What are we doing in the garden 2025

Well we continue to retake the iris "rock" area. The ivy has been allowed to take over for too long. Now we can see the rocks and find some of the irises. But we need to plant some more but that will also be very difficult as we have no rain for long our ground needs a sledge hammer to make any hole. So still clearing and making the space more open and then we will look into some replanting. Maybe go back to East Lambrook Manor and gardens (Margery Fish) and see if they have any species irises.

 

That's another beauty, @LunarSea. This plant clearly has "how to survive and thrive" cracked! Grow easily from seed, cope in locations other plants may struggle in, stand up without support, be attractive to bees, have very visible berries the birds will love so you get to spread far and wide. Sorted!

 

Digging. I've pulled a clump of phlox and then some tiger lilies. I need to dig to make a spot in one back corner of the garden for the lilies. It is solid clay there. I planted part of the phlox in a bed at the side and will get rid of the rest. And I need to muscle out some daisies because they are overtaking their neighbours. I figured today is a good day to push through these tasks after having had a long awaited rain.

 

Back in July I purchased some fresh peas (ours had been rubbish) from the supermarket. 500g for 29p! We eat the peas and I decided to use the pods for wine. Never done it before but yet another experiment. With all the hot weather it fermented really well and today I have bottled (6). It is a lovely pale yellow colour (not what I was expecting) and have to say we tasted it before I bottled (in case it was rubbish and not worth it) and it is lovely. Wouldn't know that it was pea pods just a refreshing white wine.

 

Having had my grass overseeded earlier this year, I now find little grass plants growing between the blocks of my driveway and front path. These plants are impossible to pull up. The roots are pretty tenacious. A neighbour suggested using boiling water which I duly did. It killed these weeds but they all turned brown. So my driveway is now covered in dead looking grass plants,which are also impossible to pull up. I am not keen on using weedkiller but may have to as a last resort, though the weeds do look dead already. All suggestions as to how to get them out of the ground will be gratefully received.

 

Going back to the subject of cottoneasters, I wanted to clarity I am not against them in general. I do have two, a ground cover one which is deciduous and an evergreen one.

It's the 'horizontalis' one that I had mixed feelings about. The berries were lovely and the bees did like it. When it lost its leaves however it looked awful and I wasn't keen on the fact that it's classed as invasive (I just had another look online and confirmed it). The main reason though that I decided to take those 2 cottoneaster horizontalis out was that they were taking up a lot of space on the ground, because of their growth habit. They were fine when I didn't have many plants in the garden and I wanted to fill the space, but when I started to run out of space, the same growth habit was inconvenient.

 

@daisym Unfortunately however you kill the weeds you will be left with dead weeds between the blocks. They will gradually disappear, but may take a while. You could try a stiff brush.

 

https://www.diy.com/departments/ryo...ad_campaignid=21073390313&gbraid=0AAAAADt-XHk
This is not a recommendation as I have never used one, but may be worth trying,
@daisym.

 

Nothing much today just watering and I've ordered 80 garden ready plug polyanthus plants because nearly all of the plants in the garden have died, even though i watered them.

 

I've had to empty my small glass greenhouse and my little sentry shed as both have to be moved before next week so the builder can lift and replace the wonky paving. All my pots have to be moved as well so we're both going to be busy.

I did do more watering of pots I'd forgotten about yesterday and my newish small Deutzia. It's hanging on in there.

 

Thanks for the replies @NigelJ @katecat58.
Sounds as though time and hard brushing is the only answer. I will have a look at the patio cleaner, thanks for the idea, as I already have some batteries that would be suitable.

 

A long handled wire brush designed for block paving will remove the tops of that dead grass @daisym. They are cheap and effective, stocked in any good garden centre.

 

I was under the impression that the little Cotoneaster I have in the front garden was horizontalis [the name suits it well ] but it seems I'm wrong. It's C. dammeri. It was definitely labelled as horizontalis when I bought it! I just did a search after you mentioning it being deciduous @CostasK .
I certainly see horizontalis everywhere [now that I know that's what that is!] and it's often used as hedging. I have some at the back boundary, which was 'inherited', and it's fine as there's other stuff around and it just provides cover for wildlife etc, but I know what you mean about it looking manky in winter. There's a house along from me which has it as a 'hedge' on their fence, and it's definitely ugly through winter. C. franchetii and C. lacteus are better for evergreen hedging, or features against walls/fences, as they're self supporting once they get going, although they can get pretty large. Easy enough to trim though.

Too hot for me yesterday, but I got some stuff done in the front where it's cooler. Got some more painting done in the shed, but it was getting too hot in there too, as the sun is round to that side in the afternoon. Fortunately, today is misty for now, and it's to be cooler, so fingers crossed I can do something more productive. I have some privet to stick in among the hedging in the front garden, but there isn't much needing doing in the back other than deadheading.

 

Volunteer day at Capel Manor yesterday. We planted some Nandina and Skimmia in the area previously cleared. Trouble was the "soil " was like dust, or black sand. Even when we filled holes with water it wouldn't soak in very easily as the "dust" was so hydrophobic. I had the idea of putting a bit of liquid seaweed in the water to act as a wetting agent this helped. We soaked all the plants in a big bucket of dilute seaweed. All the rootballs out of their pots were damp on top, and bottom but bone dry in the middle. I had to explain to the Apprentice gardener working with us that if the ground was nice damp and humus rich we wouldn't have to go to all this faff. We only had a limited quantity of soil improver to mix in and mulch. Personally I would have waited to do the job until we had more compost available,, but as the senior gardener I work with is only part time he was more concerned about the plants staying in their pots, as they obviously weren't being watered enough. They seem to have this mad system where gardeners are allocated to an area, and so they ignore things not in their own "area" unless you can make a specific arrangement.
Spent the afternoon watering the Allotments and picking crops.