What are we doing in the garden 2025

I shall take cuttings from all of mine @Songbird except Hot Lips. She's looking OK now with mostly white flowers and early on they're mostly red but in between, whene the flowers are red and white, I'm not so keen.

Not today tho as rain has stopped play cos it turns out my old waterproof gardening jacket is no longer waterproof so needs a wash and a spray to see if that works. I did get the broccoli planted tho.

 

Hi,

Best laid plans seldom work out. I intended bagging up weeds and couch grass this afternoon. Sunny periods were forecast for today with little chance of rain so it's just been bucketing down. Heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow; I'm sure the MET office will get this right?

Kind regards, Col.

 

It's been sunny and dry all day but rain is now expected later and all day Wednesday.

Inspired by Obelixx (thank you!) I also planted a rose from a cutting which I think was from my Penelope one. I put it into the hole where the lavatera had been in the wall sleeper bed and added manure to beef the soil up there. It's an apricot colour and nicely scented.

Then OH decided to start digging out the 2 yr old leaf mould bin but first I had to rescue a seedling fuchsia 'Riccatonii' which had somehow settled itself in the open bin. It was flowering as well which was a bonus so I potted this up and will try to find a home for it although they can get quite big if it's happy. It can go on the verge outside if all else fails.

 

Finally dug out the tomato plants outside and put them in the garden bin, bin day tomorrow.
They were blight resistant but did have a few signs of blight here and there, they have done well this year.

Took the last few trusses off to try ripening indoors.

 

Collected more apples for storage. Sturminster pippen, coxes, fiesta, Blenheim orange and spartan. Still more out there.

 

Started planting the tulips in the borders, they were starting to sprout I've got to wait for the cosmos to finish before i can plant some.

 

Hi,

The organ machine I was looking forward to receiving today after an email from Royal Mail didn't arrive bursting yet another bubble this year; later in the day I received another email stating it would be delivered tomorrow; sort of creates an anti-climax.

Nothing doing in the garden today other than dreams; tomorrow I'm visiting a friend in heavy rain; oh hum never mind nothing changes.

Kind regards, Col.

 

Hi,

Rain, rain go away.


Over the last two days; today Thursday has been forecast wall to wall heavy rain; the guessers have now changed their mind as seen above.

I've received an email stating I'll receive the organ machine for my violin today; I'll wait and see.

My latest Parkers order will be with me in the next few days; if it's raining when they arrive I'll put on my waterproofs; wellies and pull the hood of my "site" coat over my head; gone are the days when rain stops me doing what I want to do assuming it's not outdoor painting. I modified my full length wellies into ankle length years ago; the wellies rubbed the back of my legs sore so I popped them through the bandsaw; now they are much more comfortable to wear.

I'm visiting a friend this afternoon so I need clean fingernails.

Kind regards, Col.

 

Managed to get my hose fitting done, but of course, as soon as I started footering with it all, the other side started leaking! Eventually got it all done, but the left hand one is always tricky to access as it's so near the steps. So far, so good. Fingers crossed.
Apart from that, I spent a while chopping up some dying foliage of the Ligularia near the pond, and some other deadheading, and moving a few pots into better sites. The birds were enjoying the pond too which is always good if there's a pleasant spell to sit with a cuppa for ten minutes. The nuthatches have returned to the feeders, which is always nice to see. The coal tits are very busy burying sunflower hearts, so the feeders were needing filled again.

Today is to be dry, with some sun, and it was almost frost level half an hour ago, but that always feels warmer than the murky, dreich weather, so that'll be pleasant for some other planting or potting on etc.

 

It was quite windy first thing so we didn't get out till gone 11 am. I started filling up a big blue glazed pot on the terrace with fresh compost, using a mix of Westland Rose and Shrub compost and their J.I. No.3, which I was a bit puzzled by, as it was a Peat free one. Surely that's not the proper J.I one - or are they all peat free these days? Stopped when the pot was half full as I suddenly realized I needed to leave room to plant the actual rose when I get it, probably a bare root Gertrude Jekyll one. I think the bright pink will stand out against our pale Bath stone house wall better.

 

@lizzie27 there is a peat ban on the way in the UK but it will take a while to get thru parliament. However, the RHS has already banned peat at all its shows and in its nurseries and shops so manufacturers are ahead of the law.

JI no 3 is loam based but I think always had some peat in the mix for moisture retention.

No gardening here today as it's still blowing a hoolie, tho calmer than overnight, and we're getting squalls of heavy rain. I shall have to venture out to inspect soon as there were a couple of pots blown over near the house so likely to be some casualties out in the open.

 

I think I have a bag of peat free JI hanging around, I bought a couple and have used one.
Must admit it didn't look or feel like JI compost, I think if anything they had omitted the soil, it looked very similar to an ordinary peat free compost but with sand as part of the mix.

I think the term JI today almost virtually applies to the fertiliser content, we seem to be getting some really strange compost mixes for all kinds now.

 

The John Innes composts stocked by my local garden centres are now all peat free. I’ve started adding composted bark to beef them up, something I hadn’t used before until one of the staff recommended it to me.

 

It's a standardised formula @pete with variations for seeds and cuttings, young plants and mature plants plus an ericaceous version so there shouldn't be much variation between brands if they claim to be JI.

John Innes compost - Wikipedia

Maybe time to look into labelling and quality control in the compost industry.

OH and I have braved the squalls and been down to check the veg plot and other beds. All is well apart from a few posts holding up nets round the asparagus and cabbages. They've now been bashed in deeper and firmer.

I also potted on 3 parsley seedlings, all from one cell of a 24 cell tray. Not an impressive performance so far but all the chervil, coriander and dill I potted on are doing well and so are the blue fescues and eragrostis are growing too.

 

Thanks for that link @Obelix-Vendée, I thought the original composts all contained peat but hadn't realized that most manufacturers now omitted peat in the J.I. particular formulations.
Think that's misleading and I won't buy it again unless I can get a peat included one. What I didn't know about was the inclusion of ground limestone, which here of course we definitely don't need more of!

Hope your parsley seedlings survive, I've always had problems with germination and nowadays just buy a pot of supermarket ready parsley and divide that to pot on. You probably can't get that in France though.