The week in my garden - 10.08.15-16.08.15

How on earth is it the middle of August already? Where has the time gone? 

I've been away this weekend visiting friends, which was wonderful, but I still managed to get a reasonable amount of garden time in during the week, both before and after work.

Sitting in the garden is incredibly enjoyable at the moment (providing the weather is reasonable). Some parts of the garden look beautiful, and bring me lots of joy. The Crocosmia (lucifer variety) are just stunning. I can't take credit for the wooden sleepers, they were in place when we bought the house. I think they really complete the look though, allowing the lucifer to spill over the top. They bring such a fabulous burst of colour to the garden.

This picture does not do the Crocosmia justice!

Our apple tree is also still full of apples, although they do keep dropping off in the wind. I'm just hoping that a decent number stay on the tree and become ripe so that we can make lots of apple crumble!

This week my husband started digging out the foundations for our second vegetable bed. Last week, he pulled back the membrane that was in place in that area and found a load of bricks underneath, that had foundations themselves! Luckily, his parents were on hand to make a trip down to lend us a pickaxe - and thankfully they then weren't too difficult to remove. Goodness knows how many there are though, thus far we've only removed enough to dig the next lot of foundations!

I've carried on doing a lot of weeding this week, especially on the steps that lead to the back right corner of the garden. I came across quite a few bramble plants (no fruit, just prickly stems in completely the wrong places). I have cut them back but will need to try to dig them out at some point. One evening I also cut back all the euphorbia seed heads, as they had really gone past their best. 

This week I've also spent quite a bit of time cutting up the wood from the tree-behind-the-compost-bin. The thinner bits were chopped into small pieces and went into the compost bin. The wider bits, where possible, have been cut small enough to easily fit into the car. I used the loppers, and it actually felt like quite hard work! That's my exercise for the week :). The bits that are too wide for the loppers are still long, and will need sawing in half so we can get them in the car and take them to the garden waste section of our tip.

This was before it was all chopped up.

This is all that's left of the tree!

I also carried on doing a little hedge trimming, so the left-hand side hedge is pretty much done in the back garden. We have a little more to do in the front garden, and then we need to decide what to do with the leylandii (right-hand side of the back garden). We got a quote for having it cut back professionally, as it's quite tall and we're not sure we'd manage the top, however it seemed pretty expensive. We are going to maybe get some more quotes, and I will probably ask my in-laws for advice as well. I guess it might partly depend on what we do with the clematis, as it's kind of entwined in the leylandii. Maybe that's why it was so expensive.

The other garden task that we achieved this week was treating the lawn. I wrote a post about it here. I rained hard on Friday, so the feed should now be active and hopefully it's improving the lawn as we speak! The week after next I'll need to scarify it, but for now I can leave it to do its job.

We gained a few new plants last weekend when my parents visited, including a couple of begonias. It's nice to have some more pots on the patio, I really think they add something to the garden.

Begonia, in a pot that used to belong to my granny.

Other than that, we have found time to enjoy the sunshine in our garden, including drinking some delicious strawberry fizz that we were given as a wedding present back in March. It does feel like summer is slipping away a little bit already, so I'm trying to make it last as long as possible :).

Obviously the photo has had filters applied as it was instagrammed!

On that note, I'll sign off.

Happy gardening!

Jenny

A fortnight in my garden - 27.07.15-09.08.15

As usual, more time than intended has elapsed since I last posted. Eventually, I will get better at this (I hope). My goal is to post 'A week in my garden' each weekend, even if I don't manage to write anything else (though fingers crossed I will manage more than that). Due to me not posting last weekend, this week I'm cheating and the round-up covers a whole fortnight!

The first week I was out in the garden quite a lot; before work, after work, at the weekend.

I pruned the cordyline (almost to within an inch of its life). I finally found out where all the snails hang out: in and under the cordyline. I bet they're not going to like it quite so much now that it's lighter and airier!

Cordyline pre pruning

Cordyline post pruning

It looked a bit weird for a while as I was so used to it draping over the wall, but now I definitely think it's a bit improvement. It means it's not encroaching on the rhubarb quite so much!

We also started chopping down the tree thing behind our compost bin. You can kind of see it behind the compost bin in the photo below.

Mostly the picture is of a bare flower bed. But maybe you can see the tree a bit.

By the end of the weekend, I had this much foliage from the tree to get rid of:

Six charity bags full of tree. Very charitable to the garden waste section of the tip!

The rhododendrons were also deadheaded, so they now look nice and tidy. I also cut back the clematis where it was strangling the beautiful acer, and started pulling out some of the herb bennet lurking in various places around the garden. Unfortunately, the more I pulled out, the more I found hiding under other plants! My husband also helped with chopping down the tree-behind-the-compost-bin. Aside from that I did lots of the usual weeding, trying to keep on top of weeds in the veg bed, herb garden and (former) fir tree areas.

This week I haven't done as much gardening, in part due to me having to be at work early all week, and in part because our garden bin was full (and the garage was getting full of the charity bags!). We did manage to do more work on the tree-behind-the-compost-bin, to the extent that it's now pretty small, and you can see the pretty bush (laurel or something similar?).

The remainder of the tree-behind-the-compost-bin. Plus the pretty plant behind.

I also continued to weed out the herb bennet - I think I've got most of it, but I'm guessing there'll be plenty still going to come through. I just need to keep on top of it, which hopefully won't be too difficult now I know where it likes to be!

We also have some horsetail, which is notoriously hard to get rid of. I pulled out what I could, but really I think it was probably a mistake as the roots have broken, so it won't actually get rid of it. I should have read this first - when it starts growing again, I'll cover it in Roundup Gel. I get through a fair amount of Roundup, as I use it on dandelions and dock leaves - weeds which are quite hard to get out, as they have tough, long roots. I like it because I can kill them off without worrying about killing anything else off.  It's especially good for dandelions in lawns (although I do usually end up killing off a little grass, but not much). It takes a while to work, but it does get the weeds gone.

My parents visited this weekend, so my gardening has been limited to a small amount of weeding (plus a trip to the tip in my parents' big car to get rid of the charity bags of garden waste!). The weather has been pretty warm and sunny though, so we have at least spent quite a lot of time in the garden enjoying it. Which is good, because it's also meant I've had a much needed rest (boo early starts for work and restless nights). The parents did bring us a few plants though; a couple of begonias and a stripy tomato plant. Our tomato plants have some baby tomatoes as well - hopefully they will ripen and we will manage to eat them before the birds do!

I think the weather is turning a bit, but whilst it's still warm I'm writing this from outside. I'm hoping that it stays reasonably dry in the evenings this week, as I have a garden to-do list (as always) and a busy weekend next weekend, which won't leave much time for gardening.

Have a wonderful week!