What are we doing in the garden 2025

Carrot fly only travel about 18 ins from the ground so you will need to tie the fleece around the rim of the pot with something. Put canes inside the edge of the pot for support, clothes pegs would work well to keep it in position, tie the fleece off in a top knot which you could open for watering.

 

Dug up the last of the leeks. Some still OK but most now well over. Weeded an area and then planted out the sweet corn seedlings.
Carried on removing ivy growing up into the Indian Bean Tree and a self grown magnolia. Didn't realise the damage that the ivy was doing to these 2 trees. The bark has been cut into quite deeply. So today they have been given hopefully a new lease of life.

 

I hate ivy.
I planted out some of my sweetcorn today as well, still got some smaller ones coming along of three different varieties.

 

I like ivy in the right place but not up ornamental trees.

I tried sweetcorn our first year here but the drought killed them off. Haven't tried since but maybe I will. The farmers grow it as a feed crop for their cattle but it needs copious watering and the whole plant is fed dried and munched and probably fermented in winter so is not a good guide for gardeners.

I've been watering babies in the polytunnel, moving some outside pots to a better place for this evening's storm - late but on its way according to the radar and potting on seedlings - asparagus, coriander and Mexican Hat - Ratibida columnifera f. pulcherrima | most beautiful upright prairie coneflower Annual Biennial/RHS - which I hope will do well in my new island bed.

 

After a morning indoors, it was lovely to spend the afternoon in the garden.
Digging, weeding, tidying, and WATERING!!
Actually, typing that, has reminded me that I omitted to water all the seedlings and potted plug plants. Most will have their first night outdoors tonight, acclimatising them.
I'm still unsure as to where to put all those aquilegia!! Why my OH ordered them, I don't know!!
Still, we have them, so . . . . .

 

Maybe you are drier than here but one of the reasons I like sweetcorn is that I rarely water it, its grows pretty well with minimal watering once established.

Farmers also grow maize here for animal feed, but I've never seen it being watered, mostly they seem to cut it fairly late in the season.

 

@pete we don't hate ivy but we have let too much grow too much up into our trees. We will leave ivy growing where we now "think" it wont be such an issue as the ivy flowers and berries are so important for wildlife at different times of the year. It has though been great to see the trunks of the trees again. As always left too long before we did anything but then we have at long last.

 

I pressure washed the paving under my Acer which has been dropping resin for the last few days, making it sticky and darker. I mowed the lawn which is already showing signs of drought and trimmed the edges. I then spent an hour watering all the plants I have moved, divided or newly planted this year. Even some of my grasses were looking a bit frazzled . Time for some rain!

 

I cant get these pics to load in order... first two are jalapeñohouse and super hot chilli house. Hope I got this a little untangled I brought out my seedlings to acclimatize on my deck and which I will plant in the gardens this week.


That freed up room for my chillies in the little green houses. The first greenhouse shot is Canadian Shineyland.


There are some plants left in the greenhouses that are for friends so they'll stay put until picked up.

 

Some days ago i cut back a old and dying lavender and put this variegated one in It's place and some red wild poppy seedlings in front of it.

 

Potted on everything. The plants (mostly perennials from plugs and seed, cuttings etc) are more than garden ready, but the garden is not plant ready

The Child heroically dug up another double bath tub size area in the back, we refilled it with better clay from another area, bagged compost and manure and plopped in the Philadelphus, evergreen Jasmine and some Verbena Hastata.

The clay soil is now starting to look lush when most of the rubble bits, plastic and unmentionables are out and a mixture of the best parts plus bagged stuff is in. I have a small mountain of the bad stuff, slowly getting lower when I sneak a compostbagful of it in the general waste every fortnight.

It seems we have found the water table when digging out the mighty mid-fence posts. I was thinking that the post, or the digging done when it was put in, had damaged an output pipe but today we (ok, The Child) dug around the deep bit with the water to find the pipe and there was nothing.

This means that my pond needs to be a bit shallower than planned, and it also means that Northumbrian Water lads will not do the digging but it's down to us. There goes my cunning plan!

I also improvised a blue container that might become a hanging planter. I have several small potfuls of variegated Vinca minor, most useful plant and easy to propagate (hence the number of potfuls from the previous house). Three went sideways into a bowl planter and since I had some Nigellas in a fruit tray, they went in here and there.

All Toms and Chilli pots are now in the greenhouse. Sorry, Glasshouse (apparently everybody says "glasshouse" The Child tells me, but she mixes with the posh lot when volunteering )

If I can lug another lot of compost and manure from the front to the, hmmm, glasshouse, we'll do the raised beds up and plant the Toms in tomorrow. Chillies will have to stay in their pots until I figure out what to do with them.

Now that everything is gone from my home office, I can dismantle the grow lights, do a good clean up and decide what to do with all that free space. Room for more plants! I'll regret this next spring.

 

I went to the Malvern Flower Show today and bought lots of gardening sundries but no plants as I have more than enough here to find homes for. Does that count?

 

Sounds very wise, @lizzie27. I hope you had good time.

 

Bought some geraniuma and a regal perlagonium, you can sort out which is which due to reclassification, I think they are all one group now, and a white peony from Lidl when I did my shop. They were all watered and looked as if they had just been put out as there were hardly any gaps amongst the pots where people had taken them from and no dead foliage. Also bought a tray of 6 miniature fuschias to tuck into spaces in my containers. I had an appointment at the ear clinic so by the time I got home I was too stiff and tired to do anything in the garden except bring indoors anything I didn't want to get wet prior to the forecast storm. So far all we have had is cloud and several hours of much welcome, gentle, steady rain. Lovely.

 

I wish we had had a couple of hours of steady rain. We’ve had little rain for ages and nothing meaningful in the forecast