WHAT JOBS ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY 2018

I've been busy doing "things" today and so I only had about an hour in the garden even though the weather was dry and occasionally sunny. So I spent some time dividing the large, thick, root ball of the dwarf Mock Orange dug up by the Landscapers so that I can pot it into a large round clay container. I used a sharp spade and managed to cut out a portion around about a third of the original size of the rootball and that will be the part I'll use.
I've also got to build another wooden two tiered, but shorter, bench for the Bearded Irises I couldn't fit on the first, longer, bench I'd built, but at least I've decided that the spot for it is against the West fence on the Patio.
I watered plants in the Green House that needed watering and realised that I still have a bag of Daffodils, Crocus, Imperial Fritilliarias, and Tulips to plant. The landscape work, bad weather and being busy stopped me from planting the bulbs but I'd better get a move on. I'm also moving pots from the borders and putting them in the spaces left by the Bearded Irises that are now on the long two tiered bench.

 

Better late than never, Perki I've planted Daffs as late as the last week in January and had them come up.......somewhat later!!!

 

I haven't started overwintering yet as I'm still cropping well from the ones I have left. They're kept in a heated propagator so as long as I feed them they usually crop into January. I rarely overwinter much of them nowadays as we get the new ones started quite early. I used to find that they started tapering off in production after year three and weren't worth bothering with after year five. The problem I usually had to watch out for was whitefly.

 

I spent some more time in the garden moving large clay pots from the borders into more suitable places. Unbelievably, I found 4 more pots of Bearded Irises down at the bottom of the "walk around" border underneath a Viburnum and Buddleja Globosa, which means i will have to extend the length of the 2nd wooden two tier bench I'm planning to build. But getting them all together in one spot against a South facing wall should make a good display.
I also de-weeded all the Irises pots and dumped the detritus into one of the new Compost Bins. I've also ordered a Philadelphus "Etoile Rose" so that it's ready for planting in the New Year. I'm also learning where all the leaves now get blown due to changing the patio and hard area and they do seem to have changed from the normal areas they collect.

 

I've kept moving the large pots around from the borders and the lawn and putting them into suitable places around the patio and paths. I found two more "lost" pots of Bearded Irises when I thought I found them all, I'm going to have a major rethink on where I'm going to put the now 18 large pots of Bearded Irises that are not on the two tiered wooden bench.

I also found the two metal bowers that were on the South Wall of the Garage that I've lined with hessian and planted up with annuals every year, but they will need repositioning as they used to be where the Bearded Irises are now. I dumped the old contents of the Bowers into the Compost Bin and relined them with hessian again ready for Spring

I moved another large pot containing Prunus "Kojo-no-mai" and one of Hamamelis "Diane'" onto the circular base of the Observatory and a couple of shallow but large pots of annuals onto the patio. I'm trying not to put too many pots onto the patio, but that is becoming a losing battle. After that, I de-weeded all the pots I'd recovered and that also went into the Compost Bin. I think today is the first day since the patio and hard areas were pavered that I felt I was getting somewhere in getting things into place and although I have a long list of jobs to do to finish off everything I went into the House feeling happier and made a Mug of Tea.