What Jobs Are We Doing In The Garden Today 2020

Today is raining, not sure I will do much.
Yesterday I gave molasses to most plants. Shiney mentioned somewhere that it is better to give a light watering first before watering the fertilizer in, so I gave it a go.
Given all my watering is done by hand, it took kind of forever, but probably worth it.

I have this shady corner of the garden where I put an enclosure for spinach, pak choy and other plants which fear slugs and need no pollination. I put in three spare pumpkins and a corn plant too, as an experiment, in the assumption they would not grow at all. Surprisingly they have, despite of the little sun they get, and they even made a pumpkin, which fell due to lack of pollination. They were also smothering all my veggies.
So I repositioned the vines, having them stick out of the enclosure and rest on a bench which gets more sun. I resealed the enclosure around the vines (gotta love velcro) as well as possible.
Still, it does create an entry point for determinated slugs and other pests.. I think I will modify it over the next days.

The day was really gorgeous, so we had a nice barbecue, followed by a bit of pruning to espose more blackberries.



Promptly converted to jam. These were around 1,8 kg.
I think we will be able to collect another 6 kilograms or so over the next month, so more jam for sure but also some pies and smoothies.

 

Putting netting under some well established shrubs. These have become a hiding place(early morning)for a cat who yesterday took a Jay. I have fed the family of 4 jays and 4 woodpeckers, latter not ground feeding, for the last few months. The parents come all through the year.
A desperate situation putting things side by side it will hopefully be sorted.

 

Cleared the rest of the Brambles & pruned the Holly Tree to let in some light. This has been done over a couple of weeks as my poor back won't take too much hard work.

 

Digging out several large Acanthus that had self seeded too close to my crabapple tree gave me a good workout. Who needs a gym?
Brambles growing through the large fatsia japonica were hard to get at with overhead trees and shrubs. I think I need a hard hat when I'm in that part of the garden
The weather has improved greatly since this morning and now the sun is shining and the temperature has gone up by several degrees. Just right for sitting out with a drink before dinner

 

Being 94f and very humid, I just watered the hanging pots and cleared the pots out one side of a greenhouse. The floor was periodically turning into a puddle and I wanted to figure out where the source is. But it started getting ultra dark so I abandoned that little sleuthing. So I came inside and was chatting with granddaughter at the hospital when the gods started throwing down sheets of rain, lightning bolts and beating their drums. Marvelous. Lots of free water and bound to cool things down. She and I enjoyed the storm together

 

Very minor jobs outside at the moment as I'm meant to be concentrating on sorting the house out...but weeded and cleared along the edge of the patio this evening, mainly to investigate what was underneath it (a long slab of concrete that I'm sure will prove an irritation once we start working on the garden properly!) and de-lateraled the tomatos. My main daily task at the moment is catapillar patrol around the red cabbages - they weren't netted due to the house move, and I will never make that mistake again . I can't decide whether it's worth netting them at this point or if that's the veg patch equivilant of stable doors and bolting horses

 

The californian pumpkins seem to be happy having escaped their cage. Pak choi and spinach in the cage are relieved their large flatmates have left, I suppose.




Beans and japanese pumpkins enjoyed the feed and grew a bit taller, while the tromboncini are doing their job, making the fence slightly less unsightly.




I gave the front beds their feed too and added some twines. Hopefully within a few weeks everything will be nice and tall as planned

 

I am no expert but, reading around, it would seem that there are three or so kind of butterflies which will depose their eggs on cabbage.
They do so one egg at time, but they will deposit a lot. The breeding happens either two or three times per season.

RHS website says "The eggs hatch after three days. Caterpillars emerge from the eggs and eat for 10 to 12 days before forming chrysalides. Adult butterflies emerge from the chrysalides in 7 to 10 days. [..] The butterflies have two generations during the summer; cabbage moth has two or three overlapping generations [..] Large and small white caterpillars are likely to be seen in June-July and August-September; cabbage moth caterpillars are active in July-September"

Cabbage caterpillars

So, if it was me I would put the netting on. Chances are that you will only need to patrol for a few weeks more, removing eggs and caterpillars, and then the netting will prevent butterflies to lay more.

 

Not much done today but its been quite nice for a change , verticut the lawn and tidied up the bits after. fed and watered the pots. I've cleaned /tidied the spring bulbs and bagged them up for storage , they weren't labels in two pots of bulbs and I do remember leaving them without labels saying I'll remember that one well the time has coming and I am not a clue .

I've identified a few plants which look like they are going to have to go , papaver patty plum is top of the list and reluctantly my Lobleia Tupa its never really been spectacular and the wet winter and now wet summers aren't doing it any favours.

 

Water butts 3. One is going to be kept half full during winter and needs a bit of drilling to fit overflow pipe halfway up. So a 40mm tank connector, elbow and pipe should do the trick. I will turn the overflow pipe upwards for the summer allowing it to fill to existing top overflow. I empty the other 2 for the Cooler months. Today a little watering and generally enjoy the plants, wildlife with tea, coffee and soon Apple pie. Lovely.

 

Did my usual pollination round for the pumpkins, it involves lots of back and forth carrying flowers and trying not to mix them up, because I have scattered my plants all over the front and back garden.
I also managed to have a proper breakfast in the garden with my wife, for once. Given our garden is detached that requires a bit of preparation, unlike my usual stroll there with a mug and a biscuit

 

Thanks Aldo, that was vaguely my thinking - but countered with the theory that I'm more likely to be vigilent about picking the blighters off if I don't have to get through the netting each time to do so

 

This year I planted seeds from tomatoes that we picked last year at a pick your own farm. The farm added a five dollar per person upcharge just to enter the farm, in addition to the twenty dollars per bushel fee. We liked their tomatoes but we will not pay that price to pick our own, so I decided to take a chance and plant their seeds hoping they would not be hybrids.
Today I picked the very first tomatoes and they are fantastic and plants, both in the greenhouse and garden, are hardy and disease-free. I have no idea of the variety, but they are very nice tomatoes. We do not plan to return to the farm anytime soon.