What are we doing in the garden 2025

The Lemons are tucked up in their protective leantoo . I got GD round to help with the tricky part of the assembly (side panels), it will be nearly 6 months before I can liberate them again. They will loose some leaves but at least they will continue to flower and fruit next season instead of spending all summer trying to recover. Thats what happened before when I tried fleece etc. I'm hoping by getting GD to help she'll be able to take over in future when I ca't do it anymore! Merceanary Moi??

 

I spent over two hours in the garden today, weeding and leaf sweeping. Loads more to do. I've never seen such huge greater celandines. A couple of Nicandras, shoo fly plants, have grown while we were in France. Maybe a bird dropped the seed. The flowers are pretty but I don't want them seeding all over the place. I've left them for the moment.

 

Weeded yet another area in the veg patch left too long. Looks better now and the veg plants have more room.
Took down a very old arch way and made new supports for the loganberry. This was a runner 3 years ago from a plant given to us over 30 years ago. The runner has done amazingly well and cropped brilliantly this year but has decided it wants to grow all over the place so we have had to curtail this!

 

Weeding as mentioned earlier; also decided that a Kniphofia northiae had got too big for the space so I removed 5 out of 6 offshoots. This is a large Kniphofia species and this created a considerable amount of material for the compost heap. Next year I may move the plant pack to where it started some 7 years ago.

 

Today I removed the leaves from my paving and steps then mowed both lawns and trimmed the edges. I then moved a Heuchera and a couple of grasses near to the edge of the small pond that I created last week and altered the position of one of the sandstone blocks, known as fine tuning .

 

Nothing yesterday as we had to go to hospital for daughter's MRI, and I'm not sure what might get done today as the weather's to be hit and miss. If it's dry, I'll get on with the wee green roof. I'd like to get the new Irises planted too, and it's always nicer doing it outside. Tomorrow's looking good though, so I might wait until then if it's a bit rubbish.
Garden's more or less set for the rest of autumn/winter, so it's only minor bits and bobs to do - and the relentless bird feeder filling!

 

Agree with feeder filling! They are constantly eating. Mostly blue tits and great tits at the moment, and occasionally woodpecker.

 

Sparrows are the most common here @CarolineL , and dunnocks, but we have lots of blue, great and coal tits too, as well as all sorts of others. The nuthatches have been in a couple of times, so they should appear more over the coming colder seasons.
We have woodpeckers here, but they don't often come in the garden as there's loads of nearby habitat for them.
I've never had them all eating so much over summer though. I think they've all had a very successful breeding season though as the weather's been kinder for them in spring. It can often be hard for the smaller birds because of that , especially blue tits.

 

Hi,

Good luck to your daughter @fairygirl

Kind regards, Col.

 

not done anything in garden, heating still out even though engineer came, fixed it in 2 secs, then later it went off again :( their back tomorrow though. Loads of pots blown around the garden due to high winds we have had here last few days.. they will have to wait for clear up. My kale seeds have come, will try and sow tomorrow in greenhouse..which seems quite warm as little sun we had has warm it. Eventhing in there covered now in bubble wrap and my artic king lettuces seem very cozy.. so far i'v got parsley, mint,, mustard leaves, the winter lettuces, dwarf metor peas, few red and green cab , few of my own kale plants and some beetoot seedling,we will see what happens when cold/frost arrives.

 

No gardening today as it's set to be wet and we'll be out dancing anyway.

However, my perennials have arrived so have been stored in a cool room till tomorrow when I hope to start palnting them but it'll mean digging out more stones and broken roof tiles in the new rose bed so may be slow.

We move our citrus plants to the polytunnel for winer @Allotment Boy but they need re-potting with extra compost for their roots this year - same deep pots as I left space for that very reason. One of these days they'll prove too much for us so i'm planning a deep raised bed for them to live permanently with winter protection added for the couple of cold months we get. haven't yet told OH tho.

Hope all is well with your daughter @fairygirl and that any problems can be easily fixed. Great to have a garden for distraction.

Our birds are mostly sparrows at the feeders plus blue and great tits and collared doves. we get woodpeckers in spring and summer. They all seem to have had large, healthy broods this year as they're eating double our normal daily rations but i don't mind as we had very few pests on our plants. The Merlin app says we have loads of other birds too but, apart from the odd robin and chaffinch, not at the feeders tho we do have a new family of magpies who like to bathe in the drinking water.

 

We bought a plant 3 years ago and while we followed all information it didn't seem at all happy. So dug it up and replanted in a pot. Still no success and now all gone. A great pity as it was a lovely small interesting plant.

 

@On the Levels
Mine never really did much more than survive. I will try again though in a different spot.

 

My neighbour at the back had his 12 foot laurel hedge cut on Sunday. Thanks, whatever happened to Sunday being a day of rest? It took nearly all day, plus they left three stems sticking up in the middle in clear view of all windows at the back of my house. (I think they did this deliberately .) I used a long handled pruner this afternoon to get rid of them so I can now view my garden without visual disturbance. I suppose I should be thankful that he does actually get it cut every year.

 

You could do without neighbours like that @Plantminded - good on you for cutting down the offending stems. I assume you've thought about the High Hedges Act and discounted it for fear of future aggravation?

I was only able to dash out and sweep up leaves from the drive after lunch during a brief respite from the rain - the recent winds had very handily blown them to one side by the fence so it seemed a shame to let it go to waste.

Hope your daughter will be ok @fairygirl although I understand that's a difficult condition to treat.
We've got lots of goldfinches visiting the bird feeders lately, along with other finches, a woodpecker, robin and sparrows. As you say, they don't arf eat!