Awful weather - typical Brits talk

RAS

Farway, both definitely apple. I'll see if I've can find a pear that's not burst it's buds and photo it so you can compare.

I think you need to find someone who can graft, and then splice a bit of next door's pear tree on your own next winter. It's one of the things I did because my two trees at home did not bloom at the same time. You've got 10 months to find someone and it looks like being easier than getting a second tree!

DD265

I've pottered around outside after work the past couple of days.

Raked over the front ex-lawn on Monday evening and removed the worst of the stones before the skip was collected on Tuesday. Will be topping up the soil - planning topsoil for most of it, then compost around the plants we're putting in. Almost fell down the hole where the acer used to be! We're going to level a slab in to the slope, then will put whatever-our-potted-tree/bush is on that, and we should be able to come right around the pot with slate. I am wondering whether I should just move one of the roses from the back garden, as I already have one in a large pot and it's a beauty when it flowers.

Yesterday I 'built' my little greenhouse. It's the Gro-Zone Tomato Growhouse Max, which is typically £40-45 but it was £35 at our local garden centre so I snapped it up. I'm really pleased with the quality and size wise (it's 100cm x 80cm so takes two growbags, then 150cm tall, opens both back and front) it's great. My heart is still set on the Juliana City Greenhouse, but that's £500 so it's got to wait. I've got the peach (which is looking leafy) and the nectarine (which still just has buds, but it's flexible so fingers crossed it's just a little behind) plus the still-potted-front-garden-plants in there, and I've opened the front door today then closed it overnight.

Today I popped a couple of herbs into the planter; a coriander which is looking quite unhealthy from a stint in the kitchen, and a mint, both came from Tesco, and a flat leaved parsley from the garden centre. It turns out I already have a mint (I thought it was a weed until I smelled it; the two look nothing alike) so the supermarket one went in the greenhouse until I decide what to do with it. I do need to replace my basil - on inspection, that section was indeed weeds.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to do a bit of jetwashing, and to come up with a solution for the bird feeders. We have a storage box which goes up against the fence, and the feeders hang above it. The birds stand on the box, but loads of waste gets either behind it or even in it. We've come up with the idea of some kind of trough, and I need to figure out what, if anything, we can do to achieve that. It's time to track down some slate for the front garden too; I've been watching FB marketplace for about a week now and no joy, so I'm going to bite the bullet and get it ordered. I don't feel like I can put the plants in the ground until the slate has been delivered, in case they have to drop the bags on the bed itself. The guy that took the skip said if he was delivering, he could get it over to the drive but appreciate not everybody will attempt the distance even with a crane thingy.

I need to ID the plants in the front border as I think some of them are weeds, and there's a couple in the back garden I've forgotten the names of. Are there any apps people recommend for this? I've got PlantSnap but I've not been too impressed with the two attempts I made to ID plants today.

Farway

Bright, sunny but cold start, should warm up in the sun later I hope

I've moved my runners from the window sill into the unheated conservatory, they are growing strongly but I don't want them going too mad before May & planting out

Continuing hardening off cosmos, onions, nasturtiums, peas & beetroot.

If the promise of warm weather holds the peas may go into their final position this weekend, only have half a dozen plants of own Hurst Green Shaft but enough for a taster

May pot on more of the tomatoes this afternoon if the sun warms up enough, and possibly sow more radish in modules

RAS said:

Farway, both definitely apple. I'll see if I've can find a pear that's not burst it's buds and photo it so you can compare.

I think you need to find someone who can graft, and then splice a bit of next door's pear tree on your own next winter. It's one of the things I did because my two trees at home did not bloom at the same time. You've got 10 months to find someone and it looks like being easier than getting a second tree!

Thanks for looking, grafting sounds a good idea, just checked and bud grafting could just about work for me, I'll have a look at the trees later & maybe give it a go, nothing lost and TBH next door's tree is so neglected & hacked about another bit missing will never be noticed

Meanwhile there are still some blossom buds left on their tree so fingers crossed for this year

phoebe1989seb

Yesterday the weather here was glorious, feeling far warmer than 10° 😁 I'm so glad I have my new egg chair strategically placed to make the most of this, not to mention the great view over the magnolia Susan which is where the majority of our bird feeders are!

It also confirms our intention that this will be the perfect location for the extension should we decide to stay here.

The plants I ordered (Brunnera mac. Betty Bowring) haven't yet arrived - hopefully they'll come tomorrow as they've been marked as sent and I'd rather they weren't sitting somewhere over the weekend - but the Crambes that came last week have been coming out each day to soak up the sunshine for a few hours.

Along with plenty of weeding/tidying beds, I've been working on the plans for the Sissinghurst inspired bed and think I know exactly where stuff will go/what still needs purchasing. Hoping to have a little run out tomorrow to buy a few more locally grown plants 😉

Lots of things are going great guns now the weather is *slightly* more Spring like - including astrantias, rheums, acteas, kirengeshomas, trilliums, phlomis and of course the persicaria which love it here are romping away. The tiarellas are in bud and the thalictrum Elin is huge already!

Still convinced we've lost some stuff, but you never know.....

RAS

Farway said:

RAS said:

Farway, both definitely apple. I'll see if I've can find a pear that's not burst it's buds and photo it so you can compare.

Thanks for looking, grafting sounds a good idea, just checked and bud grafting could just about work for me, I'll have a look at the trees later & maybe give it a go, nothing lost and TBH next door's tree is so neglected & hacked about another bit missing will never be noticed

Meanwhile there are still some blossom buds left on their tree so fingers crossed for this year

Sorry, carp photo but if you look at the bottom, you can see how pear buds are round, pointed and stand away from the branch, rather than hugging it like an apple.

Re budding, it's easier in one way but the take rate tends to be lower. However, you'll be grafting pear on pear which should take better.

One tip from the person who taught me was to wait until a good thunderstorm. The trees will be soaking up loads of water over the next few days so it helps keep the new bud moist. Cut your twig just before you bud and keep it moist until the deed is done. .
Good luck when the time comes. If it doesn't work you just graft next winter.

Farway

Guess who was watching You Tube about grafting last night? No prizes, it was me. Thanks for photo RAS

It'll either be one of those things that works for me and I'll be grafting a thousand varieties onto one tree or killing everything in sight

Potted on more tomatoes yesterday, only have the Balcony yellow [own seed] left to do now

And my radishes are starting to swell, which is a first for me in years, this year I have them in modules which seems to have done the trick, I'll sow some more this afternoon probably

Continuing with the in / out with the seedlings hardening off, forecast is still cold until next weekend despite the sun today

Today's main task will be water the large pots out the front, not had rain for a awhile & none forecast for at least a week

The T & M fruit tree saga continues, I told them about the duplicate apple trees, here's the response

I may be knee deep in pear trees next

I've asked my daughter if she wants the apple tree

Thank you for your email. 

I am very sorry that you have received an additional apple tree within your recent delivery. We take great care when processing and packing orders to ensure such errors are kept to a minimum.

Thankfully such problems are rare, but I appreciate when they happen the disappointment and inconvenience this causes. I have arranged for a replacement order of the Bare root Pear Beurre Alexandre Lucas to be sent, which I would expect to be dispatched by the end of the month.

With regards the unwanted Apple, you may keep this if you have room to grow it on, or gift it on to someone who may have use for one, having an additional Apple tree local to you will help with polination, so maybe give to a neighbour

Apodemus

Farway,  I'm glad to see that T&M are starting to improve their communications!  My experience last year was that they were always so slow to respond that they were constantly a couple of emails behind, so always answering the last but one part of a serial complaint and never up to speed with what was being despatched (or not).

However, that apple might be better described as barely rooted!   

greenbee

Good luck with the trees Farway. It's a lovely sunny day here, so hopefully is with you as well. 

I've spent a couple of hours in my stream, weeding out water parsnip as well as I can, and dividing and redistributing flags, watermint and crowfoot. There's masses of blanket weed at the moment, and lack of planting won't help that. I'm hoping that this year I can get enough planted up that the flow improves and the water parsnip stops dominating. My upstream neighbour likes her stretch completely clear of vegetation, which doesn't help. 

It's lovely to see the sunshine, and hopefully the weather will warm up properly soon so there's more incentive to get outside!

DD265

I have upset the garden birds

We've moved the storage box from it's previous location under the bird feeders to a different part of the fence. Until we're sure that the birds would be happy to eat there (there's about 1.5m between the fence and the cat enclosure fence!) we've only moved one tray feeder across. This means the tube feeders are all hanging about in mid air and the birds are Not. Impressed. Thoughts so far are;

- cave in, put both tray feeders on the patio (where the original was before) and probably buy more as we know all the birds that visit will happily eat from the ground (all the feeders have been on the ground for about 10 days whilst the fence was stained)
- put a shelf on the fence so the birds have something to stand on again

In the course of moving the box I realised all the mess was because we'd ended up with mixed seeds (and it must not have been no-mess) rather than sunflower hearts due to availability at the time. I'll pay more for the sunflower hearts going forward as I couldn't see a single one in the 'mess'. There's a robin coping quite well, but a pigeon is on the patio looking hopeful that the robin will drop some scraps in it's direction. I feel bad!

Moving the box is good for us, however. It does make access down that side of the house, where we have a small storage area, a little tight but we don't really take anything large that way other than compost. It frees up a lot of space on the patio.

The herb planter has been moved to the front of the house, again freeing up more space. It should be pretty sheltered for them, but they'll get the sun in the morning and it stays fairly bright for the rest of the day - the front garden is (slightly north-)east facing. The coriander has died already, I'm guessing a bit of frost got it, but it didn't look happy in the house either. The lemon balm has also been hit hard, but there's some healthy fresh growth in the middle so it'll bounce back. The planter is now outside the kitchen window so whilst we'll have to walk round for it, I think it's a bit more accessible.

The plan for the space is to put in corner seating around a kadai firebowl. Ideally the seating will have storage in it (I place huge emphasis on effective use of space as we're so limited) so I think it'll be a DIY project.

Farway

Another sunny but cool morning, plant hardening off continues, if sun holds I'll plant the peas out this afternoon, forecast is still cool but peas near house & fingers crossed,

 and I can always emergency wrap them if needed

Again sun dependant I may dead head the daffs out the front & add some blood, fish & bone to the tubs to feed the bulbs for next year. I watered them yesterday, sorely needed

My daughter has agreed to take in the orphan apple tree, I did explain it's background so hopefully when she has a twenty foot tall Bramley in her garden she will not blame me