WHAT JOBS ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY 2018

I'm lost with why your losing your grasses...my ponytails are growing long and faintly white on the end..yes mate this is mind boggling
I looked up Belfast sinks as I've never heard of them before and they're nice and there's also different varieties in them

Fog and mist can bring smells in mate...as we get here being more in the countryside and by the canals and like you as soon as the pops out it slowly moves.

 

Verdun we get quite a few of those here and when it rains they do come out more...horrible

 

I've tried nematodes for the slugs this year, but can't say I've seen much of a positive result yet - hundreds of the buggers when I went out this evening The hens love snails, they take them into the run and will spend ages knocking them against the wood to open them up, but for some reason they won't touch the slugs, despite the fact they'd be far less effort

Do you ever listen to Radio 2 @luciusmaximus ? Pam Ayres was on Graham Norton's show yesterday morning talking about hogs, it was a good listen.

Busy busy couple of days making the most of the sun; clearing, tidying, planting, painting. Achey now! We were going to visit the North Somerset show tomorrow, but I don't really fancy standing in the middle of a crowded field with hundreds of people and no shade, so might just get the BBQ out instead

 

It can be listened to here you need to sign in/create an account.
BBC Radio 2 - Graham Norton, With Pam Ayres, Charles Aznavour, plus Rylan Clark-Neal and Scott Mills

 

It's wonderful that you have two hoggies in your garden , but slug pellets are lethal to them. If they eat a slug that has eaten the pellets the hog will die . I've had two with poisoning symptoms and there was nothing I could do for them, there is no cure and not nice to see the hoggy convulsing and foaming at the mouth .

 

They are part of the first lot of plants I bought from WCN and three of those have died. I thought the Pony Tails were doing ok, new green growth at the bases. It's possible the birds have snapped off the tails for nesting materials or the wind has damaged them. I'll take a pic later.

I love Belfast sinks . I have six, different sizes. Always on the lookout for more . They are cheap to buy from Ebay or Preloved, etc. I've kept mine as they come ( enamel coating ). Some people add a tufa coating which creates the look of a stone trough. One of my sinks was featured in a gardening for rabbits booklet as I had planted it with bunny Herbs.

 

I was wondering if it could be birds? They sometimes gather stuff for their nests by pecking it off, this could look like a clean break. My main suspects would be the "little and large" combination of great tits and rooks/magpies (although wood pigeons are rarely innocent!)
Edited: I hadn't read to the end of the thread before posting my thoughts - as ideas can slip out of my very quickly after a disturbed night's sleep with a poorly hound...

 

Slugs n snails are not really much of a problem here.....I think the nighttime forays esp in spring control numbers.
Shiney, maybe I need to use a catapault to project the pellets

Lucius "ponytails" wont like heavy wet soil......good drainage is important. Yes, I appreciate pellets and hogs are not compatable so I will not be using pellets anymore.

A quick visit to the beach.....very warm and thick mist. Going to be hot again

 

Spent a hour recycling a old fence to hide the compost heap, i just need to put a removable front on it and re fix the feeders over the top.

 

Treated to lunch today so I ate plenty ....a couple of cornish ciders too

Picked up a couple more large bags of compost at bargain price (£5 for 120 litres) earlier.
Staked some heleniums.....not a good idea after a couple of ciders but job done . Lawns mown again.

Stipa gigantea flowering now......the very best of the tall summer flowering grasses I think.

Hot at times but the mist came in mid pm .....still very warm though

Hope your dog is better Sian

Excellent job martin

 

hope your hound is better now? I had a sleepless night with one of mine last week...thought she'd broke her leg or back in the night because she screeched then couldnt stand properly. By morning she was fine!

 

It was a golf day so didn't start on the garden until around 4.00pm.
Ran one of the jukeboxes in the tea-house for two hours. A good bit of preventative maintenance."

Having pointed up the waterfall a couple of days ago, I gave it a good scrub with hot water with the wet n' dry vac running so nothing ran into the pool. The lime in cement isn't good for fish, but as there's 3000 gallons of water in the pool any trace would be pretty harmless.

I's more a token feature, the water supply is just a valved bypass from the filter pump in the nearby pump sump through a length of garden hose buried in the pool concrete collar. You'd be hard pressed to hear "the tinkle of running water," above the noise of the multi gallon per minute return from the filter. It's more for visual effect particularly at night under the lights. I use yellow die in the cement mix to match the York stone, it's a bit noticeable at the moment but will "algae- up," over a few weeks.



The naff-looking bit of wire and net is my "heron deterrent." The lip of the waterfall is about the only place where there's some "sure-footing," to get close to the water.

But the fish like the waterfall, they tend to hang around under it, you can just about see one. It takes too much effort to stay under the filter return without actually swimming.




Did a pool water quality check for "everything," five different test-tubes of pool water with different testing gents added. I rarely bother as the results are always good. Bound to be as the pool isn't over-stocked, it has a big filter and I run a 24/7 trickle change of tap water through a dechlorinator to waste.


Gave this a bit of haircut.




Well pleased with the new wisteria, looked a bit dead three weeks ago when we bought it. We'll see some blooms opening by next week!




Gave everything a good water.



Pleased with the growth of these dwarf azaleas, they're just there to hide the big plastic tub of the sambucus.




We're "knee-deep" in gladioli, sort of "here and there." They are nearly six inches tall already. We got about thirty-odd free from a garden centre for spending over fifty quid just a few weeks ago.

 

Hello Luciusmaximus, it could be birds but we've got quite a few around here...they've stripped my false plant on the decking that looked like hair on the stem plus witnessed it

Yes add a pic mate please if you can...our soil here is lovely and fresh..not wet or hard and with the gravel on top it keeps the soil just right.

I saw this regarding Belfast sinks besides more and I thought how

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Well today the garden was re-washed off to remove any dust besides the decking and that's not going to be done this year and it's still dark with last years coating plus it's done yearly.

Hubby stained the front fencing and put new slim pieces on top...all done now to enjoy