What did you do in your garden today?

[Sabina515]

Weeding, mulching, dead heading 15 rose bushes, trimming neighbors bushes coming into my yard,, watering, and watering the new sod that was laid down some before and after pics. What a mess this yard was before.

 

[Sean Regan]

Dodging between the showers this morning.

I Jet-washed the the two lines of paving slabs either side of the tea-house and the path around it, which hadn't been done for a while as 'arry the hedgehog lived under there and I didn't want to disturb him with the noise, as well as that of Motown from the jukeboxes over his head which I usually play at the week-ends! He's recently moved to the house we bought him, which is under the azaleas at the other end of the garden.
I also jet-washed the small patio in front of the shed.

Half way through, the leccy went off!

Now I re-wired the garage, freezer/store room, shed and tea-house a year ago. The supply comes through a pyro cable under the drive from a dedicated trip in the new consumer unit in the house. It goes to a fifty year old fuse box in the corner of the garage which uses old-fashioned 15amp fuse wire!
This has never blown, so it's a case of "leave well alone." From there it passes through a big rccb unit, which I installed over thirty years ago when I built the koi pool. (electricity and water aren't a good mix). I do test it regularly.

From there there's two supplies, one to a consumer unit with four mini breakers for the garage and store room, lighting, sockets, water heater and garden mains lights.

The sockets below it are for all the low voltage systems, lanterns, fairy lights, fountain, controlled by switches behind the lounge curtains.

They are supplied by a four-core plus earth armoured cable I buried under the patio's concrete raft in 1976. (no idea at the time what I would eventually use it for). The fourth switch is for a porch light on the wall next to the French windows.

The other supply from the rccb is to a second mini-breaker in the shed which supplies it and everything in the tea-house.

There's more than a dozen 13amp sockets in the tea-house as there's the two jukeboxes, TV, fridge, clock, the inspection lamps I use as heaters in the bottom of the jukebox. Two sockets to recharge the dehumidifiers in both. Plus the low voltage lights supply and then three spare.
I had both the jet-wash and wet n'dry vac plugged in to sockets in the tea-house and running when the leccy went off. I checked the min-breaker in the shed but it hadn't tripped out and everything in the shed was working.

Then I remembered, before I installed the new supply to the tea-house I'd just had a 13amp double-pole fused switch in there that supplied eveything. I only ever turned it off if I was messing with the electrics in there.

I checked the fuse in it which was only 5amp, as decades ago there was naff all in the tea-house and hadn't changed the fuse since, I really hadn't given any thought to it.
Fortunately, everything is well protected.
It's here on the right above the switch for the five ceiling halogen downlighters. The sockets on the ceiling are for the transformers for the lanterns, spotlight behind the pagoda and two sets of fairy lights.

So I changed it to 13amp fuse and everything was working again. The jet-wash and the wet n' dry on together was obviously too much load for a 5amp fuse. Took all of five minutes.

That's it for today as it's chucking it down.

 

[Logan]

It's been raining on and off so started potting on the wallflowers, done 17 of these.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

Always something to do with 3 acres. puttering about. picking up limbs from the storm. pulling a few weeds here and there. load of wood chips has to go down.

 

[Logan]

Yesterday ordered my tulips to plant in the autumn, get them in August but won't plant them until September or October.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I am cleaning the shed. Does touching garden tools count? I hauled a bunch of stakes and trellis materials to just outside the garden. The tomatoes have become unruly. I just have not quite gotten inside the fence yet.

 

[Logan]

Not a lot just watered the hanging baskets and deadheaded the roses.

 

[Logan]

Potted on some more of the wallflowers can't do anything else because of the rain.

 

[quiltbea]

Not much happening here in the far north. With a late start in the garden, I am lucky to see tiny tomatoes starting to grow on my small bush tomato plants. The Peppers have nothing yet but greenery. I am sowing greens every week now. Radishes are coming up nicely. Its slow starting for me, but am looking forward to August and September when my cool crops will be starting their emergence.
Love all the photos I am seeing and the gardens. So lovely.

 

[Sean Regan]

Last night I gave the lawn a soluble feed, I think it needed it after all the rain we've had.
This morning I got into the rockery and weeded out quite a bit of grass.

I got it done before the rain.

I say "rockery," but it's now just a "mound of phlox" for the most part.

But it is a proper rockery, not a "dogs' cemetery" as poor ones are sometimes called, with a few rocks scattered about.

I mean, this many (not actually these, as they are more regular shaped and were for the other three sides of the pool). This is from 35 years ago.

In all I had five pallets worth, including three for the patio and paths. York stone is easy to split to use on paths.
I built the rockery as you should, positioning the rocks as strata. This was how it was immediately after I'd completed the build.

I've got to say a carpet of phlox looks attractive in May.

But I might get into it at some time, do a bit of "fettling" to expose some of the rocks, which under there all have a nice covering of moss.

 

[Chuck]

Pulled up tomato plants. Getting soil ready for fall tomato crop.

 

[Sean Regan]

Today was a golf day, so I only spent a couple of hours in the garden this afternoon.
I gave our several wisterias a prune. This is the time of year when they put on a lot of growth. Like many plants, they want to put out the maximum amount of growth nearest the root. It's like a garden hose, more water will come out of a hole in it near the tap than one twenty yards away..

These are "two and a half" wisterias.The left hand half is a branch from the one on the pergola on the side of the garage, the other grows up the pergola post on the right. It wants to "bunch" at the top of that post, so it's a question of thinning it out to encourge more growth in the middle of the pergola. I like to achieve an even amount of foliage along its length. The foliage keeps the sun off a bit in our lounge.

The "half" is this pink one in the small bed next to the kitchen window.

The thick branch on the left-hand side is from the one on the garage pergola.

The pink one only grows about four or five feet along this pergola.

That's because I've trained the rest of it along the side of the house. I'll prune off the end just before it reaches the front corner.

To get it to grow that far requires regular pruning along the length and where it tries to fill out, like just on this corner.

The ones on the garage pergola, I want to "cascade." The two blue ones at each end are cooperating, but the white one in the middle is resisting a bit, but we'll get there in the end.

I've half a green bin full of the stuff I've pruned off them all. It's a never ending job until October.

 

[Nadi]

I watered my friends plants today. She pays me to handle all of her gardening needs I also drilled some holes into some new pots I recently got, getting them ready to transplant some succulent babies! I also prepared my soil for my succulent babies and managed to transplant a few before having to head off to work. Not the most eventful day buuuut my morning glory gave me my first flower!!

 

[Sean Regan]

I always think that 'arry is a bit like Rudolph Hess. In that he gets his food provided daily and has free range of the garden, but is still a captive.

I've managed to convince my wife that he needs to be allowed to roam a bit and mix with other hedgehogs. We do get another one coming up our drive, but of course it can't get into the garden. Occasionally, we've seen 'arry caught by the camera sniffing the door in the fence between the corner of the garage and that of the house, so I guess he's aware of another hedgehog.

Creating access for him to next door's garden was a bit of a pain. It had to be at the bottom of our garden as far away from the road as possible. I decided on here, near the bottom corner.

I needed to stitch drill an access through the concrete base panel of the side fence. Easier said than done. There's no space in our garden, so I had to lie full length in the border under a rhododendron to get at it. In the end I made the hole in the top of the panel as the bottom of it was well buried. I had to drill over a dozen holes, then knock out the unwanted piece. There was a 1/4" reinforcing bar in it that I had to cut off using a hacksaw blade.
To make sure there's no rough edges to the hole I made up some cement mortar to line the sides. Also a little concrete ramp up to the edge of the hole. So it won't get blocked up this side.

I tidied up the other side of the hole so the access wasn't blocked.

The cable is the low voltage supply to the two Japanese lanterns. I might get round to tidying that up.

Job done!

Well not quite, I've blocked up the hole with a slate for the time being. The house next door is presently unoccupied and the grass is two feet high, so 'arry could get lost in there. I'll wait until the house is sold and the new occupants have sorted out the garden. I'll tell them about the hole, so they don't block it up.

Digressing, thinking about my first paragraph. I have a golfing pal who's ex-army, he was an engineer in a tank regiment. When stationed in Germany in the eighties, his wife had a part-time job driving the German equivalent of a "butty van." She often took their daughter on her rounds. One of her customers was a prison. She was allowed to drive into it. She supplied the guards and other staff with hamburgers etc., They shortly returned to England and he said their daughter delighted in telling her new schoolfriends that "she'd been in Spandau Prison." As she had on many occasions.

 

[Sabina515]

Planted a new dinner plate hibiscus!!! Summer carnival dinner plate hibiscus. I couldn't resist and bought it. Had no place to put it of course so I just added it in my flower bed and moved a few others around.

Treated my rose bush with neem oil as it has powdery mildew. Pulled some weeds and fertilized some other flowers. And impatiently waiting for starry hibiscus to bloom!