popular What have you done today in the Garden?

Daniel very nice pics and love all your trees. Tulips do better in planters , those you picked out look delicious. The squirrels dig in my planters and party all winter long on my tulips bulbs. I give up…

Like your yellow picker upper helper. I have a pair and use them all the time.

Adore your 4 legged helper…

 

One lawn got mowed today..gosh it was well overdue!!
Removed some spent summer bedding.
Cut back a couple of big Dahlias that had broken during some recent strong winds, gave up waiting for them to be 'frosted' as our weather is currently enjoying a very mild spell.
Picked some more Apples.
Swept all 3 patios and was somewhat relieved to find the East patio was mainly covered in leaves as all the acorns look to have been shed now.
I can now do some serious leaf collecting without having to try and separate them from the acorns.....more stock for the leafmould pile.

Started to sort through my seed stash and make plans for next year.

 

Oreti you do keep buzzy and there is so much to do this time of year. Good job. Slow . Easy does it and using ‘Mindfulness’. . I still have to tackle my little greenhouse. Yours is all organized and so neat and clean. I open the door, look inside and wonder where the heck do I start.

After yesterday’s venture up on the flat sections of the roof removing pine needles and debris from the scuppers and downspouts… due to a horrible wind storm last week . Today was a different type of pine needle removal day. The wind storm sent over all the pine needles from the Douglas fir 100’ trees next to my property. Sooo.. today was again more pine needle removal day from the whole entire front garden and flower beds.

I actually found myself singing this strange song in my head to keep from loosing my sanity as the piles of needles seemed to go on into infinity.
“99 piles of needles on the ground 99 piles of needles, pick one up turn around , 98 piles of needles on the ground.
It was raining so .. dawned my rain gear and hat, gloves and out I went loading up pine needles in my tractor and piling them up on the compost pile. 4 hours later, called it a day it was too windy & it was freezing outside.

Ah the never ending issues of fall clean up. It may be a common irritating event for fall garden clean up , boring, repetitious and exhausting, however, as much as I complain, I find that i am very grateful to be in mental and physical condition to take on these tasks . That’s a Good Thing.

 

For the last week I've been putting in my fall garden. Today I had to clean out a pile of couch grass that grew up on the end of my big raised bed. I still have it on the end of my other big raised bed. It's growing in the grass and comes right all the way up to the top of the bed.


The fava beans, 20 of them, now have a clean home to start off in. I put in the bamboo sricks, then planted the Fava, or broad beans, on the north side of the bamboo because, you know, they're going to lean south.


Tomorrow I intend to mulch that bed with the hay piled on the ground there.


I planted out some broccoli started from seed indoors along with two kinds of cauliflower and some brussells sprouts.

Here's a close up of a couple of them.



In other beds, nothing has come up yet. I have mache, or corn salad, peas, spinach, lettuce and radishes and golden turnips. It's the first time I've tried growing turnips.

Oh wait, a few radishes, the purple kind, just came up.

 

Anniekay you have raised beds & a nice set up and a longer growing season than I do here in the PNW. Taking advantage of cold weather plants is an excellent option. So nice to see all your new califlour and sprout seedlings. Looks like a very seasoned gardener at work.

My son moved to a new house. I’ve been helping him design his backyard and plants with small trees and shrubs. He wanted a place to grow herbs and veggies, so I took your raised bed containers option and he has a few like yours all set for planting next spring.

 

More of the same here...sweeping, raking, bulb planting, emptying out containers .Still deadheading the Dahlias. Moving the big pots still with viable plants in to more sheltered positions.
Hubs finished the roll down coverings on the lean-to coldframe. So the Geraniums will be nice and snug tonight.

 

Annie— you know, I am so darn jealous of your climatic sit there. How good that you can begin with serious crops now.

Oreti— your sit there looks so smart— everything so neatly arranged and orderly. Chapeau.
Great that you have installed water butts.

 

Thanks @Sjoerd ...it's more orderly now, but it was embarrassingly untidy before.
In spring/summer I'm afraid my nursery area becomes a dumping ground as seedlings grow and are potted up and then eventually planted out into the borders their discarded trays and pots are left to their own devices to leisurely loll around for the summer.

Oh yes we have butts !! There is one more + 2 Suzee bins which are just out of shot too. We also have 3 more butts placed in the actual garden area too.

 

Did a bit today, started at 1.30pm and called it a day at 3.30pm as it was starting to get dark.
I mowed the back lawn and then did some leaf collection.
Lots of dead bamboo leaves between the bottoms of the bamboo canes.



Got at them with my "sawn off" Flymo blower. I got a lot out, most I had to sweep up as it's quicker than trying to vac them up.




The acer palmatums are starting to shed leaves and the foliage is getting "thinner"





I wired up these two "tree" azaleas to stop them spreading too much. When I remove the wires in April, they will spring back a bit, but not as far as they would without the wires.




No leaves have yet fallen from the remaining wisterias.

More leaf collection in the front garden, most on the big acer have now fallen.




I've moved the unoccupied hedgehog houses into the shed. The hay I'd put inside them was still dry. But the exteriors were wet.
At the beginning of the summer I bought an extra house as we had so many visiting hedgehogs and for a while two were occupied.
But I believe now, that was too many. Either because it was a "territory thing," or maybe they found that it was too noisy with garden appliances making a lot of noise every few days and likewise, my two jukeboxes in the tea-house. But with the latter, they didn't bother the mother, which gave birth and raised six cubs under the tea-house.
Next year I'll just put one house back out, under the azaleas to the side of the patio next to the French windows.

 

Started early no rain today. Picking up those pine needle piles again. Many pine mold piles were put around plants and or over areas that needed them. The ground squirrels made a deep concave hole around the perimeter of the south side of the house. Used the broken down black soil from the pine needles to fill in that large area . Rolled the tractor wheels over the entire area to pack it down well.

Mowed and mulched the leaves around the pasture areas from the deciduous large maple trees with leaves as big as a basketball. Used the battery op blower to move the leaves from the dogwood trees out to the pasture area to mulch. And just a bunch of other picky things that needed attention.

I wish I had the greenhouse cleaned out . I’m envious of Oreti , hers is well organized as clean as a whistle. It’s going to be a huge task. Everything gets dumped in there garden related. Honestly I don’t know where all that stuff keeps coming from it sure adds up quick. I managed to clean up a small area in the garage for my garden tools and other equipment . Changed the chain on the pole saw, it was really dull, added oil and removed a couple more branches from the weeping cherry that I could reach. I got one high branch partially cut but could finish my arms wore out. Will try again later. Blew off more leaves from the porches.

Unfortunately today I located another 80’ white pine tree in the front garden that some roots have rotted and need to put that tree on the remove list soon. I don’t know how I missed that it was a nice tree but I did notice that the lower branches about 20’ up have yellowed a bit & some needles dead , 3” sized needles, a recent discovery , but no evidence of black beetles above the ground or on the trunk. I think it was the ground squirrels AGAIN munching on the roots. I dug down and found serious root damage from the main trunk.
After that discovery & 4 hours working on garden tasks …I Called it a day .

 

Finished planting the tulips in big pots and polyanthus on top, planted a lot of polyanthus in on border.

 

Don't be jealous Sjoerd. I envy all of you who can grow your entire year's worth of veg in just two seasons. In summer you still have veg growing. It's so hot here that most veg succumbs to heat and only things like okra, ( which I really don't care for much) and melons still grow.

Well, Pac, that is a very nice complement and I hope that your son has boat loads of success with his new raised beds.

You work much harder than I do on your place and it's always so beautiful and immacculately kept !!

 

All of your gardens look lovely.

Something got into my hen house overnight and killed 2 of my 3 hens (Betty Boop and Blackie). I have one hen left (Alice and Boogie) and my rooster. It was a huge mess. I got that taken care of this morning. DS dug a trench where the varmint had gotten in from, and filled it with cement blocks and rocks, and pinned them with rebar, then refilled the trench with the dirt, and spread cement over top of it. Hopefully it will set up and make it more difficult for them to dig in.

I did rake the straw out of the hen house and put it aside for my compost heap. I did get a little weeding done this afternoon, and changed the water in horsey's tubs.

We were supposed to get a freeze last night, but it doesn't seem like it.

 

AAnightowl so sorry to hear about your hens. By the description of how you plugged the trench up and covered it in cement sounds like a good plan. That is quite a plan you did there. Hope the hens are safe in the morning.

Anniekay thank you for your kind words it means a lot coming from a season gardener. Your right this garden and property is a lot of work. But it keeps me outta trouble.

 

@AAnightowl to Keep varmints from getting in your chicken pen, the tried and true method is to dig down a foot deep and a foot wide all around the pen and attach chicken wire to the pen, then down into the trench you dug. Then fill the trench back in. This works because the varmints will always go right up close to the coop to dig and they can't dig through the chicken wire. They give up.

I had to do this with my coop and I had to get a two-step latch because racoons have fingers that can open most latches but not this one with the spring.