Still very dry, but lots of things flourishing, e.g., irises. We are on the cusp of the inspection, so if we survive this week, we are OK. The pieris looks terrific, white flowers and red leaves, or are they bracts, dunno. Rosemary also going bonkers, with many flowers. Who needs rain?
Gave the Lychee tree a severe pruning yesterday. Today we will be mulching the prunings.
This will leave large limbs that can be used on our BBQ when they have dried out.
That sounds perfect @LatchKeyKid. We've hung onto a few branches from husband's trimming for our fire pit. Glad to say though, the rest of the mulching has been taken away (oh joy).
Green bin was emptied this morning, ready to be filled up, I've noticed leaves beginning to fall and seed pods around on the ground, so I think tomorrow might be a sweeping day.
Cheery husband has just come in from working on the watering system pipes. He is now waiting for some glue to cure, I assume he's had to rejoin some pipes. In half an hour or so, he he'll be able to finish that off and hopefully he'll have successfully added another line to manage the watering of another bed (fingers crossed).
Inspections are on allotments, where the powers that be inspect your plot and judge if its up to scratch. If not they will warn you, and can boot you out, quite rare. I think we are OK, as we haven't had the dreaded email. There are 3 a year!
We are in Norfolk, and watching the farmer plough the field with great precision. There are 3 ploughs, first, to create a tilth, then to score parallel grooves, and the third drops in the bulbs. Well, we assume he is growing flowers. No rain for another week, although we had some yesterday.
I planted 3 clematis and a honeysuckle a few weeks ago and one of the clematis (Montana ‘Elizabeth’) is already in flower.
My established geum ‘Mrs Bradshaw’ has started flowering this week. I have planted some more vairieties as she is so successful.
Inspections are on allotments, where the powers that be inspect your plot and judge if its up to scratch. If not they will warn you, and can boot you out, quite rare. I think we are OK, as we haven't had the dreaded email. There are 3 a year!
People are just powering away in their gardens at present, I'm loving reading about all your new acquisitions and plantings.
Not much happening at our place today garden-wise, but I am pleased to report that I have done an hour of sweeping up with a small amount of raking and weeding this morning. I am sure there will be more to come over the next few weeks. Lots of people out and about this morning walking around the pond as I was sweeping. The long weekend and beautiful weather has beautiful weather has brought them outside to enjoy nature and I love that.
Yesterday and today we have had pouring rain. We have just had a brief break to allow some tidying up before we go away. And as I am writing this the sun has broken through the clouds.
A box of perennials arrived today in about as good shape as you might expect after 8 days in a box coming from the Netherlands. Spent a messy hour or so planting them in pots. I see the bees are out and about (hurrah) but so are the aphids (boo). The tulips, daffodils and muscari are fading, but the aquilegia and yellow poppy are limbering up, the bluebells too.
It is a perfectly stotting year for apple blossom.
We finally put in lots of new veg plants, just the usual, plus purple cabbage cos I like the colour. We are still faced with drought and heat, 24 today. And we are going away, so let's hope they survive. We have a choke berry, which is looking very nice, lots of white flowers. And our little acer is looking gorgeous.
Excuse my ignorance, but I've never heard of a choke berry, I'm going to go off and look that up! I love how with gardening, there is always more to learn! I hope your plants survive @quetzalcoatl.
In the last couple of weeks I've had the most spectacular rose blooms, they are quite large and the edges are all ruffled, really attractive. Cheery husband took a photo to send to his Mum who was an avid gardener before she became less mobile.
Over the weekend, Cheery husband has cleared out the vege patch. Put up a frame for the last of the climbing tomatoes to hang from, and added extra mulch as well as tweaking the watering system.
Yesterday I dealt with some messy leaves on the gravel and tomorrow (if it's dry) I plan to go beyond the gate onto the driveway and clean up more of the leaves and perhaps dead head the roses. The lavender badly needs pruning, so plenty to be going on with here!!
Just looked at the forecast, Gordon Bennett, sunshine for 2 weeks solid. Nice for hols, but poor old plants. There are several species of chokeberry, one of them from US, but I'm not sure which one we have.
What are people's thoughts on watering? After 18 months of what seemed like endless rain we have now had a couple of months of very dry weather here in the East Midlands of England. I was out this morning making sure the two borders at the back of the garden got a good soaking. I last did it on Monday evening. My husband thinks I'm overwatering, I disagree.
If you are watering stuff in the ground it needs a good soak, or you will just gets roots at the surface, and plants vulnerable to drying out, rather than heading deep down.
I'm located far from most of you, but the gardening advice here is to water infrequently perhaps no more than a couple of times a week to encourage plants to send roots deeper to search for water. Whether that is an old husband's tale I do not know. I try to water pot-plants no more than 2-3 times a week. I have moved them off the concrete patio onto the garden bed to reduce radiant and direct heat/dehydration.
I don't know how often Cheery husband has the automatic watering system set to run.
I reminded him last night that we need to change from summer watering (early morning/evening) to winter watering (later in the day when the frost has passed). We haven't had a frost yet, but I am anticipating one fairly soon.
One of my dreams has been to have a rainwater tank to collect the roof water and I intend to have one installed once I retire and my pension begins.
I have a tap in the garden - the water butt alone is insufficient - but not one I can run a hose from. So there's a limit to how many heavy cans I can lug about. I concentrate on things in pots and newly planted, everything else just has to cope.
We are going away for a week, and not a drop of rain is forecast for 2 weeks. Yes, they will cope, or not. Luckily, we will be in Bath, and there is a decent nursery there.
In the past we had a house sitter for the cat, but never for the garden, it was a bit too far gone (previous house, not the one I'm at now, where a housesitter to do both would be great)!
Have just come inside from a bit of lawn tidying and leaf cleanup. At the weekend I dug up some plants that I've never liked and moved them to a new spot. They have spiky leaves and spiky looking flowers, so I moved them to an empty spot in the garden, but one that I can't see from the house. So they will hopefully help with weed control because the space has been taken up and I can plant something I like the look of in the spot they have vacated.
Although the temps are hovering around 50 degrees (F) we've had a couple of warmer days, and everything in my garden is beginning to pop. I have mostly shade, so there are "quickfire" hydrangeas and lots of hostas and heuchera (coral bells). There are a few different varieties of hosta, and they are all emerging on different schedules! My temperamental little rhododendron is sporting a half-dozen beautiful buds. And I have four "volunteer" bluebell plants - no idea where they came from!
I'm wondering if there will be a hosepipe ban soon, as the next 2 weeks are showing no rain. We are away, so don't know how the allotment is, but most things survive. But the ground gets rock hard.
Woken up in the night to a bit of a storm, the ground is wet, but I suspect not a lot in it, other than making the roads slippery.
Last Saturday dug up the last of the spiky plants and moved them. Then off to the garden centre for more pansies, which are making my pots look lovely and cheerful. As we've not had any real frosts, the petunias are still hanging on from November in a couple of pots. I'll probably clean those out next weekend. I've noticed some self seeded tomato plants growing as well, so those will probably be ditched as well! They won't make it through to summer, so might as well get rid of them now too.
Yes, we've got used to watering, watering. And most things are doing well, some becoming huge, e.g., blackberries. We now have the vine and a thornless blackberry entwined along the fence, very pretty. The best things are unplanned. I can't remember rain, my wife says 3 weeks ago, I don't believe her.
I planted a patio tomato today. This is the only plant I bought this year; the rest of the garden I am doing with seeds. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Blackberries sound excellent @quetzalcoatl! I hope you get a nice yield from them.
@Graven Image are patio tomatoes meant to grow less vigorously than others, or remain compact and more suitable for pots? I don't think I've seen any advertised in Oz, so I'd like to know more.
No gardening this week except for a couple of lots of petal cleaning and watering of pots. We've been lucky with a storm passing through, so I hope that will hold our pots until Sunday as I'm busy tomorrow and am not sure if I can fit the watering into my schedule.
@Cherry Gardener, Yes, patio tomatoes are more compact and were developed to grow in pots. The problem with tomatoes where I live is hot summer days but cool nights. The tomatoes do not like that combination. There are also tomatoes developed for that situation, but alas, not in the patio kind.
I have thinned out my carrots. The bad news is that our garden currently has no water
Apparently there is a major leak in the building below (it's a roof garden) and they've turned it off until it's fixed. Anyone know an effective rain dance?
I've repotted four tomato plants (Rubylicious) They're two feet tall already! They are staying in the mini greenhouse. I've taken the shelves out. Four more will be planted outside on large pots tomorrow (Tumbling Tom).
That's really difficult @la vie en rouge , it's a bit too far to be carting water, by the sounds of it. Momentarily I had the thought of grey water, but then realised that it's not suitable for food. Such a pest, I hope they can resolve the water issue soon.
No real gardening since Sunday, when I went outside to sweep leaves, and it was freezing! I think it was the first day of snow a couple of hours away and the wind was definitely coming from that direction!!
I have just come inside from walking one of the cats and noticed that one of my daphne plants, which had been looking a bit seedy, it putting out some lovely new leaves, so I"m chuffed about that and feel quite encouraged!!
Put some purple french beans in, bit of a fraud, as when you cook them, they turn green. Never mind, eh? Still marvelling over healthy plants, despite the drought, now ended. We have a rose bush, not very dramatic, but it has about 100 buds on, and no aphids, (Irish Eyes). Our vine has gone bonkers, very lush. Finally got some Cal poppies flowering, it's a floristic summer. My wife reckons drought puts plants under stress, so they produce lots of flowers, maybe.
I am not sure how flowers work in drought @quetzalcoatl , but after an extended period of drought, we lost one of our silver birch trees. It totally took me by surprise because it had been beautiful in it's last summer and it dying really floored me!
We have had an unseasonably warm day for this time of year, though a very cold sub zero morning. I pulled the frozen top off my bird waterer this morning. My pansies and violas are blooming wildly.
I've been continuing to rake leaves and clean up fallen camellia petals, I could be doing this more often, but I've been a bit lazy and avoiding going outside on grey mornings...
I was glad of some rain last week, everything is looking so much fresher, but it's been really bad for those interstate where floods have been destructive and unfortunately in places that flooded a bit too recently to pretend there is nothing happening .
I think that's wrong about droughts, they are not good for plants. I'm not sure why most things are in overdrive, probably the sunniest spring for a century.
My new home has a garden!
I've only been here a week and I've already got rid of the plastic grass the previous resident put down.
There's good black soil under it and I have made a start at filling the space by buying a honeysuckle to train up the back fence.
My new home has a garden!
I've only been here a week and I've already got rid of the plastic grass the previous resident put down.
There's good black soil under it and I have made a start at filling the space by buying a honeysuckle to train up the back fence.
Exciting times!
I've just moved a honeysuckle and found out why it wasn't thriving. It was full of bindweed masquerading as honeysuckle!
Neighbours either side put up stotting great fences - it seems to be a modern Thing, a declaration that this is My Space from the sod to the sky, as the saying goes.
The one to the north west matters little, since there are two large and long-established shrubs screening it. The southern one I decided to turn into a green wall. There's a vigorous ivy from another neighbour at one end, then a honeysuckle - which I trimmed hard last year, which seems to have encouraged it greatly. Then a Virginia Creeper I'm training along the top, and below that a climbing hydrangea.
I keep a sharp lookout for bindweed sneaking in amongst them.
My new home has a garden!
I've only been here a week and I've already got rid of the plastic grass the previous resident put down.
There's good black soil under it and I have made a start at filling the space by buying a honeysuckle to train up the back fence.
How exciting for you! And so glad to think that at least one piece of plastic grass is no more - dreadful stuff.
@Boogie it was sad that we lost both silver birches, which had been a real draw when buying our home. This happened when our son was sick and we just weren't at home to realise what had been happening with the garden overall and those trees in particular. I think we discovered there was an infestation of some kind of borer when we cut them down.
@Eigon, so pleased you've found good soil at your new home, that bodes well for making a nice garden. Also echoing the joy at the demise of the plastic lawn. Not far from me is a home for sale which is quite spectacular, but the whole place is ruined by a plastic back lawn and extensive use of large white pebbles, which I assume are to form a mulch and minimise weeds, but the whole thing is harsh looking and a bit tacky. I do understand that not everyone can maintain a lawn or wants to reduce water use, but there are other ways to achieve this and soften the overall garden look and feel.
A lot of show gardens today have huge patios, and a few plants round the edge. This happens at Chelsea every year. Of course, there is also the fashion for wilder gardens.
I am not sure whether our garden had some professional input when it was being constructed. We have sliding doors on all the rooms on the north side of our house, which overlook the garden. We have wooden fences, which I anticipate at some point will need replacing, but they are fairly good for 20 years old. When you exit our house there is a path that goes all the way around and our dining room opens onto a patio/slab of concrete. We have camellias right down one side of the garden just in front of the fence, they are in flower at present and make such a nice show. Along the back fence we have a photinia hedge. The plants were getting very leggy, so we cut them back hard las year. Unfortunately a couple of them didn't survive so Cheery husband is attempting to strike a new plant from one of the ones which recovered well. If he's not successful, we'll buy two new ones to fill in the gaps.
We have quite a small area of lawn which provides some nice green to look at, but is not a lot of mowing. Perhaps we'll consider replacing this with some sort of paving and pots as we get older, but we are fairly contented at present with things as they are.
We have quite a large garden bed to look at from our family room and even though it has quite a lot of plants in it, I like to have pots on the bed which i can fill with seasonal colour. I was happy with the petunias last summer and the pansies are cheerful at the moment. We also get a lot of birds and bees, which are really lovely to observe all year round.
The south-west side of the house just has woodchips up against the fence, and the bed is very narrow - I'd like to find something really tough to plant in this position and I might look for a hardy native that might do well there.
We visited a cool climate native plant nursery this morning and I was very happy to find a prostrate grevillea to plant on our nature strip to try to help with weed suppression. If it's successful we'll invest in a couple more. It was recommended by the plant man on our local radio weekend gardening program. The man at the plant centre was very helpful and we saw another couple of things that took our fancy too, so I suspect we will be having more than this visit there.
Comments
This will leave large limbs that can be used on our BBQ when they have dried out.
Green bin was emptied this morning, ready to be filled up, I've noticed leaves beginning to fall and seed pods around on the ground, so I think tomorrow might be a sweeping day.
Cheery husband has just come in from working on the watering system pipes. He is now waiting for some glue to cure, I assume he's had to rejoin some pipes. In half an hour or so, he he'll be able to finish that off and hopefully he'll have successfully added another line to manage the watering of another bed (fingers crossed).
I've planted a little herb trough. Basil, borage, flat leaved parsley and thyme.
Today I'm planting two honeysuckles and a clematis Montana.
My established geum ‘Mrs Bradshaw’ has started flowering this week. I have planted some more vairieties as she is so successful.
Motivation! 🙂
You made me order six! 😜
Not much happening at our place today garden-wise, but I am pleased to report that I have done an hour of sweeping up with a small amount of raking and weeding this morning. I am sure there will be more to come over the next few weeks. Lots of people out and about this morning walking around the pond as I was sweeping. The long weekend and beautiful weather has beautiful weather has brought them outside to enjoy nature and I love that.
It is a perfectly stotting year for apple blossom.
In the last couple of weeks I've had the most spectacular rose blooms, they are quite large and the edges are all ruffled, really attractive. Cheery husband took a photo to send to his Mum who was an avid gardener before she became less mobile.
Over the weekend, Cheery husband has cleared out the vege patch. Put up a frame for the last of the climbing tomatoes to hang from, and added extra mulch as well as tweaking the watering system.
Yesterday I dealt with some messy leaves on the gravel and tomorrow (if it's dry) I plan to go beyond the gate onto the driveway and clean up more of the leaves and perhaps dead head the roses. The lavender badly needs pruning, so plenty to be going on with here!!
It's not empty yet. But I'd very much like a (nighttime!) downpour to fill it up. 🌧️
I don't know how often Cheery husband has the automatic watering system set to run.
I reminded him last night that we need to change from summer watering (early morning/evening) to winter watering (later in the day when the frost has passed). We haven't had a frost yet, but I am anticipating one fairly soon.
One of my dreams has been to have a rainwater tank to collect the roof water and I intend to have one installed once I retire and my pension begins.
Have just come inside from a bit of lawn tidying and leaf cleanup. At the weekend I dug up some plants that I've never liked and moved them to a new spot. They have spiky leaves and spiky looking flowers, so I moved them to an empty spot in the garden, but one that I can't see from the house. So they will hopefully help with weed control because the space has been taken up and I can plant something I like the look of in the spot they have vacated.
Last Saturday dug up the last of the spiky plants and moved them. Then off to the garden centre for more pansies, which are making my pots look lovely and cheerful. As we've not had any real frosts, the petunias are still hanging on from November in a couple of pots. I'll probably clean those out next weekend. I've noticed some self seeded tomato plants growing as well, so those will probably be ditched as well! They won't make it through to summer, so might as well get rid of them now too.
Not only is the garden romping away, but a chilli plant in the kitchen has gone from 3 inch sprig to about 2 ft and festooned with buds.
@Graven Image are patio tomatoes meant to grow less vigorously than others, or remain compact and more suitable for pots? I don't think I've seen any advertised in Oz, so I'd like to know more.
No gardening this week except for a couple of lots of petal cleaning and watering of pots. We've been lucky with a storm passing through, so I hope that will hold our pots until Sunday as I'm busy tomorrow and am not sure if I can fit the watering into my schedule.
I adore zinnias. 💕
Apparently there is a major leak in the building below (it's a roof garden) and they've turned it off until it's fixed. Anyone know an effective rain dance?
I've repotted four tomato plants (Rubylicious) They're two feet tall already! They are staying in the mini greenhouse. I've taken the shelves out. Four more will be planted outside on large pots tomorrow (Tumbling Tom).
🌱🌱🌱🌱
No real gardening since Sunday, when I went outside to sweep leaves, and it was freezing! I think it was the first day of snow a couple of hours away and the wind was definitely coming from that direction!!
I have just come inside from walking one of the cats and noticed that one of my daphne plants, which had been looking a bit seedy, it putting out some lovely new leaves, so I"m chuffed about that and feel quite encouraged!!
We have had an unseasonably warm day for this time of year, though a very cold sub zero morning. I pulled the frozen top off my bird waterer this morning. My pansies and violas are blooming wildly.
I've been continuing to rake leaves and clean up fallen camellia petals, I could be doing this more often, but I've been a bit lazy and avoiding going outside on grey mornings...
I was glad of some rain last week, everything is looking so much fresher, but it's been really bad for those interstate where floods have been destructive and unfortunately in places that flooded a bit too recently to pretend there is nothing happening .
We lost a huge Rowan tree in The Beast from the East storm. It blew down. I found two tiny saplings and potted them up. They are growing well.
I've only been here a week and I've already got rid of the plastic grass the previous resident put down.
There's good black soil under it and I have made a start at filling the space by buying a honeysuckle to train up the back fence.
Exciting times!
I've just moved a honeysuckle and found out why it wasn't thriving. It was full of bindweed masquerading as honeysuckle!
The one to the north west matters little, since there are two large and long-established shrubs screening it. The southern one I decided to turn into a green wall. There's a vigorous ivy from another neighbour at one end, then a honeysuckle - which I trimmed hard last year, which seems to have encouraged it greatly. Then a Virginia Creeper I'm training along the top, and below that a climbing hydrangea.
I keep a sharp lookout for bindweed sneaking in amongst them.
How exciting for you! And so glad to think that at least one piece of plastic grass is no more - dreadful stuff.
@Eigon, so pleased you've found good soil at your new home, that bodes well for making a nice garden. Also echoing the joy at the demise of the plastic lawn. Not far from me is a home for sale which is quite spectacular, but the whole place is ruined by a plastic back lawn and extensive use of large white pebbles, which I assume are to form a mulch and minimise weeds, but the whole thing is harsh looking and a bit tacky. I do understand that not everyone can maintain a lawn or wants to reduce water use, but there are other ways to achieve this and soften the overall garden look and feel.
We have quite a small area of lawn which provides some nice green to look at, but is not a lot of mowing. Perhaps we'll consider replacing this with some sort of paving and pots as we get older, but we are fairly contented at present with things as they are.
We have quite a large garden bed to look at from our family room and even though it has quite a lot of plants in it, I like to have pots on the bed which i can fill with seasonal colour. I was happy with the petunias last summer and the pansies are cheerful at the moment. We also get a lot of birds and bees, which are really lovely to observe all year round.
The south-west side of the house just has woodchips up against the fence, and the bed is very narrow - I'd like to find something really tough to plant in this position and I might look for a hardy native that might do well there.
We visited a cool climate native plant nursery this morning and I was very happy to find a prostrate grevillea to plant on our nature strip to try to help with weed suppression. If it's successful we'll invest in a couple more. It was recommended by the plant man on our local radio weekend gardening program. The man at the plant centre was very helpful and we saw another couple of things that took our fancy too, so I suspect we will be having more than this visit there.