbour roof and then disentangled the Rose "Alchemist" from the Honeysuckle and pulled it safely away from the Arbour while also doing the same for the Rose "Creme-de-la-Creme" on the other side. I've also put canes around both Roses to ensure the Contractor knows where not to tread while, to be honest, I'm not too concerned about any damage to the Honeysuckle as that can be replaced easily.
I also phoned, this morning, the place in Wales where they're making the Statue I ordered back in November as those places are now able to operate after they lifted the restrictions. Anyway, I got a nice surprise when I was told that the Statue was ready for pickup and I was in the long line of people they were phoning to tell them that orders were ready. Because the Statue is slightly fragile and not to be trusted to any rough handling by a Courier I will have to collect it, which is only an 80 mile or so round trip, so that's something to look forward to, but not until after the 12th April.
As a last job I've repaired the large pot that had the big chip in the side with Expoxy Putty

It will need smoothing down when it has hardened and then painting and then the plan is to fill it with a mixture of Compost, sand and potting grit and planting 12 Dahlia in it. I'm not a great fan of Dahlias, as some of them don't provide useful pollen for the insects, but I'm always open to trying new things so it'll be interesting to see how well they do.
A quick check on the 15 or so Echinacea in pots in front of the Bearded Iris bench has shown me that, at least, they're all pushing red leaf growth from the soil.

 

It's about the average amount that I use, Perki, during the year but @shiney, he uses more than me. When you think about it I probably increase the amount used, by about a third overall, by adding sand and potting grit to make my favourite mixture of good draining compost,
I store about 20 bales in the Garage, (which has never had a car in it), and the rest is stacked in the side passage for easy access.
Most of it goes in growing on plants, potting plants, renewing compost in plant planting and also for plants that I give away to local Gardening Clubs so that they can raise money in their annual sales. What compost goes into the borders of the garden is mostly used compost from previous use, compost from the Garden Compost heap, and emptied pots, so it's very rare for new compost to be used for the borders.
Actually, the garden, after decades of adding trailer loads of Horse/Cow Manure, and used compost so it doesn't need, apart from the used compost/Garden made compost; any new compost added to it. Digging down around 18" will bring you to the 350'-450' of pure sand that I garden on so it does retain the fast drainage and is still a hungry garden and needs dress feeding with Blood, Fish and Bonemeal in Spring and then weekly/fortnightly feeding of High Potash liquid feed for the Roses and borders. The borders are, as you know, over planted so that leads to the necessity of regular feeding and, of course, Roses are hungry plants in their own right so they get the normal feed that they love.
Some of the large pots I have go from about 50litre to 100litre capacity so I can use a bale just on one pot.

 

I'm on a "reduce Ivy to a minimum, Mike, so I now finding time, every now and then, to deal with a section of a fence or the garden to cut the stems of the Ivy at the base and then hastening it's demise with a spray of Weed Killer. Ivy's fine in the right place but it can get out of hand so quickly if an eye is not kept on it.

 

You talking about me???

 

Well, if you lean to the right and I lean to the left, we might look straighter.

 

I think that's now in the past tense

We used to get through up to 6,000 litres a year but none of it went on the garden. As we used to open our garden for charity at the end of May Bank Holiday we had around 500 people turn up and could sell 1,000 plants in a day. Mrs Shiney propagated all the plants, mainly from the plants in the garden, and the compost all went for potting.

We had to cancel both last year and this year and don't think we shall be doing it any more. There's too much organisation and effort to take the chance on arranging it and we're not getting any younger.

I used a fair amount of the compost for potting the edibles - mainly runner beans and chillies. I grow 200 bean plants in the garden (all grown in pots to start with) and sell the produce for the charity. I also sell about 500 bean plants (buy the seeds trade). Although we're not opening the garden I have orders for just over 400 so far.

I normally sell about 50-60 chilli plants and only grow two varieties. My main seller is my own hybrid which tends to not take up too much space, has virtually no problems and pretty hot. I always get virtually 100% germination from them and they germinate in about four days. They tend to be well into fruiting by the end of May. They even do well for @CanadianLori in her more hostile climate. I think she also has excellent germination.

The other variety I grow is one of the Naga family (extremely hot) and they are ordered by the Bangladeshi community and restaurants and for the Asian wholesalers in the nearest town. The wholesaler is very good as he gives all the sale proceeds to the charity. They take a bit more effort to grow and nurture and don't fruit until July.