What I did today 2021

[Mr Bones]

Cut down asparagus ferns and chopped them into the compost. Planted daffodil bulbs (picked five bags up in a sale )

[Purple Primrose]

Repotted some small hebe plants. Moved some other potted plants into a more sheltered spot. Planted some snakeshead fritillary bulbs.

[ameno]

Pruned the blackcurrants, cut down the autumn raspberries, and thinned the summer raspberries.

[Jungle Jane]

I made a little greenhouse for my peach tree & several geraniums,dug out a few Charlotte potatoes,the courgettes are still ok out there (I took two of the flowers off coz they go brown & wet but I leave them on the younger courgettes for a bit)

[ameno]

Uncovered the tender plants at the allotment.
Also cut down the tomato plants and put them on the compost, along with the huge pile of sweet potato vines I had been leaving to catch a frost (I put them on the compost as soon as I cut them off last year, and I found they were still alive a good couple months later, so this year I decided to try and let them frost kill them off before I compost them ).

[Containergardener]

Some cutting back, mulching of roses and clematis, weeding, chopped down some plants ready to dig out and over winter, collected heaps of leaves .

[Sweet savory]

Planted some saved sweet pea seeds, more in hope than expectation. Pulled some leeks, carrots and a celeriac for soup/stew.
Put a support next to the purple sprouting and removed bottom yellow leaves from brassicas.
Spread a bag of compost over the no dig part of the plot which I am expanding gradually according to compost availability.

[ameno]

Spent over an hour carefully covering everything tender in preparation for the frosts which may come over the next four nights.

[Purple Primrose]

Far too wet outside so sowed two trays of salad leaves indoors.

[ameno]

Weeded the kale and broccoli.

[quanglewangle]

Showed broad beans.

I usually dribble a little paraffin over the seeds to put off mice but we didn't have any so I tried a few drops of Chanel cologne - that should confuse the little blighters.

[ameno]

Finished digging up my sweet potatoes, then dug over the whole area and removed all of the bindweed and horsetail I could find.

[ameno]

Weeded the new grape bed, and pulled out some of the excess strawberry runners from it.

Also dug up some of my sweet potato plants, which was a lot of work. Even just cutting the stems off was quite a bit of work. The things are a great tangled mass of vines, probably well over a hundred stems, growing some 2 metres in all directions.

[quanglewangle]

Planted 100 garlic cloves.

No worries about Halloween chez Bones then...

[Jungle Jane]

Today I pulled up half the strawberry bed (it was massive,there’s still loads of plants) & planted out about 50 of the ‘electric’ red onions I bought at the garden centre yesterday,still got around 50 left I might put in a tray or somewhere. Covered the onions with metal greenhouse shelf things to keep cats off. Pruned a bit more of the grape vine,tore the leaves up around the plant & also next to the courgette plant that has three small courgettes growing still. Cut down all the tomato plants & cucumber plants,ate the last tiny cucumber in a sandwich,tomatoes ripening on the windowsill. Also put some fat balls,seeds & mealworms out for the birds,the Robin will love all the exposed soil near to the onions,there’s loads of big worms here. I remember during the summer on a slug hunt in the dark,it was raining & some of the worms that were darting back into the soil were so long but within a second they’d be back underground