Today I did something in my Garden

looksee

Yes we have the plague of invading fennel. Its really very pretty but you lose patience with it when it pops up in every crack and crevice and flower bed!

Meanwhile today we (entirely unplanned, there are lots more urgent jobs ) got stuck into an area of brambles, nettles and willows which hasn't been touched in donkey's years apart from a place to dump unwanted furniture, mattresses and unidentifiable rubbish. Most of the rubbish was already gone into skips last year, there was just an old metal bed frame and what may have been a small mattress (kind of synthetic black/purple horsehair stuff) and a few bits of timber - oh and a mine of broken wall tiles.

The willows are not looking great - one had a lot of 'new' shoots that were obviously dead, so I gave the tree a push and right enough it was rotten and rocking on its stump. So we pushed it over and hauled it to the dead wood graveyard. Then I spied another one that seemed to be at a mad angle, so I gave that a push and it swayed in the ground, so between us we literally pushed it out of the ground, in spite of quite a bit of optimistic new growth. We were going to sort them out a bit anyway, but I didn't think it would be that easy - they had about one foot diameter trunks. Most of them - there were about 8 in total, 3 or 4 are now gone, are rotten to some extent, the two we pushed over were completely rotten at the base. They are probably around 20 years old at a guess. There is evidence of burning round several of them so maybe they were damaged and got some sort of fungus or rot.

I suppose I should do a bit of research before I plant anything else (hazels maybe) there if they have some kind of rot. Its going to stay a wild corner anyway, the nettles are raring to go again!

CelticRambler

:pac: Ye're all cursing your fennel, and there I was this morning scratching through the dirt trying to find as many plants as possible to lift and save before I get stuck into renovating the herb garden! About half a dozen - the same as the number of single shoots of mint I found - and in great contrast to the many, many clumps of oregano.

After that, I set my mind to cutting some wood (trimming old knotty trunks in preparation for getting them cut into planks) and the next thing I know, it's seven pm and I've broken new ground with a couple of trenches for potatoes, and stripped a narrow border along the pavement out the front back to bare soil - something I've been dying to do for fifteen years!

SnowyMuckish

As annoying as the fennel is I think raspberries /tayberries take first prize in my garden for most annoying plants! I rue the day that I introduced them to the veg patch, should have kept them well away on their own. It’s creeping along under the raised bed sleepers and popping up in all the beds. Spent last spring trying to remove every last piece of root, evidently I didn’t do a great job as I’m back to square one again :mad:

Would you believe my father in law was getting rid of this cordyline?
Its been uprooted for about 2 months but I think its going to be ok.
The root ball was almost 1m deep! Had to rent a van and it was still hanging out the back.



Also bought & planted 2 cox's pippin apple tress on our espalier frame.

CelticRambler

BrownFinger wrote: »

Would you believe my father in law was getting rid of this cordyline?

Parents-in-law can be strange creatures. :pac:

Congratulations on getting it moved; hope it settles in at the new location.

SouthWesterly

CelticRambler wrote: »

Parents-in-law can be strange creatures. :pac:

Congratulations on getting it moved; hope it settles in at the new location.

Mine are 3 5 hours by plane and a 4 hour drive away. In laws not the plants.

Took the day off today and planning on putting in some posts tomorrow to make a support for the beans I sowed yesterday.

looksee

Planted a tree, did some weeding, cut the top third off a very badly placed large holly bush, helped dig up yet another mattress from the willow area, pulled up another rotten willow stump.

magicbastarder

we got some seed sowing done today - pea, shallots, spinach and carrots (i think, my wife was doing some)
got the spuds in the ground last tuesday.

beggars_bush

Two glorious days for gardening

Moved polytunnel, frame in place, timber doors + frames done. Just have to finish timber raised bed frame inside then cover with new polythene.
Made a plan for my veg garden for the season.
Also got most of area dug for my early spuds. Hopefully going into the ground tomorrow.
Also powerwashed three quarters of our paths.

Lashes28

Painted fencing for 92 hours today.

What's the best way to get rid of weeds? The front garden is just a sea of them.

magicbastarder

Lashes28 wrote: »

What's the best way to get rid of weeds?

by embracing them, they cease to be weeds.

SouthWesterly

Lashes28 wrote: »

Painted fencing for 92 hours today.

What's the best way to get rid of weeds? The front garden is just a sea of them.

They are on my weeds if they are flowers in the wrong place.

SnowyMuckish

magicbastarder wrote: »

by embracing them, they cease to be weeds.

SouthWesterly wrote: »

they are flowers in the wrong place.

Good philosophy! I’ve been known in past to take this approach a little too seriously I’m probably the only person on the planet who replants dandelions that I pull out of my garden :pac:

One of these may come in handy for anyone who wants to embrace them :pac:
I’d love one myself

looksee

A mass of dandelions like that looks lovely, and the leaves can be eaten as salad.

I saw a clump of clover with exceptionally prettily marked leaves today, I think I will try and remove it to my anticipated clover lawn. A lot of my grassed area is clover and buttercup, I don't mind buttercup in the grass but its a pest in the flower beds, total thug.

I have a soft spot for well grown clumps of plantain, they can look very sculptural. If they were expensive and hard to grow they would be a designer plant.

If you like herbal tea the goosegrass will soon be ready, stuff a good handful into a mug, add boiling water, wait a bit, haul out the silage. Drink. Very good for you and tastes nice, slightly like camomile.

SouthWesterly

Picked up 25 cabbage plants today from my local 'everything' store.

Built a support frame for my beans.

laoch na mona

seed trays from quick crop came today, only ordered them a little over a week ago. No more reusing egg trays and cutting up milk cartons for seedlings. handy as I realised I've a lot of different seeds left to start in trays

I also got most of my beds prepped over the weekend, will start planting out over Easter and will make a start on moving my glass house

CelticRambler

10:15 (coffee break time) and it's already 15°C outside! :cool:

Today I will do something in the garden! :pac:

blackbox

BrownFinger wrote: »

Would you believe my father in law was getting rid of this cordyline?
.

I can well believe it. Your FIL is a very sensible man.

The amount of time spent I've spent picking up the the leaves from these brutes.

The leaves are almost indestructible. They wind around mower shafts and strimmers.

You can put them in your brown bin or burn them, but don't put them in your compost.

.

SouthWesterly

Secured netting on a frame I built as a fruit cage. Looking at MTC's forecast, the weather won't be good for the next week or so.

countrywoman

SouthWesterly wrote: »

Picked up 25 cabbage plants today from my local 'everything' store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Built a support frame for my beans.

I have lots of cabbage plants ready to plant out too. They are so lovely and healthy. I usually get an awful doing with cabbage fly and insects etc...
I plan to use netting this year. Do you use netting?

CelticRambler

Good things come to those who wait, so they say, and so it seems. Holding off for a week beyond St. Patrick's Day to get my first potatoes in the ground paid off - no rain for three days, and high double-digit temperatures yesterday and today made the newly cleared and broken ground much easier to work. Got a first batch of both earlies and maincrop into place this afternoon, with three drills of great-for-chips Charlottes to do tomorrow.

Morning and early afternoon was spent getting almost sunburnt :eek: as I moved various things from the propagator into individual pots and under cover (lots and lots of tomatoes), pricked out other plants (flowers more than veg), and completed just about all of my scheduled sowings for March.

Working between the old beds and the new terraces, I can see that the latter will need a lot of improvement: it's impossible to get a nice crumbly tilth there at the moment. I transplanted winter-sown lettuce and onion and self-seeded beetroot a couple of days ago, and they're looking happy enough (in the mornings, a bit floppy in the afternoon heat) but I think I'll use it mainly for leafy greens this year and give their roots and the worms a chance to do their work before I add root veg.

Igotadose

Friendly local farmer dropped off a tractor load of cattle manure. Into the beds it went, actually the stuff looks fairly well rotted to begin with. Hopefully this plus an earlier application of seaweed a couple weeks ago will really help the veg along this year.

looksee

Did a bit of half hearted weeding but decided it was too cold so went in and finished the 'tomato house' - a timber and plastic structure using up more of the old greenhouse plastic to make a tall thin 'greenhouse' to grow tomatoes in. Managed to use the zipped front though had to turn it sideways to make it fit Worked out fine!

whelzer

Got a garden sieve in the post the other day - I do not know how I grew anything without one before! Carrot bed has been sieved, the sand I added by hand last year, is properly mixed in now. Will start to get seeds in at the weekend. I have peas in pots in the mini green house. I have borage and viper bugloss seeds in trays on a window sill inside. Have a planter outside the backdoor with rocket seeds in, another with garlic chives.

Took delivery of 20 plants yesterday from Kilmurray nursery for my front garden, they are in. Got some lupins from a guy on adverts earlier today, will get them in tomorrow. A friend of mine is dropping over trays of seedlings at the weekend (herbs, onions,etc), will get all them planted.

All go. One of the few benefits of WFH, I get to spend more time in the garden.

Zardaz

Picked garden flowers,
for Zardette.
She ate them.

SnowyMuckish

Got a delivery of certified native Irish wildflowers today from wildflowers.ie. It’s going to be a busy weekend sowing hope the weather holds long enough.

Ms2011

Setup my wormery.

looksee

Can you use ordinary garden worms for a wormery? We have more worms per square foot than I have ever seen in a garden!

trixiebust

Dug my first ever patch, trying to grow some veg.. potatoes, onions etc. Soil is very clay like so I added compost to help break it up!

Igotadose

looksee wrote: »

Can you use ordinary garden worms for a wormery? We have more worms per square foot than I have ever seen in a garden!

in my wormery experience (outside Ireland), temperature matters a lot. Garden worms don't like it too warm, the 'composting worms' (the red smallish ones) do fine. So, if your wormery is indoors, you might want composting worms rather than generic garden worms.

Frankly, depends on what your plans for the worms are. Seems like if you have lots of worms per sq. foot, you don't need a wormery