What I did today - 2019

[bramble]

Raked up all the leaves.
Did some weeding.
Some tidying in the greenhouse.
No rain today so it was lovely to spend time outdoors.
However everything is still extremely wet.

[ameno]

Finished digging the patch I was working on. Now I need to get some sharp sand and collect some spent hops to try and make it less sticky.

[Can the Man]

Went to visit some customers, and not VC’s customers at the end of the garden

[ameno]

Dug out one of the cardoons, and started digging over the soil where it was, ready to plant a new fruit tree. Lots of bindweed.

[Small pumpkin]

Ripped out a very sorry looking nasturtium. Also started tidying the tunnel and bagged up some saved seeds.

[veggiechicken]

Cleared out the peach/nectarine (roofless) tunnel. One of the peach trees is dead. I think the roots have been attacked by summat small and furry (and I don't mean the dogs!).
Chopped back some of the peach tree branches - can't call it pruning and its probably the wrong time of the year to do it - but I don't care. It had to be done to walk through the "tunnel".
Pulled up lots of raspberry suckers that had crept in and rather a lot of weeds!

[roodles84]

Yesterday we made it down to the plot for the first time in a couple of weeks. It's been so wet and miserable, it's getting harder to drag the kids down there so opportunities to make progress are few and far between.

I chopped down the runner beans and collected up the pods I'd left to ripen, hoping some will save and be ok to grow next year. I've not done this before and the combination of soggy weather and probably leaving it too late meant a lot of the pods were turning to mush. Hopefully some of them will keep ok.

Then we marked out a bed at the side of the plot which will be for the raspberries and started weeding it out. The edge of the plot is just marked with a length of plastic string between stakes, so we'll need to find something to go along the edge and keep the mulch contained. At the moment, there's still just a random mass of canes down at the end of the plot, which will need some serious weeding and pruning before moving, but that's a job for when I'm there on my own.

[ameno]

Dug some more of the patch where I'm going to plant some new trees. Soil was actually much better than the patch I had been digging last week, despite being in an area which clearly hadn't been cultivated in years and which was a thoroughfare, so ought to be compacted.

[Small pumpkin]

Made some big plant labels for next years chillies

[Baldy]

Ripped out the plastic panels from my old little greenhouse - started to frame up the windward side of my new convert(ing) polytunnel-framed greenhouse using a mixture of decent timber and some battens that are on the cusp of turning to rot... but I'm cheap.
Went up quite well, have a hinge from an old tumble drier that will allow ventilation too.
Amazon are doing a ryobi impact driver, battery and charger (in a bag!) for £74.99 so when that arrives I shall be able to progress onto affixing polycarb to the frame.
I'll (hopefully) end up with an (approx) 6x12 foot greenhouse(ish-thing) for £60. (Ignore the impact driver - I *need* one of those anyway! )

[burnie]

Actually did something garden related after nipping into town, last pot leek lifted along with a parsnip and a few carrots to go with "les rosbeef". Leek bed weeded and raked over level and chicken wire suspended over it to keep the varmints out, had a quick check round the greenhouse, the lettuce still not doing much, even with a cloche on it.

[Gillykat]

Flashback to my day off on Sunday 1st December as I've been busy at work this past three days (Argos gets a tad manic in December )...

Lovely frosty weekend so I took advantage of the lack of rain (at last!) and pulled everything out of the shed. Sorted out my gardening stuff, Neil's tools and rubbish to skip. Then, as the shed is quite leaky (holes in roof!) I put Neil's tools back on the left-hand side where it's dry and put my plant pots on the right-hand side as it doesn't matter if they get the odd bit of rain leaking on them as I'll be sorting through them in the next couple of months and cleaning them so I'm ll ready for the new growing season

[bario1]

A rare stop-off at the plot on my way to work this morning. Staked a couple of PSB plants that had keeled over, and pulled out all the bolted kale plants. Gave the asparagus bed a hand weed.

[Small pumpkin]

Made some seed envelopes.

[Sweet savory]

Pruned 2 gooseberry bushes and cleared leaves around them