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

Cherryfudge

Thank you for the article @Mee, the photo looks remarkably like my garden! It's encouraging to know I can treat ground elder as a tide to be stemmed, rather than spending years trying to pull up every last bit. I don't think I will get it out of the lawn without weedkiller, which I've been resisting but may resort to that as the lawn needs help for various reasons. Elsewhere, I continue to battle on...

Today there's another flush of new growth: not just ground elder but everything! Now that yesterday and this morning's wind has died down, I was able to put in an hour and a half of weeding: not just GE but new bramble branches and geum seeds that I'd missed. I'm pleased to say I can see progress, though to anyone else it would have to be explained.

I've also picked more blackberries and greengages, and emptied the last of the buckets of rainwater into the compost heap.

Cherryfudge

How are all your gardens growing? Or are you completely inundated with harvesting and watering? We have a huge excess of greengages and where our house is, few people come past the gate so we won't benefit from putting a box out for people to help themselves. I've made some jam, stewed a few and made up 500g bags of washed and sorted ones which we are giving to any friends who show the slightest interest.

At the car boot yesterday, I got a very small bulb (or weeding?) trowel for 50p and a sort of claw, also 50p, which is brilliant for the ground elder roots in the gravel. I got as much out in ten minutes as I normally do in an hour (though there's a very long way to go). It's also made short work of scooping the top layer out of compost bin 1. That's now transferred to compost bin 2 and I'm using the compost from bin 1. I've been doing a roughly 50/50 mix of this with garden soil to fill some large pots and finally planted out the leeks I bought some weeks ago. They aren't going directly into the ground as there's nowhere prepared, but the soil is sorted through for stones, plastics and roots so it's a way of keeping it separate while I clear the weeds, put down mulch and top up with either plant pots or gravel. There's still only about a square metre that I feel is 'done', but there are fewer weeds elsewhere than there were.

As well as the leeks, I've got potatoes and herbs on the go, and various flowers, also in pots. The pretty stuff is intended for the front garden alongside the path but there aren't enough hours in the day!

SuzeQStan

Glad you found a useful tool for such a bargain price Cherry 👍🏻

its been so hot here and the rain barrels long empty so I’ve been getting a work out with the watering cans.  Takes a good hour to water the things that need it and I follow @twopenny ‘s advice for a good dunking of any potted plants every week or two on top. 

Happy to report I haven’t seen an anemone seedling in weeks now.  I’m watching the same variety rip through our neighbour’s garden bed (thankfully other side from ours)  and from theirs to their next door neighbour which really is a shame as they have a lovely herbaceous border full of wild things. This particular JA variety is such a thug it out competes pretty much anything it encounters. 😔

Went to a flower show on Saturday and bought a large veronicastrum at an excellent price which I’ve had my eye on for some time. It’s replacing a dead rose which I took out.  

We took a picnic to the show which must have saved us a fortune - whippy ice creams were £4.50, and sarnies a blessed tenner 😱.  But on the upside I got to meet one of the gardeners from GW which was nice.

KajiKita

My garden is a right off this year due to lack of rain - we’ve barely had any since the end of March. I’ve kept some new plantings going, ornamental pots, the greenhouse and the cut flower border but the rest … 🤷‍♀️ We are drowning in plums - apples will be next. 

I’m quietly keeping a note of garden learnings from the year:
- Must buy bigger pts for my begonias next year - one of them toppled over and the others I am struggling to keep on top of the watering for them.
- I need a new tap on the waterbutt by the garage - current one is pretty much seized and the handle is starting to split.
- Having pots under the JM works really well - adds cooler to a drab area and if I make them the same / similar plantings to the verandah it will tie together really nicely. I can repurpose the current begonia pots for this. 

- I need to give up on trying to grow sweet peppers - they just die in my greenhouse. I’ve tried for 4 years now, if think that’s enough! 😂
- Clearing a small area at a time and immediately planting it up with what’s in flower at the time has worked really well for me this year. I’m pacing myself better and don’t get left with huge dispiriting swathes of work left to do ….

KK

kazwookie

Toms are cropping well

Cues are slow but have one so far, and two more growing.

Just picked 1.5kgs blackberries while out wlking. 

EssexHebridean

Hey all - our little garden is still providing a source of great joy and plenty of work! Trying to keep tomatoes even vaguely alive in growbags is the current main occupation - getting sufficient water into them is an ongoing task. I think for next year I will definitely only be growing chillis and bush toms in bags - everything else needs to go in pots. the discovery that the plastic trays mean for putting boots in are a great size and shape to stand the pots in has been a lifesaver though - there will need to be additional of both pots and trays for next year. 

Beans are still coming - and freezer 2 is rapidly filling up with them. KK - we've found that the sweet peppers have done well just in the garden itself, I have tucked the pots in front of the compost bin so they get some shelter and reflected warmth from that which I suspect helps. that said, the chillies are going great-guns up in the cooler patch by the house, so who knows what they want! 



These are the "Bishops Crown" chillies that a few of us had free seeds from KG Magazine. 

Courgettes are appearing at a mercifully manageable rate. Cucumbers likewise. Tomatoes have been slow getting started but are now starting to ripen - annoyingly though we're not going to get the sort of level of crop we had hoped for in spite of having lots of plants.  Oh - and we ate our first two home grown sweetcorn ears at the weekend - delicious! 

We used the Bank Holiday weekend to deal with the refurbishment of the log store - which in spite of our concerns about the roofing (neither of us having dealt with roofing felt before!) went rather well. 



We now have additional space free'ed up in the shed thanks to being able to fit so many logs into the store - we just have to hope now that it actually does its job and keeps them all dry, too! At the moment that space isn't giving us much advantage beyond somewhere to store the untouched (massive!) pot of paint for the continuation of the task of repainting the shed/office, and the plastic baskets that get used at seedling time to keep things neat-ish in the greenhouse. A bit of reorganisation once we get the chance should make things work better, but for now I'm just delighted to have at least some clear surfaces in there again! 

I've done fresh sowings of various salads, and have also re-sown the cabbages as the first lot (predictably) got eaten! More basil too - ready for further batches of pesto - and we rescued a pot of parsley and one of chives from the orange DIY place's clearance section. 

SuzeQStan

Log store looks fab EH 😍 agree with you re grow bags - we said the same this year. 

Love pesto made with home grown basil can’t beat it

KajiKita

Thanks for the feedback about the sweet peppers @EssexHebridean. I had decided not to bother growing them at all next year because 🙄🤷‍♀️ It hadn’t even occurred to me to try them outside…!  
They will be in the veggie patch next to the greenhouse, I think - let’s see if that helps at all …? 

KK

Cherryfudge

I am very impressed with your log store, @EssexHebridean - it's four time the size of ours!

I continue to make bits of progress against the ground elder: got a real knot of roots out yesterday but then I spotted another patch that's fully grown, and it could take a while till I get that far round the garden. Meanwhile we are onto our third or fourth week of the glut of greengages so a lot of my time gets taken up with them in one way or another. I've even had them drop on my head while picking up the fallen ones!

We are going to be away for the best part of a week and I have plant-Mum anxiety so this afternoon I dug over a small patch next to the new path and added a whole bucket of home made compost as it looked as though the humus content was composed entirely of dead bits of spring bulbs and twigs. I've now planted it up with some lavender, thyme, crocuses, a dianthus and a Mexican Fleabane that had all been stuck in pots, waiting. I found a little gap further up for a yellow foxglove and watered everything in.

Veg-wise, the leeks and spring onions are now in bigger containers and I've potted on a hardy fuchsia in the hope that the extra soil will cushion everything against drought. Mind you, this is the fourth consecutive day we've had rain. It's not been enough to get deep into the soil but much better than none. It's also become very windy so everything needs extra water.