What I did today - 2017

[sparrow100]

It's raining. Nothing decent, just persistent mizzle. So I am planting up the balcony with herbs and flowers. So far lovage, sage, thyme all done, fuchsia's trimmed, a climbing rose is being persuaded to climb (fingers now covered in plasters!) and all the frost-burned foliage and flower buds are removed from the quince (small sob).

Dill, chives, root parsley, cosmos & trailing geraniums to go - I am reusing compost & that means sifting through for weevil grubs & squashing. This year I'm getting nematodes too, that'll give 'em what for!

I want some astilbe and another climbing rose for the balcony - the scented climber from a few weeks back on GW sounds lovely and a good do-er in shade.

[bario1]

Pulled nettles and bindweed from the old 'compost bin' that was on my plot before i got it - I wanted to dig out and remove it altogether as it's an eyesore, but I won't have time now this season, so I planted six Charlotte spuds in it instead.
Planted out and netted brassica bed no. 2.
Planted out the sugar snap peas.
Planted out the globe artichoke and the Daubenton's kale.
I now have enough room in the cold frame to bring all the tender stuff from home to the plot.
Pulled up the parsley in the polytunnel - newly pricked out pots of this year's parsley will go in when they've bulked up a bit.
Mulched my big pot of peonies with wood chippings.
Other little jobs I can't remember!

[Martin H]

Today I planted out some veggies in the sister-in-law's garden. Sweet corn, DFBs, cabbage, cauli and calabrese.

[Small pumpkin]

A bit of bracken bashing and finished making the bunting for my shed. I've gone with green & yellow colour scheme this year

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

We've had some lovely rain this last couple of days, not a "Boat Load" but enough for my latest topic of getting a friends lawn in order for both his Daughters garden party for their 18th n 21st respectably!

[Hazel at the Hill]

Yesterday I went to the Hill to find that - rather depressingly - a lot of it looked like this:



But that's what happens at this time of year when you go off on holiday and also are training for our town's flagship fundraising event, both of which coincides with the weather being ideal for everything green going bonkers and growing at a triffid-like rate.

However after some hard work, at least some of it looks like this (potato bed), and this (roots bed), with some newly laid chippings on the paths to smarten things up.



At home I have bean and brassica seedlings ready to plant out; and after deciding that my tomato seeds were a fail after 3wks, have bought some little plants at the farmers market at the weekend.

Obviously the next day, the seeds all decided to pop their heads up - ain't nature great?

[bario1]

Panic-planted the last of the kale seedlings, just couldn't bear to compost them.
Gave the polytunnel beds a thorough soaking by connecting the mains tap to the soaker hose - usually it runs from the water butt - now I see how soaker hoses are supposed to work! Might consider changing to a dripper system.
Planted my first tomato plant out - Nimbus F1 - it was free trial seed, anyone else tried it?
Took the two bags of spuds out of the tunnel as they were getting huge - they'll have to fend for themselves outside now. I did put some canes in to support the haulms a bit.
Pulled most of the sorrel out of the asparagus bed, as it was throwing up nothing but flower spikes.

[vixylix]

I had snail-mageddon in the garden last night. We've found lots of dead snails, but only a couple of live ones so far (don't worry - we have an army of slugs), but the rain all day yesterday and last night brought them out for a reunion.

I happened to look out the front window and could see them all lined up all over the front wall. I have genuinely never seen so many snails in my life.

I had a mini-breakdown where I decided I was defeated and it was pointless trying to grow anything - but eventually rallied and took myself outside with my bucket and a pair of gloves.

114 snails later I'd lost the will to live - but that cleared the top and road side of ONE wall. I couldn't face crawling through undergrowth in the wet and dark to get the other side of the wall. I drowned them all in hot water and then felt like a horrible terrible human.

So all in all an eventful evening I'm hoping that wil start to break their cycle though!

[Snoop Puss]

I hate killing snails, but last year I had to. Hundreds upon hundreds over the course of a week. I could have killed more but was appalled by the massacre. There are still plenty left to cause me trouble this year.

[burnie]

I hate killing snails, but last year I had to. Hundreds upon hundreds over the course of a week. I could have killed more but was appalled by the massacre. There are still plenty left to cause me trouble this year.

You could eat them and get your own back........................................

[Bren In Pots]

Washed my GH inside and out, emptied a compost bin into the GH borders then planted my toms there. Potted on cucs, Courgettes and Basil.

[Jay-ell]

Planted put a Bluecrop blueberry, Pink Lemonade blueberry, a Red Pearl lingonberry, a couple of cranberries and a golden currant.

Fitted the mesh to the top of the double greenhouse bean frame. Cleared out the shards of broken glass from around the perimeter of the bean frame greenhouses.

[bario1]

Transported all my greenhouse plants to the plot (polytunnel and cold frame), they'll have to take their chances there now, as the leaves have come out on the trees in my garden so the greenhouse is done for the year.

[ESBkevin]

One area I have is no dig, it's remained filled with flowering kale,brussels, brocholi etc. all about 4ft+ tall. There are no weeds underneath (planted in cardboard and woodchip last year. So I spear a barrow load of homemade compost on the area then chopped and dropped the vegitation removing just the stalks and leaving the roots undisturbed. Theory being that the soil structure and soil food web remains intact and ready to grow again. I then spread a thin layer of the free soil Improver we got recently and left it to bed down for a week or two before planting straight into it. I'm probably going to put some more sweet corn, courgette and dwarf french beans in there and see what happens.
I planted the last of my Texas Grandee onion seedlings (they were the poorest of the batch) to see if they do anything and waterred about some.

Since then we've had a substantial overnight rain, boy did we need that. More to come too so the butts will fill up a bit and the soil gets a good soak.

[vixylix]

I hate killing snails, but last year I had to. Hundreds upon hundreds over the course of a week. I could have killed more but was appalled by the massacre. There are still plenty left to cause me trouble this year.

You could eat them and get your own back........................................

Snoop - that's exactly where I am.

Burnie - it did cross my mind that if I was french I'd either be very happy or very rich!

They're still sat in a bucket on the back steps as I'm not quite sure what to do with them now!