GreenFly - A 'flylady style' gardening thread with weekly tasks to tame your garden

redofromstart

What do we mean by GreenFly? Over on old style there is a long running and supportive community who focus on getting the house clean and tidy in smaller steps.  A group of us thought that something similar for taming the garden would be very useful so here it is.

The idea is that by doing little and often we can get on top of the outside tasks and make our garden spaces a source of joy.  The plan is to add a weekly suggested list of tasks, and people can then post their progress.

Everyone welcome - regardless of size of plot and knowledge of gardening.
Before and after photos are always a joy to see.

redofromstart

Weekly Tasks  Updated 08/06

1. Multiples of 15 minutes on the basics - watering weeding, tidying.  Have a walk round - where needs in the most?  Can you nip some flowering weeds off before they bloom?
2. 15 minutes on this season productivity or pretty things such as adding some seeds, planting out veg, hanging baskets or pots, etc. 
3.  15 minutes progress on your longer term aims.

Feed back on what you have done - love before and after photos.
Suggestions for things to add would be appreciated.

KajiKita

Awesome! 🤩 
Subscribed 😊❤️

KK

Merlin's_Beard

Thank you so much for setting this up!

greenbee

Thanks @redofromstart. I'm in. When it stops raining, obviously.

Brie

I shall try to take encouragement as I'm the world's worst at keeping up with that green mess!   

• Currently have a green house full of important stuff that must be saved junk.  
• I've got 4 large pots that seem to only be used by birds so they can dig up grubs.  Do I dare get a courgette again and see if I can get anything whatsoever to grow?
• 2 pots with sun flower seeds that haven't yet sprouted (planted this last week)
• I have 2 wonderful black eyed susans that I'm trying to encourage to trail along the side of the deck railing but any time I go out there end up just playing peek a boo with the very large spider who lives nest to them.  (OH tells me I'm weird for playing with spiders)
• 4 tomato plants that need whatever it is that you do with tomato plants so you have a hope of getting any actual tomatoes.  
• Sweet peas and morning glories have yet to reach the 3 inch mark.
• And then there's the dreaded honey fungus to deal with...do I get some trunk burner to get rid of whatever the previous owners had cut down or should I wait until the baby robins fledge and get away from any toxic chemicals.  Then take out the dead bush near by.  And then see if I really should plant out that cherry tree in the same vicinity.
• Decide if that dead bunch of sticks along the back of the garden is the lavender planted last year and see if I've got a "guaranteed 2 years" receipt for it still somewhere.
• Check the calendar to see when the gardeners are coming again to cut the grass.
• See if I can find the calendar.  OH did say he would hang it up last month. Not that it's urgent as we're not half way through the year yet.  Sorry - that's an inside job so I probably should cross it off. 
• prune some bushes back.

Oh it goes on and on and on........

KajiKita

@Brie, with reference to any dead trees or stumps, yes you will have to wait until all the birdlings have fledged 😊 so you won’t be able to do anything with that area this season (except possible pots on the surface? 🤔) but you don’t have to use chemicals. When I had some big fir trees taken down here, the tree surgeon put me onto a separate contractor who had a stump grinder - a ferocious but effective piece of kit. Might be worth asking your gardener if they know of anyone with one? 

KK

greenbee

Have watered houseplants and anything in the greenhouse that looked like it needed it (water just comes straight out of the bottom of the pots, so I think the toms and aubergines might need to be put in gravel trays - they’re on cardboard that I’m using to mulch the soil on the basis that the roots could grow through it. And they’ll clearly need feeding. I then filled up the watering cans, persuaded the cat who had come out with me that the rain wasn’t so bad and it could come out of the greenhouse, and came back in.

What I need to do is:

• get access to the village gardening WhatsApp group and offload my spare tomato seedlings before they die!
• Keep potting up cosmos and nicotiana and lavender so I have stuff to plant
• Put compost in pots on patio so I can move things into them
• Build at bed to put climbing courgettes and squash in
• Build a bed to put rhubarb in
• Weed/weedkill
• Pot up cucumbers before they die on me
• Make space in the greenhouse for cucumbers and peppers (by getting rid of excess tomatoes!

And THEN start thinking about the garden design and what plants I might want to acquire AFTER I have somewhere to put them. 

There are two builders’ bags of garden waste on the patio which will more than fill the garden waste bins in 2 weeks. And there will be more by then as we’re finally clearing beds and doing a bit of cutting back/pruning where necessary to see what’s there.

i filled the ordinary bin today with the remnants of the dog flap and half the carpet that’s been adorning the drive for weeks. The other half can go in a fortnight. 

Brie

For those with excess plants - I've seen numerous ads locally about plant sales for charity or plant exchanges where you can hand in all those tomato seedlings and get peppers and squash instead.  Also lots of people on freegle asking for excess plants - saves you the hassle of trying to pot them up.

Or even just put them out front of your house - someone is bound to help themselves.  

ArbitraryRandom

I'm not sure if 'greenfly' has quite the right associations for this thread  

But today I've had a walk through the garden - I'm trying to get out every day at some point - because the garden has been badly infested with bind weed and I've just had raised beds built, so my mission this summer is to prevent the bind weed from growing up through the beds. I keep finding the odd shoot just breaching the surface every three or four days and dig down as far as I can (the beds are 60cm so I can't get right down to the old ground level without falling in!) to pull out as much as I can. The roots are getting thinner I think, so hopefully I'm wearing it down by forcing it to keep regrowing while denying it the chance to open any leaves. 

I'm not sure how to tackle the rest of the garden right now. It's kind of on hold until I have a patio built next year. Little old man local gardener/handyman is booked in for the next time we have a couple of dry days forecast to come and cut/tidy. I probably need him to visit once a month for the next 3/4 months as the grass is growing just that quickly.  I'm hoping my new compost bin will have been delivered by then so I can get it set up. It's a 'hot composter' so I'm hoping I can use the bindweed cuttings (if not the roots). Alternatively I've a spare wheely bin that I can use to smother/drown the weeds from the back and use the cuttings from the front (no bindweed) to compost. 

No watering needed at the moment due to the weather kindly providing at least once a day. I'm getting into my feeding schedule tho with the toms and pots. I think that's going to be a sunday or monday (whichever day it's not raining). 

greenbee

Arb - I can recommend at least keeping the rest of the garden from getting worse. Focus on the bit you've got under control and just keeping the rest at bay. If you have time, then do a bit more. 

All I've managed today is watering (and harvesting some salad leaves and radishes at lunchtime). 

Electricians start tomorrow, so even if it isn't raining I probably won't get into the garden (I also have a massive amount of work that I could do with shifting in the morning). 

Looking in the greenhouse I really do need to get on with potting up/on the numerous seedlings and planting out the squash and climbing courgettes before they all give up. Which means I also need to message my neighbour to let her know I can't see the village gardening whatsapp group she says she added me to (just done) in the hope that I can shift some tomatoes rather than composting them.