What are we doing in the garden 2025

@Retired good to see you on here again and glad that you are keeping busy.

Yesterday planted up 2 big tubs with daffodils and polyanthus.
They already had daffodils in from last year but i thought that i would check on them and good that i did because they were going rotten, so i dug them up and kept the ones that were ok and put them in pots.

 

The cactus dahlias are coming to the fore now, hopefully the weather forecast for the coming weeks will stay mild , despite some short lived dawn frost , the floral displays are, so far, unaffected. I tried cosmos for the first time this year, primarily due to sweet pea failure and almost as an afterthought chucked a packet of cosmos seed in the ground where the sweetpeas would have gone and have been very pleased with the results so i will grow them again , maybe with a little more care though in future. Lawn mowing again today !

 

Hi,

Thanks @Sheal I think your suggestion is the right one and the one I also considered to be the best; I've just gone over all three meadows and even the grass paths with weedkiller; I decided to kill the lot; the grass which contains lots of couch grass was here 38 years ago and I've always cut it but every year it creeps. I hope the weedkiller is as good as it says it is on the label.

This morning I helped a neighbour move lots of his gardening kit to the new place he's moved to; the new place doesn't have grass so he's generously given me a very big bag of top quality grass seed totally free of charge. This is excellent timing so I now have the new grass seed ready for next springtime; I just hope the couch grass dies completely; I've suffered it long enough. He did suggest I put lots of plants and bushes in to save the yearly hard work with the meadows; it's tempting but I love to see the wildflowers and I think adding bushes retc would just involve more weeding.

It's only a short while ago I rotavated the meadows but already nature's taken over; thousands of tiny seedlings have popped up plus some rather nice wildflowers; the lot got sprayed.


This is what happens shortly after rotavating.

The middle meadow with couch grass appearing agin.

A few weeks ago I was on my hands and knees removing geraniums with a hand trowel after I'd strimmed them; now other unwanted seedlings are popping up. This area is the top right hand corner of the garden. Near to top are still lots of buried stones and conifer roots; it's the final frontier; I'd love to dynamite it. The conifer stumps upset my neighbour; the wall is actually a flight of steps from his garden to his door.

A few years ago I was up there with fueled chainsaw ready to remove the conifers when the neighbour approached me; he asked me to please reconsider removing the conifers; I'd explained I was sick of climbing ladders every year to keep them tidy; he and his wife offered to keep the height and there side of the conifers trimmed if I'd leave them up. I was unsure but did agree to this. It worked fine for about four years; he had tree surgeons in looking after them then decided to ignore them.


Conifers seen on left.

The picture shows what I wanted to avoid so one afternoon I felled half of them; the following afternoon the neighbour was in his garden and he wasn't an happy bunny at all; he accused me of possibly causing subsidence to his steps and possibly causing damage to his incoming mains gas pipe also he'd lose his privacy; He behaved like a sulking little four year old brat; he even told me there hadn't been an agreement so what planet is he on; the bottom conifers were 20' tall. To finish his sulk he had the downright cheek asking me if I'd sell him part of my garden because he wanted to build on office; my reply was why would I sell you part of what I could convert into a building plot worth over £100K. Two weeks after this whilst I was looking out of my kitchen window I saw him sweeping clouds of dirt into my garden from his steps; we've fallen out; I can't stand selfish; self centered people who break agreements then blame the other party.


The top meadow; please note the amount of grass already taking over; the meadow pictures were taken today.

Very well done indeed @fairygirl with the felt; it looks so neat you could have ironed it; the wooden border is the icing on the cake; thanks for adding the pictures; now I understand what you were doing. DIY'ers are usually good at patching themselves up. You know what DIY stands for; DON'T INVOLVE YOURSELF.

Thanks @Logan yes it's nice to be back amongst forum friends. I know you keep J Parkers busy buying lots of bulbs from them so I'm surprised you haven't put in another order or maybe you already have. In the past when I've bought from Parkers they've included hundreds of daffodil bulbs free of charge. I'm expecting my shrubs to arrive this week; EVRI have emailed to say they have them. You'll be pleased to have caught the good ones though.

What a lovely picture @Robert Bowen.

Kind regards, Col.

 

I was pleased when my friends SIL turned up as promised with his chainsaw and within the hour he'd tidied up the Euronymous hedge, cut down the half dead side of a large Viburnum and then did the same to a dying Cornus - oh what it is to be tall, muscular and younger than me!
I paid him for his time and rewarded him with coffee and a slice of the Dorset Apple cake I made yesterday.
It would have taken us ages to handsaw that lot. We used to have a small chainsaw but at the time I didn't appreciate you needed to keep the battery charged all the time so it died on me.
I think the children and OH were quite pleased at the time!

Spent the rest of the day just pottering, cutting back a lavender I'd forgotten, tying in a rose to its obelisk and trimming part of an old privet hedge. Don't know where the time went really.

 

Hello @Retired, Col. I remember you and your beautiful wild flowers from last year on your thread 3rd year Meadow. I'm so sorry about your wife.

I've spent a couple of hours in the vegetable garden, weeding. I've dug up the sweetcorn plants and put them in the compost bin.

OH has been mowing.

 

Finally finished transplanting heucheras to finish the whole of the north side of the house with heuchera edging. So easy to propagate , and frankly i severed all the leaves off one with a strimmer a while back and the tough little cookie has gone on to make more lovely fresh leaves. I am amazed that i am still picking tomatoes , they are still reddening well but seem to be benefitting from a sheltered spot and a fair amount of sunshine - i shall be picking more tomorrow , same goes for apples . I have netted them to keep all sorts of birds off and been eating lots of lovely apples fresh off the tree for over a month . Even eating apple diced up with my cornflakes in the morning! Surprisingly good . Mrs B made some fresh apple sauce last night with roast pork ( plus a glass of local perry) and tonight more of the same , but cold in a sourdough baton with chips ( no perry) . Hanging baskets are starting to show signs of fatigue but have flowered their little hearts out for over 3 months , i am trying to coax them and the lemon verbena to keep going a while longer.

 

Hi,

Thank you @Busy-Lizzie. Being single again after almost 50 years takes a lot of getting used to.

I've lost track of the meadow years they could be on their 7th year now; time flies by so quickly

Kind regards, Col.

 

Watered the greenhouse and sorted out the mess left by a badger deciding to rehome a Dietes while it had a look in the pot, Dietes repotted spilt soil cleaned up.
This afternoon planted out some recently purchased plants, including a Hydrangea serrata "Shojo", Kniphofia pauciflora, Strobilanthes mastersii and Amicia zygomeris.
Also noticed that for the first time I ever I had a mass of seedlings underneath Sarcococca confusa.

 

Yesterday checked on the daffodils that were in the 2 large pots at the back, most of them had rotted away so put new daffodils in and the old polyanthus.
The smaller ones at the front i planted last years hyacinths.

 

That's a lot of work - your meadow @Retired . I think it's often seen as an easier option, but to have it looking right takes time and effort. Getting the right mix of planting for the site can be difficult too. It's certainly beautiful when it's in full flow.
We had a large area at the last house that could have been used for that, but it was easier to just have grass and bits left for the existing wildlife. It couldn't easily be seen from the house anyway.
Not sure what I'll get up to today. It's supposed to be dry/overcast until this evening, but...
If it's ok I'll plant out these wallflowers I have, and I could maybe move the potting bench thing to it's site, and have a look to see if I have any other wood for the shelf apart from the couple of bits I have. I can botch something up so that the pots can be stored anyway.
Nothing done yesterday, apart from filling bird feeders. The rain came on quite soon after I got in from my walk, and by the time it stopped, I was busy doing some indoor projects. The rest of the week is very rain filled, so I'll have to play it by ear with anything outdoor.

 

@Peaceful Gardener I am indebted to you! You got me thinking with this post and i found up a book i inherited from my grandfather which i had only glimpsed at and was amongst my other gardening books on a bookshelf. The photos tell their own story but the book was published in 1948 and the postcard dated December 1950 and received in Wales on Jan 1 1951. The postcard is really interesting as grandad had about 300’ of privet hedging ( no trees) . He was not well off and he must have saved hard to cover the cost - he moved into the house as a new build in 1948 so i cant think of anything else he might have had on order. But the real treasure trove inside this book were the handwritten gardening notes tucked inside the dustcover , written in fountain pen by my grandfather. They are recipes for all sorts of home made gardening mixes - John Innes composts,assorted veg fertiliser , Tonks’ formula etc with some wonderful old terms where he talks of quantities per bushel and adding “ hoof and horn” to his seed compost mix. The notes were written in 1941-42 and he references AGL Hellyer as his source.Chrysanthemums were his passion , he had a 100’ long bed of them and at flowering time every day people were knocking at the door wanting to buy them and it was a nice top up to his pension at 5/- ( 5 bob) a bunch with a sprig of , possibly, asparagus fern . Some of these notes were written on Woodbine spills and even a packet of woodbines. Fascinating !

 

Hi,

Thanks @fairygirl The thing with grass is during the growing season it demands cutting every few days during a normal wet year when there's no drought. The meadows demand a great deal of effort but not all the time; whilst grass is growing so are the wildflowers but the wildflowers don't need mowing during summer months so can be left alone. At the end of the growing season and before the weather turns really bad around the end of October I strim the wildflowers and rake up the remains which I discard along the wide border in front of the 60' long dry stone wall helping to prevent soil erosion considering how steep the garden is; then I rotavate the meadows leaving them bare until I once again rotavate in late February or early March weather permitting; in March I reseed the meadows and then can stand back again until the following October; so the heavy work is twice each year; working on the steep slope and rotavating gives me a top class workout. I rotavated early this year because of the drought ruining the widflowers hence I've decided to use weedkiller rather than rotavate again.

Beware of Cherry Laurel; here's just one of the stumps I removed from the very top of the garden; there was a double row hedge to add to the hard work; I did the lot working on my own using 24 tons of hydraulic jacks and a 2,500 kg pull winch which I used to winch this stump to the corner of the garden; I disposed of the stumps the following year; cutting them up and taking them to the tip in the car.

Just some of the rubble and stones dug out. Lots of the larger stones were used around the border edges.

With the hedges removed and every stump dug out; the ground was made good then a wagon load of mulch was delivered; there's a very pretty lane alongside the wall. The bare top meadow can be seen on the right just starting to grow; The 4" x 4" x 12' fence posts were another heavy job to get these to the top of the garden; I bought a very heavy jack hammer and welded an extension to the chisel in order to break through a 36" deep stone shelf; typical of my luck but just more work to do so I got on with it.

Here's what the garden looked like after the hedges were removed and the meadow flowered for the first time. In total over the years I've removed over 30 trees between 50' & 80' tall; my two petrol chainsaws saw a lot of action.


Just one of the trees at 65' tall stripped of branches ready for logging.


Just how unlucky can I get; here's an horse shoe found when it jammed the petrol rotavator tines.

I've lots of household chores to catch up on today; bedding to launder; dusting and polishing etc; my life is full of fun.

Keep up the good work @fairygirl the rain can't last forever; or can it. You'll be like me in going mad during dry days catching up with outside jobs; daylight hours are rapidly becoming shorter and next month when we alter the clocks again we'll be plunged into a black hole for months.

Kind regards, Col.

 

@Retired , As you are finding, the old saying Nature Abhores a vacuum is so true. Bare soil will always sprout weeds unless you can cover it to exclude the light, but I guess that's not practical with the size of the area you are dealing with. You have also demonstrated the other truth, rotavating persistent weeds such as couch grass and bindweed simply propagates it. ( I know I've been battling both on my Allotments for decades)
I hope the weed killer works for you but it's unlikely to get rid of every last bit. It would be a lot more work initially but a perennial meadow would ultimately be less work, a mixed of meadow grass, (controlled with yellow rattle) and perennial flowers would cover and suppress annual weeds.

 

Grandson been here all morning sorting my computor..l couldnt get it to work yesterday :( all sorted now and he's found all my photos of my garden that l thought ld lost, found them on my old computor, He's now transfered all the files onto my new computor and is around tomorrow night... he'll help me post a few on here
while he was doing that l pruned all my hollyocks to save the seeds ( or l should say husband cut them while l took all the seeds out of them while sitting down lol )...l'll be posting on the 'swap' thread soon, if anyone wants any fresh seeds.
Plus lv got a long list of rooted cuttings list as well to post on there in nk few days as im got a few' wanted' plants im looking for.

 

I took down the bird nesting box which needed a cleaning, but noticed it will probably not make it for another year. We bought a new one, and I attached it to the pole.