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

I'm Cayenne (Kn) Ackered

Today I've been doing a lot of weeding and clearing.

I'm working my way through the wild side of the veggie plot. That part is mainly self-seeded flowers that stay there pemanently unless I need the space for veggies.

Spent three hours digging out buttercups, strawberry weed (managed to get out some roots that were between 12" and 15" long), bindweed, couch grass, mares tail and lots of others.

Then got out over 100 plum suckers that suddenly seemed to have shot up (some were 4ft high in the wild woodland bed), a lot of wild garlic that seemed to be appearing everytime I turned my back, loads of lilac suckers around the base of a couple of the lilac trees, cleared off a lot of dead stems and leaves from a large euonymous,cut back some of the neigbour's conifers, planted eight hebes, washed down the permeable plastic membrane in the other veggie plot and pruned some of the big perennial fuscias.

Whilst I was doing that I kept moving the hose to water the blackberries and rhubarb. As we haven't had proper rain for about six weeks (a guess, as I've lost track of time ) the ground was cracking up. The blackberry beds have lawn edges around them so I flooded each one in turn. With the rhubarb I've put the hose on spray and put it under the stems and leaves, That way it waters a reasonable area in one go.

I still found time to have a leisurely lunch on the patio in the lovely warm sunshine. The temperature in the Main garden reached 74.3F

 

Mrs C did the garden work today as I was at work - she planted the onions into their growbag of top soil, sowed sunflower seeds as per my directions via text and watered stuff for me. Hopefully, I'll get a wee bit done tomorrow - even if it is only continuing the evictions from the greenhouse to get stuff hardened off.

Seven days to go, and I have 7 days off work - then things will really get moving in the garden!

 

With the weather forecast being so good for today I decided to spend most of the day "tidying up" in the garden. I started by clearing some deliberately grown weeds ['for the Bees] that were giving the Rose "Orange and Lemons" a hard time by trying to smother it. I thought I would carrying on doing the same thing in the other borders [you know how one job leads to another] and ended up in the border where the Escallonia, Hebe "Baggins Gold".
Looking at the Hebe I could see it was out of it's bounds and over grown.....so out came the Secateurs!! I pruned it quite heavily to get it back into shape and then found it had seeded into the border as well as layering itself into the ground. So I dug those up and potted 6 of them. They'll be ready for selling next year when they've settled.
I was then getting "warmed up" and it was into the Green House and out with trays of White Cornflowers, Blue Cornflowers, Asters, Cosmos, Sweet Peas and Holly Hocks. I planted around 400 of them into whatever open soil I could find in the borders [not an easy task in my garden].
The Hydrangeas had got to the stage where there was plenty of new growth so I pruned them getting rid of the old wood. They do seem a bit behind for the time of year but I'm sure that they will forge ahead now.
I'd bought some trailing Fuchsia so I potted them up into a tall pot and placed them into the shallow shelf of the pond, that saves me forgetting to water them!! Also by the Jasmine Hedge that runs along one side of the pond I found space to plant a Yellow Flowering Honeysuckle which hopefully will mingle and grow into the hedge. Looking down I saw that around 8' of the path had been covered in soil over time so it was onto my knees and clear all the soil so that the path was exposed agai9n.#
After that I got the note book out and started to count the number of pots and trays of plants that will go into the Sale of Shiney's Open Day and also the local Gardening Club. Then it was a mug of tea and a sit in the Arbour!!

 

Always got time for a mug of tea and a lounge, GA, besides the Cats needed a break from supervising!!

Just a bit, lolimac!! Felt better for it too, as I felt I had achieved something for the day.

 

Today, the evictions began in earnest.

Put simply, I was running out of space in the greenhouse and plants were beginning to fight each other for space and light, so something had to give. Looking at the forecast for the next week, we are not due a temperature below 7 or 8 degrees, so I shifted the hardier stuff out first:





Some of the dahlias are looking decidedly floppy and leggy, so they will be amongst the first to get planted out so I can stake them and hopefully fatten them up - meantime, I have huddled everything together so that there is a bit of safety in numbers from any wind.

After that, I rearranged some of the tomatoes in the greenhouse to get them into the brightest possible position, then put my tomato troughs onto the fence ready for the maskotkas and millefleur to move into next week:



I forgot to take the labels off a couple of them