WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2022

Huh! Chance would be a fine thing.

 

Good day for finalising plans and seed orders for 2023

 

Removed all the veg that died in the freeze, lots of invading couch grass and various weeds into the compost heap. Hopefully if we have a mild rest of winter and I turn it a couple of times I will have enough compost for the rest of my beds and greenhouse to spread in March/April time. Also covered a couple of beds that had a lot of annual weeds with tarp. Dug out some parsnips, should be nice and sweet now. There's still huge ice blocks in a couple of my water butts despite it being above freezing for a week.

Also caught a mouse in my rat trap but no mice in any of my mouse traps. Typical

 

Not a very good idea at all! As the grass will not rot down you will be just spreading it around! Every tiny scrap of root will just form another plant which you will eventually have to dig out thus compounding your work of weeding!

 

I had to go out onto the balcony on 2 occasions, in spite of the rain, to retrieve 2 pots of Clivias that gusts of wind had knocked off the balcony table. As they had no flowers but only leaves no damaged was done other that a little compost being knocked out of the pots by the fall. Luckily the pots are also of a fairly soft plastic so they weren't damaged either! I can't add more compost into the pots for the present because I haven't got any. I shall have to buy some more compost next time I'm in town.

Due to the rain I haven't been able to do anything on the balcony, other than pick up said pots.
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I've had no problem composting couch, bindweed, etc. As long as it's covered it'll die during the composting process. If there's a bit that maybe stays at the edge of the heap even after turning they tend to be really obvious when forking out the compost to use as the roots are so white. But I always make sure any pernicious weeds are at the centre and also line my heaps with cardboard to exclude light and keep it warmer. Weed seeds are a bigger problem though, I doubt my heap gets hot enough during winter at least to kill them. Just need a bit of dry weather in spring to hoe them off when they germinate.

 

I've found couch grass is not easily killed, new roots are white but older roots are less obvious and are even resistant to glyphosate.

 

Nearly It takes three applications and two years but it can be beaten!

 

Experience has led me to desiccate troublesome weeds;buttercup, couch, nettles ,thistle by either laying out on a rack of wire netting so as to dry them ; 10 days or submerging in a waterbutt til they stink! Can then be composted without resurrection.

 

Decent day outside, more leaf relocation happening.

 

Not a lot, been sulking inside as I have a bad knee (slowly getting better) and am generally under the weather.
Took it out on the bank account by buying more seeds and ordering a number of bulbs and ferns.

 

Busy afternoon only day this week we haven't had heavy rain but it has rain on and off while out there . First job was to dug up the large Phyocarpus Diablo and plant it in the spot were a flowering currant is so that was another plant that needed moving, got the P.Diablo planted and the Currant planted on the garage site on the neighbour side . Planted a Phyocarpus lady in red where the larger Phyocarpus was .

Next job was bulb planting loads of them daffodils everywhere it took forever finding somewhere to plant them, looking at older pictures digging holes to find something else there , I even dug some plants out( going to move anyway ) to get some more in. Planted hundreds in total of Feb Gold - jetfire - spring sunshine - rapture. Got a few under the beech hedge which I am going to cut back hard soon.

Trimmed back the hydrangea Anabelle which had layered its self so dug that out so I could get more daffs in hopefully two more free plants .

Still got more bulbs to plant but unfortunately it went dark on me