Trowel and Error

[Mountain Goat]

Thanks, that is heartening. It will definitely be upside down, and came off in nice strong strips so it's quite easy to do (when we dug the big border last year we only managed it in clumps which was much harder to lay upside down properly, but now I have a better tool).

[absley]

this year I'll concentrate on the main flower beds and get some sort of control over them!

I think this sort of decision is so sensible - having some bits that are looking good is so much better for me than seeing half done jobs everywhere. I hope Mr D is okay.

Goat! Your pyramid is fabulous. :))

We had another dry day and I spent most of it digging out the endless herb bennet that really got a hold last summer. As well as in the borders, I've cleared a c25cm strip all round the veg bed hedges/ and blackberries area - just need to work out what to replace it with so it doesn't just come back. Was thinking strawberries maybe? They seem to enjoy taking over and don't mind a bit of shade? I have some alpine strawbs elsewhere that could do with relocating. I also thought of some nasturtium seeds that I collected last year, but maybe they need more sun?

D cleaned the greenhouse interior and I also sowed some seeds, so good progress. Plus I've picked my second batch of rhubarb, which I want to jam today.

[absley]

Oh and look at this, which emerged amid the drizzle - a double rainbow! So joyful!

[baargain]

Nasturtiums are enthusiastic, and will overflow and then self seed everywhere. Strawberries (regular or alpine) could be a good shout, just watch out for bird shaped competition. I've started adding smallish pollinator friendly plants around my veg patch, like poached egg plant, and marigolds (also meant to put aphids off but who knows). I also plugged many gaps with dwarf beans, but I was drowning in seedlings :))

[baargain]

Excellent rainbow!

[Bat Macdui]

Goat! :)) Your greenhouse assembly reminds me of when I built Ikea bunk beds alone. :))

Lovely rainbow.

I am in Year 1 proper of Doing the Garden, as we had our one year in the house anniversary a few weeks ago and we've been concentrating on kitchens and offices and also being knackered. My main plans are sorting a raised bed and tomato growing, and planting out the flower bed I liberated from under gravel last year. I've already started on the fences - they're painted now and supporting clematis and a honeysuckle. And I bought an obelisk. :))

[Mountain Goat]

Lovely rainbows! I also like your euphorbia punctuating all over the place.

I've just realised from your post Baa that dwarf beans don't need a trellis. :lol: I've carefully created my area for climbing things without looking properly (I was given the seeds so didn't actively choose them and haven't planted them yet so haven't looked at the packet properly).

I have marigolds and nasturtiums around my veg (but they're in sun). Both did really well, marigolds don't self seed I don't think (or mine didn't) but nasturtiums are already coming back all over AND I have a massive jar of nasturtium "capers" so I had gathered up a lot of the seed pods. Plus they happily martyred themselves to caterpillars, saving my veg (or maybe the caterpillars wouldn't have come without them, who knows :lol: ) and then still coming back in the autumn when the caterpillars had gone after being almost completely eaten. You can get some really vibrant shades too. Might be a nice place to also plug in herbs that like shade, parsley/coriander/anything salad-y? Chives are ok with shade? Or for non veg related stuff that will not be bullied by herb robert, alchemillia or erigeron? (though I am growing the latter from seed and OH MY GOD it is slow to get going - but is perennial AND self seeds and is pretty).

I pricked out my tomato seedlings yesterday and if they all survive the pricking (I got a bit careless towards the end because I definitely don't need them all to live :)) ), I have 36. I need about 3. I have offered them to two people so far but they both have fathers with too many too, so no dice. :lol:

We replaced the turf last night. Two hours. Easier with two, but nothing is easy on my poor sore body after four bloody days straight of this. The stomping down was a bit lacklustre on my part towards the end and it shows, and the whole thing needs some levelling, but nearly there. Sort of.

[Mountain Goat]

Cross posted with you Bats. Bunk beds definitely sounds worse though I suppose at least they don't involve glass. :lol: You are the same as me but a year off, I started around this time last year after spending the first year on indoor stuff (still very far from finished, naturally, but nothing madly urgent). I wish I had painted my fences, I backed out and decided on climbers instead but the fence is so ugly and now the trellises are up it's way too much work to go back and paint now. Do you have much in there from previous people or are you starting from scratch?

[Bat Macdui]

I am starting very much from scratch, the back is still mostly paved. And actual cash is reserved for in house improvement, so this is a definite labour of love. Stressing the labour. I am hoping the days dry out a bit soon, then I can least start getting an hour or so an evening in, to incrementally release ACTUAL LAND. :)) There will be a LOT of pots this year, I think, so I am starting seeds for those. And I put tulips in at the start of the year, so they are coming up (in their pots) now and that's very satisfying.

[Mountain Goat]

Oh my, you're taking up lots of paving by yourselves? I don't even really know what's involved but it sounds menacing. :lol: Definitely worse than taking up turf and that infuriates/exhausts me. I am also doing lots of pots this year I think, as the massive planter-with-seats I bought for the new gravel area is actually smaller than I envisaged (it's hexagonal, so me measuring out the widest parts gave me a skewed sense of how dominant it would be and I went down a size and shouldn't have) so there will be space that will need something.

My first tulips are out at the moment and I love them, and also put a struggling massive bee in one yesterday (she had been trapped in a cell of a seed tray in the garage and was just exhausted) and she was flying around my head five minutes later, so I consider my tulips to also be doing an important job.

We are also reserving cash for the house stuff (not that this stops me buying plants/mini greenhouse etc) hence all the digging. I have now sworn though that I am getting someone in when it comes to digging a pond (next year). NO.

[absley]

Oh, good call on shade loving herbs, Goat, I have parsley, coriander and chervil seeds which would all like that. And erigeron - we don't have any and I always admire it when I'm out. I'll see if I can find a small pot somewhere, rather than seeds! :))

Good luck Bats, that sounds like a lot of effort. I'm nervous of pots for watering reasons , as I'm not diligent enough.

[Derek Nimmo]

At least there won't be a hosepipe ban this summer if you do have a pot filled garden. I think the water companies would face rioting in the streets if they tried to impose one after the last few months

My most exciting garden news is that my misadventures with too much washing up liquid as a pest killer last year may have fucked my peonies just before flowering :cry: but they're back in full strength for 2024! I count 5 very healthy looking clumps of them

[Disco]

Ooh lovely Del! What colour are your peonies? I want pale pink ones but have some dark pink ones.

My seedlings are germinating (savoy, broc, 3 types of toms, broad beans, dill, tarragon & parsley). I really need to mow the grass but the wetness concerns me as I’ll pull up half the roots I think.

[Mountain Goat]

Good peony news! I also want some pale pink ones that will be happy in a big pot.

Same here with the grass, also I'm facing a stand off because mowing is the one thing in the garden (other than carrying bags of compost out the car) that isn't my job so I pettily refuse to do it. :))

A small erigeron plant is definitely a better plan, they are inexpensive I think. I was just now trying to thin my masses of microscopic seedings AGAIN and was thinking I could probably have just got three small plants for a tenner. Mine will go around the edge of the big planter for the middle of the gravel area with a big rose in the middle (and probably something wafty like cosmos purity or ammi, need to check what's undemanding enough to not annoy the rose). I want that area to be soft colours and calm and old fashioned, then you turn the corner and it's all bold jewel colours. Hence the pale pink peonies too.

I brought my tarragon inside for the winter and it's survived but it's not looking thrilled about it. I need to get the mini greenhouse finished (ha, not doing that if there's a storm this weekend, not with real glass) so I can move some seedlings into there and get some more started, I'm out of reasonable-person seedling room yet itching to sow more.

[Demelza]

I had to look up erigeron then realised we had some in the garden :)) It's so pretty – always makes me think of my grandparents' garden, as they had loads of it.

There's a plant sale at our local community garden this weekend so I'm hoping to pick up some seedlings then (hopefully sweet pea and some veg, though I guess it's not too late to sow still). I have got a lot of cuttings that have taken (fuschsia, honeysuckle and roses) – purely from cutting bits off and sticking them in water – so have them to plant out at some point.

Good to know about the turf also – I have a smallish pile on a flowerbed which I will just turn over and leave!

[Derek Nimmo]

It's been two years since I've seen them, so I'm struggling to remember :)) Dark pink I think.

I love erigeron and have some seeds to scatter bountifully on the cottage bit of the garden (as opposed to the seaside pebbly garden on the other side, and the exotics / jungly look I'm going for in the front. I think "eclectic" is the word).

The lovely George who mows my lawn is coming today to give it its 3rd go of the season, he doesn't seem to think it will do it any harm, and it's certainly looking lush at the moment. But I know very little about these things! Is your lawn quite new Dics?

[Disco]

Not too new, no; last decade. I’ll do it on my next free dry day. It’s getting quite long.

[Mountain Goat]

Did you pick anything up at the community garden Delmelza? That sounds like such a good idea, I wonder if there's any sort of seed swapping goes on around here, I've not heard of anything. I have managed to corner two people and get them to take some tomato seedlings when they're ready to leave home though. I'm a tomato pusher.

Eclectic is the best. Plus a garden with distinctly different moods in different areas is lovely, I think.

Predictably I failed to finish the greenhouse due to the winds. I did get the area to be gravelled levelled though (I am now looking at 4cm on a tape measure and thinking I could take it a bit higher still, I thought I knew how big 4cm is but apparently not :lol: ). That took most of Saturday. The gravel arrives on Friday.

And I potted on my ammi majus, comos purity and salvia blue monday (my god do I need greenhouse space!), freeing up three seed cell trays so I then planted cosmos apricotta, astrantia ruby cloud (which looks to be tricky to germinate so...) and with the third tray did half the cells cavolo nero and half broccoli. I wasn't going to do broccoli because of it taking so long and using up my precious space but was given seeds so...we'll see how it all pans out. I also planted out broad beans (outside) and borlotti beans (inside). Lettuce, rocket and radish sown last weekend are all poking through now. My sweet peas are ready to go outside but I didn't want to subject them to the winds straight away so they can wait a bit longer. Dahlia tubers I potted up a couple of weeks ago are all nicely in leaf (though no sign yet of the ones I left in the ground under a massive strulch, I wonder if I need to remove some of that?)

[absley]

Our local horticultural society has a plant swap in May and so does one of of the churches (although they might charge, now I think about it). Hope you can find something, Goat.

I'm in awe of all the potting on, having looked through my seeds and thought it was too early, so I'm going to get on and start sowing as we don't have trips away for a while, so watering will be easy enough. My potatoes are also finally sprouting so I think they may go in the ground next week.

I had a really satisfying time moving stuff at the weekend - a potentilla limelight that was swamped under a holly is now filling a gap in the hedge we share with next door, plus I'm going to move a small photonia red robin to fill a similar gap (I'm wondering if this might currently be planted in a pot as everything I read says they grow big) which is opposite a red leafed plant the neighbours have, so they can talk to each other. I also have plans to buy a red dragon paperbush to put near the front door instead of in that hedge, so we get the perfume as we come and go next winter.

It feels good to be a bit more considered and therefore confident with my choices.

[Bat Macdui]

Have you had a look for local garden groups on Facebook, Goat? One of the ones I'm in has a couple of people who sell on plugs for a few quid in aid of the local hospice. "On table in drive, message for address" There are also people offering cuttings, in amongst a good few "what the hell is THIS?" posts about things sprouting. :))

We dug a smallish and stupid pond at weekend. I was having vocabulary failure and R was wielding a spade too enthusiastically, so it's too deep and too square. :)) Hopefully it'll be a bit drier at weekend and I can do some modifications. The pond plants have been living in a plastic trug for two years though, so it'll be nice to get them out and let them settle into a new home.

And the only other news I have is that the fat woodpigeon has sat on one of my lupins.