What Jobs Are We Doing in the Garden Today... MK3.. 2013

General weeding & tidying today

 

Nice and still ... Spraying the lawn with selective weedkiller, got some bad patches where I sowed last year. Hoping to overseed it soon, but I have a nagging doubt that I am not supposed to do that soon after using selective weedkiller?

 

watered toms and hanging baskets , potted up the Alstromeria "Rock'n Roll" into 5 inch pots not looking that bad now , potted up Jens seed she sent me and managed to raise two plants "Chinese Lantern" only about 6 inches high but has a mini lantern appearing and lots of flowers still blooming planted now in a old clematis pot so the roots will go deep.
A bit of deadheading , I can't get over how sunny and warm it is here hope the same you , but looks like its going to clear tonight so the temp will drop quickly

Spruce

 

Loads of dead heading and watering.
Just sat in the sunshine from 6 till 7 with a nice cold beer absolutely beautiful. Still 20'c here
Picked a few toms from the GH.
Oh and took my secateures apart, sharpened and oiled (like new now )
Supposed to be even warmer tomorrow 25'c and its the little one first day at big school.
Hope to get some nice pics of him in the garden in his new uniform

 

Here's some of the cuttings, which Shiney kindly gave me on 16-June, that are now potted up



Very pleased with the mist propagation system I have installed as this years Boy's Toys

 

I have been clearing yet another area to be planted up. I've also put some winter greens in the bed in the polytunnel, potted up various young plants and watered all the succulents in the cactarium.

 

have the guinea pig run/hutch a fresh coat of paint....then realised i'd used the wrong bloody paint sod it! im not doing it all over again now

 

No, photo was the earlier batch ... I thought "sad-enough" to only photograph one batch of cuttings

Of the earlier ones (I'm guessing 600-ish?) I probably threw away 10 "sticks" that hadn't made it. Not done Euonymous before, but given that I haven't had to look after them at all, I'm well chuffed with the new Mist Bench.

The later ones look fine, bar a few pots that were not done for several days because we had unexpected family commitments. Be interesting to see how they turn out [they are under Mist] as although about half the leaves have shrivelled they don't look dead ... yet. I'll report back on that later.

I am also now using Clonex, rather than Hormone Rooting Powder. No particular reason except that I couldn't figure out a way to determine how old the stock [of Hormone Rooting Powder] was in the local shed (and my understanding is that the shelf life is finite), so I have been buying Clonex mail order instead. I get plenty of cuttings from a little pot of the stuff, but it does get used up ... whereas a pot of Powder lasts forever (such a tiny amount is used on each cutting) such that I was probably using it well beyond its useful lifetime.

If I do another large batch (perhaps more Euonymous next year ?!!) I would like to compare:

• Hormone powder / Clonex
• MPC + 50% of Sand vs. 50% of Perlite vs. 100% Perlite
• Mist vs. No mist (perhaps vs. plastic bag over the top and out of direct sun)

 

yes! the whole lot of them are waving their little fists at me in annoyance as we speak

we used to have most of the stuff in the garden painted a nice kinda honey colour (shed, hutches, runs, bench, bird table ect) but last year we fancied a change so painted all a rich brown so everything matched the fences/deck nicely....well guess what paint i used! it does look nice the honey colour but Oh My Goodness does it stand out like a sore thumb

 

Yesterday I: potted on/up (is that the right term? ) a couple of plants acquired at Shineyland; collected seed; mowed the lawn; gave my young fruit trees in the copse a very large glug of water (lost two this year though :( ) and put some of the grass clippings around their base - but not touching the stems - to act as a mulch; cast, with careless abandon, some of the nigella seeds I had harvested into the copse area; staked and trimmed the volunteer tomatoes in the copse (one is 6' tall! ).

Neighbour had a gardener in and some of the shrub trimmings (naturally) fell into my garden. He popped his head over the fence to say he would come round later to pick them up, but I declined his kind offer because ... I salvaged a couple to try and make new plants from them Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Made a start on a hedgehog house and still salvaging items for my bug station. A good day it was too

 

Dunno if it is right? but I would say "Potted up" for a rooted cutting, or a seedling, going into its first pot, and "potted on" a plant going from one pot to a larger size.

You'll be needing a mist propagating bench ... and a production line! next