What did you do in your garden today?

[JBtheExplorer]

Seeds arrived today! I'm planting these two species of native sunflowers in memory of my grandma who absolutely loved sunflowers.

Prairie sunflower has that typical sunflower look that most people think of when they think of sunflowers. It's an annual and will have to either self-seed or be planted by me every winter.

Woodland sunflower looks like most native sunflowers and rosinweeds. It's a perennial that spreads aggressively by rhizome and should do well in shadier areas in my yard.

Both are very important for pollinators and will be a great addition to my yard if I can get them established.

 

[Tundra20]

 

[Sean Regan]

Nothing planned for today, as I've housekeeping and shopping to do.
Just a check around, I'll do some watering later on.

Our wisterias this year will do us proud again, as they always do, if you prune them correctly.

We've fairy lights strung from the cross-beams on the two pergolas. There's quite a few on this one that no longer work, I noticed this when I turned them on for a few seconds before we went to bed last night. So I've ordered a new string.
I rarely turn them on, but I don't like anything not to be working correctly, when I do.

 

[Ruderunner]

Was able to make up my rows in the upper plot yesterday, lower is too soupy still. Seedlings are getting impatient and I'd like to get them outside to harden off but, we're expecting snow the next few days.

Might go spread some carrot and spinach seeds later.

 

[gary350]

This morning I dug up 9 lbs. of carrots from carrot row #2 and yesterday I dug up 12 lbs. of carrots from carrot row #2 that makes a total of 21 lbs. of carrots from row #2. A few days ago I dug up 18 lbs. of carrots from row #1. If I dig up 41 lbs. of carrots from rows 3 & 4 that will be 80 lbs. of carrots. Each row is 30 ft long.

 

[Meadowlark]

Today, I planted more pink-eye peas and pinto beans rushing ahead of the oncoming rains.

Also, I made a pass through the 80 ft onion row looking for onions bolting to seed. Once they do that, the bulb is finished growing and might as well pull and use it.

The 80 ft row has about 800 bulbing onions and I found only 7 which had bolted. That's well less than 1% and I'll take that any day. It is one of the main advantages of planting onions from seed rather than sets or transplants here.... significantly (an order of magnitude) less bolting.

The seed heads are shown on the right of the photo below and the relatively small bulbs along with today's carrots for lunch...eat them fresh.

 

[Sean Regan]

I did a bit today, between checking on things.

This wisteria grows from the little bed under the kitchen window, up over the tall fence and along the whole length of the side of the house.
It has a lot of blossom to come out.

They will be pink in colour like this

and hopefully, most won't fall off as they did last year, as I didn't water it enough.

I found a few "lily of the valley" growing in the narrow gap between the shed and the fence, so I re-planted them under the canopy of the largest acer.

The new trail/cam is up and connected to an adapter in a socket in the teahouse.

It covers the whole of the back border.

This euonymus on the fence behind the rockery is getting big again. I prune it like a hedge every few years to stop it coming too far out. It was bought thirty-odd years ago as a rockery plant.

These azaleas should be out within about a week.

and these.

I spent some time behind this main border ripping out grass that creeps under the concrete base panel of the fence, from the garden next door.

I also sharpened the blade of my Flymo before mowing the lawn. A case of removing the blade, sticking it in my bench vice and using an electric belt sander on the blades.

This mimosa, keeps growing, I cut two feet off the top last year, but that doesn't seem to have slowed it down at all.

I then ran out of things that needed doing. I've left removing dead canes from the "bamboo forest" at the bottom of the garden until next week. I came in to watch two football games and then the tennis.

 

[Heirloom farmer1969]

I was supposed to travel to Winchester, Kentucky, to get a tandem load of manure today, but the flooding rains put a stop to that. It's starting to look like a rain Forrest around here with all this rain this spring.
I reckon it's supposed to move out of the region tonight, but next week, it's going to be terribly cold, with some forecasting lows down to the upper teens. I'm getting so far behind I'll never get caught up. At least last falls cover crops are looking good with all the rain!!

 

[Meadowlark]

.... At least last falls cover crops are looking good with all the rain!!

Now that's some beautiful stuff right there!

 

[Sean Regan]

We're promised another week of this fine weather, which will do our lawn a power of good. I'm beginning to see the benefit of the half-price lawn food I bought from Homebase in Altrincham, when they were closing down. B&Q are taking over the building and will be opening shortly. So anytime I want to "pay through the nose for something," it will be nearer than the one near the Trafford Centre.

Our garden always looks better relatively early in the morning when the sun is behind my left shoulder from this position.

The lawn looks a bit "lumpy" when the sun is ahead of me. These two acer palmatums will be fully out by the end of the week. The one nearest the camera may need a bit of tidying once the leaves have set.

I've some shopping and chores to do, but this afternoon I may strip out the dead canes from the bamboo at the end of the garden. I don't use them to support new plants as they are too visible, I use those green metal ones with ridges on them, as the ties when used, don't slide down them.
My replacement fairy lights will be here this week. 300 multi-coloured for £12.99 post free from eBay. I've also ordered a pack of 50 x 25mm cup hooks Some of these I'll use to replace bits of garden wire I've been using, wrapped round pergola beams to support the lights and cup hooks always come in handy, if you want to tie anything to a concrete post.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

OUCH! My leg has been playing me up ever since we went out with my daughter a few weeks ago. Suddenly last night things changed, extreme pain in my knee, the vein standing up all down my leg, and I could feel it all knotted up where I had been operated on. Spent the morning going around the houses being referred from one person to another until finally had a call from a nurse who is booking me in for a scan, that's what's needed, find out what is happening. Most of it has calmed down now, except the operation site which still hurts, so I'm creeping about and showing my age, however the missus had to go down the village so I managed to get up the greenhouse and finish potting up the aubergine seedlings I started on yesterday, 14 of them looking nice and healthy, I reckon that's it now for today, I was hoping to go and collect another load of horse manure, but hauling buckets about isn't on at the moment, never mind, I don't suppose anyone is going to pinch it all in the meantime
Looking at Sean's posts and feeling envious, it's a beautiful day and everything is springing into life out there, there must be about a dozen jobs I could get stuck into, never mind, they will still be there when I am up and at 'em, and a few more.

 

[Sean Regan]

Another pig of a "hands and knees job" completed.

This is our bamboo forest at the bottom of the garden.
It started life as a clump half-way down the main border. When it got to about six feet high, with a diameter similar to that of a dustbin lid (for those who know what that is) I dug it up. It had to come out as one big lump and then I chopped it up with a spade into small segments.
I planted individual clumps about six inches apart from each other up against the back fence.

Today I got into it and removed a lot of dead canes, as I do every year. The dead leaves don't decay, you have to blow them out from between the canes with a garden vac.

Then I tightened the three lateral wires, that stop the lot from falling over. You can't see them from a distance
It has never attempted to creep forward more than three or four inches in decades.

It's looking a bit thin, but it always bushes out as we move into the summer.
It will look like this by July.

I did the same with this black bamboo, between a hedgehog house and the pagoda. It's always had wires round it to keep it contained. I had to temporarily remove those to be able to spread it out a bit to get the dead stuff out, then replace the wires.

 

[Meadowlark]

... last falls cover crops are looking good with all the rain!!

Same here. Looking today at my first run with buckwheat as a spring cover. I've never tried it before in the fall because it is too sensitive to frosts...so will see how it does in Texas heat.

This is cover where I grew last winter's crops... Blackberries on the right and potatoes on the left.

 

[gary350]

TV weather said we received 29.89" of rain the first 6 days of April. My Red carrot seeds germinated and grew 2" tall in 5 days and fell over, orange carrots take 3 weeks to germinate. Red carrots are a lost crop, celery plants will replace carrots soon as mud dries up. Potato plants look nice tops might be dead tomorrow. TV channel 2 says, frost & freeze tomorrow morning am. TV channel 4 says, no frost and freeze until Wed morning am.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I grew a lot of my potatoes in bags this year, it means I have been able to put them all close together and cover them up overnight, I have only lost one top so far and they are looking very good. I must check the ones in the ground, I probably should have earthed them up a bit yesterday, I haven't been checking regularly because of my leg, they were not through the last time I looked, but some may well be showing by now, it's a well sheltered patch next to the greenhouse so I may have got away with it.