What are we doing in the garden 2025

It’s been too wet to do anything here in the garden for the past two days. Leaf collection will have to wait. At least the Acer’s red leaves are adding a bit of colour to the borders and paving .

 

Are the Canna pots frozen solid Lori, they can take a bit of frost but not really at the roots.

 

I'm not sure. The snow on the top hadn't melted. Do you think I should store them and hope they forgive me come spring?

EDIT: I just looked at the temps and we have been below freezing now for nearly 4 days straight. I think they'd be dead. But thank you for trying to be helpful.

 

Well,I'd thaw them out and have a look, if the roots are mush then probably not worth saving, if they feel solid after thawing, just clean them up and store them, you have nothing to lose.

 

Will do that. It's definitely worth a try. They are my favourite colour, yellow. Thank you. It's dark but raining only so I'll wrap up and haul them in

 

Tempting ... but luckily for my oak, it is protected. The tree surgeons arrived about a month ago and started a trim. I was pleased as that would take away a lot of the still-clinging leaves. However, it started to rain quite heavily, so they packed up and went home before they got to the bit overhanging about a quarter of my garden. Allegedly they are returning to finish the job, but no sign yet.

 

Hi,

An early start this morning; I'm about to head up the garden to evict more couch grass before the rain arrives at 3pm. The soil will be wet after more overnight rain; I wonderif daylight will break today.

Kind regards, Col.

 

@ViewAhead - you can use a standard brush for collecting leaves from gravel. It just requires a little bit of technique. It was something I regularly did when working with horses as we had a large area that was gravelled, so there was always 'debris' on it. Much better than a rake. I do it here in my garden as the border next to the main boundary has lots of shrubs/trees which shed and it gathers there even with the wind, due to the aspect.
Not much done yesterday, but I got a job done that's been on the list for a while. Not gardening as such, but very necessary. Fixing the angled bit of the downpipe that connects the gutter to the main downpipe. Frankly, I'm not happy with the job the builders did on that, and then the ridge tile that was dislodged during a storm, bounced on the gutter, and dislodged that, so I had to fix that earlier this year, and I couldn't get it as secure as I wanted. The whole thing's shoogly. Never simple, especially as I've done something to my elbow [tendon or summat] so it's painful to use tools or lift anything slightly heavy, including the big ladder. Anyway, that's done, and I got a couple of other things done as well in between all the smirry periods all day. So much for the nice, bright day with sunny spells that was forecast.

Nothing doing today as it's chucking it down and we have gale force winds too. No weather warning though - despite the fact it's a far worse forecast than a couple of days ago when we did have one. I don't get it with these warnings. Neither do they, from what I can tell!

 

Did you get permission for the trim? Maybe someone complained. Some of the trees on our estate are subject to a TPO. But you'd be surprised by people's ignorance of which trees are covered and they talk nonsense. Some years ago we managed to get a copy of the TPO including an A3 size map. The trees are individually named and numbered. Our tree is not on it and we had another chopped down. We don't let on to the ignorant neighbours - we say we've had permission even though we don't need any. It means the neighbour can't demand it's chopped down as it protects the position of the border. I love getting copies original documents to see what's what.

 

I doubt it, some people believe that if they don't know about the TPO it doesn't apply to their property.
It is generally pretty easy to find out about any TPOs affecting your area from the local council's website, generally under planning.

 

Yes! It's done about every 5 yrs. As it is officially on a piece of communal land (although the branching takes no notice of that, naturally), the residents' association deals with it all ... and pays for it too.

 

Hi,

It appears everyone has more rights over a property than the property owner.

Two and an half hours this morning removing more couch grass rhizomes; the sun came out as I was taking the images; how typical after working with my coat hood over my head to protect me from the cold breeze. The worm population were removed from the front line to safety.

My method of removing the ryzomes; using the corner of the spade run a line across the garden at about two spade widths then dig the spade in as shown; next I turn the soil over. Now I settle down on hands and knees using the hand fork to remove every piece of rhzome I can find; if any remain then it can't be more than an inch long and if it pops it's head up it can be easily pulled out. It's hard work fighting the steep slope with a prevailing cold breeze to my back but I'm determined to clear this middle meadow of couch grass before Christmas and I'm on track.

The soil is clear of actual grass because I rotavated making digging over a bit easier but as I work I'm compressing the next lot of digging. The soil is as soft as talcum powder after being troweled at least four times; it's slow but I'm being thorough not wanting to keep doing this job.



It's a large are to tackle on hands and knees but there will be little couch grass left by the time I finish. The couch grass pathways have been sprayed with weedkiller which is working; the weedkiller is also described as killing the entire couch grass even the rhizomes but I'm not taking chances with the meadow areas; I want to be confident next year when I put shrubs and plants in they won't be troubled by couch grass growing through them.

I need to get dinner ready but after dinner assuming the forecast rain doesn't arrive I'll spend another couple of hours in the garden; I want this job out of the way but then next year I still have the top meadow to sort out.

kind regards, Col.

 

Nothing today but it's sunny enough.
I'm making pastry for the mince pies that I'm making tomorrow, I'll put it in the fridge.

 

It's a dry sunny day so I'm going to make up for lost time and lay some bark on the border which was churned up by the three fencers on Monday. I've also bought a good sized Griselinia to fill a gap in the border which I will also plant, followed by some leaf clearing. Saturday and Sunday are forecast to be dry here so I will paint the new fence then. It's a blot on the landscape at the moment .

 

Have you considered getting a leaf blower for your leaf clearing @ViewAhead or are you an extremely considerate neighbour? It would work on gravel, most have two speeds so you can adjust the noise and force easily. I just blow everything into a corner and then pick them all up or onto the lawn where I then mow them, usually timed when my neighbours are out .