What are we doing in the garden 2025

Whilst doing more moving of things from A to B I noticed that I have a daffodil in flower and others in the same clump are in bud, no idea what the variety is. Will stick a picture up in the relevant thread, this clump often has a flower before Christmas or in January not this early though.

 

Unless you were a masochist, of course.

 

Hi,

Have you ever been faced with a garden like mine @NigelJ and if so can you honestly say you enjoyed the sheer hard graft; I certainly don't even though it might look easy to someone on the outside looking in.


The recipents of tons of free logs like these were so impressed by gardening not lifting a finger to help but were more than happy to benefit from my incredibly hard work not only felling huge trees and logging them but physically carrying them down the steep often slippery steep garden. Please post your pictures of similar jobs I'm sure others like me would love to see them.

My trees at up to 80' tall were becoming a major liabilty and highly dangerous in powerful wind; we had over 30 of them so do we take a second mortgage to get tree surgeons in to not only clear the trees but dig up the stumps in the rear garden with poor access; up steps when the only way to get big machinery in would be to use a crane then the steep slope would render such machinery dangerous.

What would it cost to have a single 80' tall tree fully removed?

Here's one of the 80'ers; let's see yours please?

I'm now tackling couch grass which I definitely don't find a pleasure whilst kneeling on the wet slippery slope when it's bitterly cold. Lots of jobs need doing sooner than later.

No offence meant but it's easy watching?

Bang on @ViewAhead well said.

Kind regards, Col.

 

Hard work never bothered me; I choose to do it, so what's the point of complaining about it all the time.
Very few jobs in the garden need doing immediately and you can always wait until better conditions it's your choice.
As I said if you don't enjoy don't do it; you choose to do it so take pleasure in the end result and don't complain about the work involved.
I don't need to keep posting old photographs or recounting old struggles for any reason, not that I've ever really taken photographs of what I'm doing, I'm not that special or doing anything different to many others.
We all garden in our own way and most take pleasure in it.

 

Not in our garden but today we removed some of the plants in troughs and hanging baskets in front of our village hall. They had remained flowering for much longer than usual. So decisions were made with the garden club to delay removal BUT the next plants were the bulbs. Again so the GC planted out the bulbs in Sept into pots so that they could be plunged into the containers later.
Today we did this. Amazing so see the roots already on the bulbs with growths showing. We did have to inter with bulbs around the plunged pots. Hopefully they will survive the move.

 

I have not been doing much in the garden lately due to focusing on other things, and I am particularly late in relation to mulching.

My excuse for the latter is that the weather was dry and warm - it is recommended to mulch when the soil is relatively saturated.

But seeing that the temperatures were about to dive, I did some speed mulching of a border that has several new plants before work, including one which is borderline hardy in my area (Star Jasmine "Tuscany").



I used well rotted manure - a lot of it. No one talks about the cost of doing that when they suggest to mulch deeply

Later on, I also covered the Star Jasmine with some fleece. It's probably unnecessary but considering it wasn't planted that long ago, and it's borderline hardy, I am not taking any chances.

 

@Plantminded I love Cuprinol. I use the "Ducksback" one for mine (black) and it also works well. Previously I had tried Ronseal and I was not happy. As soon as I switched to Cuprinol I thought "now we are talking"

 

@CostasK I mulch with either leaf mould or just my own garden compost. Although I'm unlikely to get as cold as you are.
Some people use spent tomato compost.

 

Those are good ideas @NigelJ Thank you.

I am also coming to the conclusion that it's more cost efficient overall (and enjoyable) to pack the borders with plants rather than having bare earth to mulch. When the plants in that border grow, they should fill out the space, I deliberately packed them more densely than I normally would. But right now that is obviously not the case.

 

Ahh! Forecast was for 2 degrees here last night, but there is frost on cars and roofs this morning. I had covered smaller plants and popped the pelargoniums in the garage, but didn't fleece my very large osteospermums as they can manage 2 degrees given they are sheltered against the house walls where these form a 90 degree angle. Hmm! It remains to be seen whether I was overly optimistic. Normally I err on the side of caution, but it's unusual to have frost here in November. February and April are the months to be most alert to the possibility.

 

It's surprising the difference that shrubs and small trees make to plants growing next to or under them. Certainly I have plants that benefit from this.

 

Arghhh! Yesterday morning was a surprise frost! According to a friend who gets up early, car screen was wet at 6, but when he returned from his walk at 6:30 it was iced up!
So I've been going around checking plants to see if they've gone sludgy (you know, all sad and disgusting). Surprisingly, even my impatiens are still ok. But I'll look round again today to see if anything needs bringing in to the increasingly crowded greenhouse.

 

No frost today after two days of that, but I think the ground will still be frozen, and the overnight rain may have been sleety stuff looking at the temps. They've removed the snow warning for here though. Positively balmy now at 3 degrees
Nothing much to do out there now, other than turning compost [if I can be bothered] and the same with the leaf cage, although I'd quite like to move that. Not urgent though. It's meant to clear up, but I'll just have a general look around and see what's what. Some deadheading, as one variety of dianthus is still flowering it's wee head off. D. Silver Star. I moved the dahlia [Neon Splendour] that still had a bud on it, into the gr'house, but left the other one out [David Howard] as it's quite large. I'll make a decision on that one later - depends on how bad my right arm is for shifting it.

Looking good @Plantminded. I use Ducksback [black] too, but I also use a paint from the cheapo shop, which is Johnstone's. It's a dark grey [similar to yours] and seems very watery, but it's excellent, and covers really well - especially over that horrible orange colour they like to call cedar! I also use it for painting terra pots, and it works quite well for that too. Just needs edges done a few times due to weather.

 

Minus 1 inside the greenhouse this morning according to the remote sensor. The shed roof was white, I haven't ventured out to check yet, but a Dahlia in a pot on the patio seems to be fine. Not sure if we will get much done today as I'm expecting a plumber soon and we are out this afternoon.

 

A plumber? They are as tricky to get hold of as GPs.