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

redofromstart

hi @kiss_me_now9 - I used to juggle house and garden and toddlers, hard work.  The original fly lady threads helped me with the house stuff and I still use those routines.

I have done:
1 x 15m hoeing weeds off the veg plot - good for the bingo wings at least
1 x 15m weeding a long border using the catspaw/mini hoe I got from MrL a few weeks ago, worked really well and made the job easier. Probably helped that I top dressed with a lot of coir last autumn.

Planted one of the surviving courgettes and did 1 x 15m of watering various things.

Back is protesting so a sit down is needed.  

greenbee

Strimmer battery is dead, so have ordered another and cut the grass I need to with long-handled shears. Used the weed puller a LOT. Cardboard is down where I want to do the squash/climbing courgettes, and I have found some bits of metal grid that might work for them to climb up. Also found some more bits of wood to use as edging

Just had lunch (must sow more radishes) and will head back out after some coffee to barrow a billion loads of compost over to fill the bed (and another small one for one of the rhubarbs). I just have to pick up some bricks/lumps of concrete to support the wooden edges first. 

I've got takers for a few of my tomatoes, but not nearly as many as I need to get rid of!

Cheery_Daff

Hello 😊 Can I join in too?? 😊

I'm trying to have an attitude change to our garden this year! It's big, and I get overwhelmed. We moved here 6 years ago from a terrace with barely any garden, right on the pavement, and now we live very rurally with a large garden that has a footpath running down the drive, and only a thin wire fence separating it from a field. Anything I might describe as 'lawn' is basically field and constantly trying to revert back, and I've spent a LOT of time feeling overwhelmed since we moved, since I'm the only one who does any gardening. 

However, I do NOT want 'overwhelmed and despair' to be the feelings I associate with my garden! It's beautiful here, there's enough space to grow whatever I want, and the views are glorious 🥰

I'm going to answer the weekly questions - thanks @redofromstart 😊

1. think about what you want from your garden, what you use it for and what the barriers are to that.  

I want to feel a bit more on top of things. I want different seating areas for different times of day, each with their own chairs so I don't have to keep moving them. I've cleared up a little terrace by the front door and am keeping an eye out for a (free) better bench, and have cleared the only area of grass that can't be seen from the footpath.

I'm also currently creating a little patio by the house in a sheltered sunny spot- don't know why i didn't do that years ago!

I also want to keep on top of the strimming. There's a LOT of grass i don't cut (before anyone suggests I just leave it!) But I do like to be able to get at the seating areas, washing line, and greenhouse, preferably without wellies. I'm adopting a routine of strimming once a week - the main two areas plus one extra. 

2. Spend at least 15 minutes removing weeds before they set seed. If you haven't got any then feel free to call round and help me.

I did two hours of strimming yesterday including clearing the nettles that had grown up through my swing seat while I was on holiday - counting that as weeding! 😂

3. do you have seedlings or young plants that need hardening off before the big move outdoors? Time to get this going if you haven't already. 

Nope, no seedlings for me this year!

4. Have you got any plants hanging round in pots that really need to be planted out? Make a space and get them in and watered. 

Yes, my sister bought me a few plants for my birthday, some still need potting up, I'll do that tonight. 

I've decided I'm not growing any veg this year - I want to use the time to get on top of a few projects, seating etc. Back later with pictures of my patio in progress!

greenbee

Bits of rubble to support wooden bed-edging located and put in place, 7 barrow-loads of compost deposited, and one more ready in case it is needed once I rake/compact the compost. Then I can do the small bed for the rhubarb and the woodchip on the path. Planting can wait until it is cooler. 

Identified a potential weed as Feverfew, so will leave it and hopefully incorporate it into the herb garden whenever I get round to that...

Cherryfudge

redofromstart said:

interesting @SuzeQStan, I have a small patch of white JA.  fairly dry and very shady spot under some trees, in the north shadow of the house, and that and elephants ears are the only things that survive but it also doesn't spread.

We have Japanese anemone too but we're obviously doing something wrong as it has hung on (under trees) for thirty years and I'm not even sure it's still there...

Question please? Does anyone know about the roots on plantain? The 'weed' version, not the things that look like bananas. We have a massive invasion on the side of the house where the ground elder isn't. For a long time we got on in a neighbourly sort of way: 'Hello plantain. All right?' 'Mustn't grumble, mustn't grumble.' Last year I noticed that a couple of plantains in the little lawn had become many, and started digging them out till the ground got too dry. This year, counting today's effort, I've removed 140, and there's a small space where I'm fairly sure there aren't any. Some of them seem to have what looks rather like a tap root, but has a clubbed end that doesn't seem to be broken off. Others - including some of the bigger ones - are just a bunch of thin white roots. Are the thicker ones perhaps older plants? If I leave bits in the soil, will I be inundated next year?

I can't believe how many there are. Earlier in the year I guessed at 200 but when you get up close, the smallest plants look like grass so are easy to miss, and there could be several times 200.

Here are my 15s for today so far:

• ground elder
• shrubs and hedges (and brambles)
• houseplants - feed, water and stand some in the garden)
• plantain (50 today)
• potting on 8 peppers and a tomato.

SuzeQStan

Our JA is the frisky pink stuff - inherited it with the house not realising what it was or how horrifically it would spread.  

The only thing I’ve found that stops it is our oak tree on one side and the behemoth holly on the other. 

The war zone is the 30 feet bed in between.  Even with membrane and several inches of mulch overtop I still pulled about 10 JA today growing up through the holes in membrane for other plants.

but that is so much better than the hundred or so I used to pull every weekend.

 

ArbitraryRandom

I'm wondering if you've got both common plantain weed species? 

Broad leaf plantain can produce tens of thousands of seeds in a year, and has a chunky tap root but doesn't generally propagate from root fragments.

Narrow leaf plantain has a small tap root at the crown, but then lots of thin roots. One of which is a slightly thicker rhizome, which can form new plants if cut. 

I've done very little in the garden today - between the heat, pollen, and needing to do some things in the house for the coming week. I will need to water tomorrow if it's hot again, and Monday is the day I picked for feeding the toms and pots. 

greenbee

Have done the next round of jobs - created a climbing frame for the courgettes and squash (probably won't be big enough), emptied the mower (just stuff cut to clear for the new beds) into the compost heap, added more string to the pea wigwam, tied up the broad beans (and managed to get the frame further into the ground as the net was only just touching the ground). Bit of tidying in the greenhouse. Drained the leachate from the hotbin to use to feed stuff in the veg plot later.

It's clouding over now, so I'm going to plant the courgettes/squash and a couple of tomatoes (there is room in the bed), do the watering/feeding, and make sure I've tidied up (there are weeds drying out all over the place - happy to leave the small ones in the borders, but the big ones are all over the grass so need rounding up. Hopefully I can mow/weedkill/pot stuff up tomorrow. 

Sun_Addict

I love my pink Japanese Anemone. It’s very well behaved and confines itself to just one patch of the garden. We also inherited ours with the house when we moved in 32 years ago. 

The most rampant thing in my garden is Herb Robert it loves my garden. However it grows in areas where nothing else grows so it can stay in those places. 

Today’s gardening task was making a start on staining the drive gates and fencing. What a blooming task that is -  3 hours of it and nowhere near finished. 

Cherryfudge

ArbitraryRandom said:

I'm wondering if you've got both common plantain weed species? 

Broad leaf plantain can produce tens of thousands of seeds in a year, and has a chunky tap root but doesn't generally propagate from root fragments.

Narrow leaf plantain has a small tap root at the crown, but then lots of thin roots. One of which is a slightly thicker rhizome, which can form new plants if cut. 

I've done very little in the garden today - between the heat, pollen, and needing to do some things in the house for the coming week. I will need to water tomorrow if it's hot again, and Monday is the day I picked for feeding the toms and pots. 

I had no idea there are two versions, so thank you for this! I've seen the broad leaf plant but what's in the lawn is most definitely narrow leaved. I'm glad I've been taking care to get the rhizomes out intact - at least I think I did - as I really have my work cut out.

Tonight I'm going to bring my transplanted pepper plants in as I'm sure the slugs will spot the new pots and go there for dinner. I know I can't do this all summer and there's insufficient room indoors but if I can get the plants taller and stronger, it may give them a better chance.