popular What have you done today in the Garden?

I got out side at 8am and started in on cleaning out my raised beds. It was in the 70's still when I finished at just before noon time. I have to still do my bed with potatoes and beans in it and my bed with soybeans.





I had Couch grass in two of the beds and had to shovel that all out. I have to do that spring and fall since it's growing in the lawn and makes its way all the up into the beds repeatedly





I used up a bale of hay mulching the 8 raised beds. I completed all but the bed with the malabar spinach because it started sprinkling and I had to stop. I did leave some marigolds that are still blooming in a couple beds just for chitz and giggles.

 

Annie— that is good graft there and your raised beds look super. Are you proud of your accomplishments flus far? Chapeau.
Ahh yes, couch grass— not a friend of mine.

 

That reminds me I have misplaced the secateurs that I was using yesterday, better go out now and find them before we have any rain otherwise I'll have a very rusty pair too.

We've been out today so no gardening duties.

 

Nothing today, just a bit of housework, though I did renew the silicone around the bathroom window frame, which was looking a bit tired. It can get a bit messy, as we (mostly my wife) put "toiletry stuff" on the windowsill. As it's above the basin, it's so easy to put on it wet containers of stuff she's been using.
I bought a length of concave plastic trim from B&Q and siliconed it to where the frame met the windowsill.
It'll be easier to clean the windowsill now.




The people across the road were having their small garden paved all week.The contractor finished yesterday. I approached the "top banana" for a quote to have our main patio re-pointed. He said he needed to come back to the job today, (but I couldn't see why) and he'd give me a quote then. I thought, why not now?
That's because he wasn't coming back and didn't want a "small job."
So I've decided the next run of dry days when it's no longer as hot, I'll jet-wash the patio and then decide whether I will do it, or try to find someone else.
"I mean, it's not as if I've much else to do."

 

Harvested more toms, some for eating and give-away and some for processing.

 

Well...proud? I always think I should've accomplished
more !! Old age hasn't registered in my brain yet, only in my body

 

Wow..!!!... @Sjoerd .

 

Soon Sjoerd will be opening up classes to students to sharing all the secrets he has developed to growing aMAZing Tom’s.

 

I'll be ready and waiting to sign up.

 

I've miss placed trowels and secateurs, i use a washing up bowl to put weeds in and trimmings, sometimes the tools will get in the waste bin or the compost bin.

 

@Sjoerd tons of tomatoes you have there, some of mine i gave to my friends.

 

I have a large trug that I haul around with me and once it fills up then hubs has to lift it up for emptying.....he often use to find he was landed with the job of hunting through it all because I had lost something. He now goes through it all without giving it a second thought...just in case.

 

I find the danger is when I'm moving around the garden using secateurs pruning, putting what I've cut off into a large bucket. On a few occasions, I've stopped myself emptying the bucket into the big green bin as, as I'd put them in the bucket when I'd finished, but not emptied it straight away. I have had to go through the green bin a few times, when I'd lost them.

 

Annie— haha…I know what you mean. Still, I think you have done a great job there and having pride in your work and accomplishments is a good thing. That feeling of “shoulda done more” is a gardeners bane, it goes with the territory doesn’t it.

Cheers Oreti— that was a great reaction. Great co- worker you have there. Missplaces sécateurs happens to us all, I reckon. I now have some work trousers that have various-sized “pockets” to put tools in while I work.

Pac— haha, thanks a million. Sometimes folks come by for a chat on this or that, but I think my answers are too long and you know things sort of run into other subjects….
At a certain point, I can notice that they have had an info overload and I stop, or the Bride stops me.

Techniques are well and good, but one must be willing to put the time and work in. I always begin and end any “consult” with the “two things” speech— know and take care of your soil and know and understand the plants you want to grow. Actually, with these two aspects a gardener is already ahead of the game and on the way to success.

Cheers Loggie— we get that every two or three days. So far we can get rid of them fairly easily, but half we consume or put-up ourselves.

 

I had a very scary tumble out in the garden back in March, thankfully not holding anytime pointed or sharpe.

I have been told that I may always have a slight unsteadiness in my walk now since my knee replacement as the realignment that naturally happens is in a bit of conflict with the screws that have fused my foot ( both feet actually). So I now definitely don't carry any gardening implements on my person anymore.

Better to be safe than sorry.