What I did today 2024.

[MelanieSW]

Planted out cauliflowers, Brussels sprouts, calabrese and kohlrabi.
Prepared the bean bed and cleared space for the yacons.

[Plot70]

With spring bulbs leave them in the sun until the green leaves have faded for best flowers next year.

[Florence Fennel]

Thanks Plot70 that's my plan, but I have to move them from their container, so I'm hoping they store ok

[Mark Rand]

Weeded the back garden and planted out about 1/3rd of the sweet pea plants. I'll see how they get on before reinforcing them with ones the slugs/snails haven't wrecked.
Dug out the only remaining raised bed (one got a greenhouse put on it and the other got paved over to make a space for foundry work and metal casting (don't ask ). The raised bed will be demolished and rebuilt 70% bigger to eliminate wasted space. Might even get some crops out of it this year.

Too windy today to water the horsetails with the 'special water' (current mixture is Glyphosate + 2-4-D) .Looks like a good day for it tomorrow

[Andraste]

but we will ask Mark Rand & hopefully you will tell - sounds really interesting

[Bren In Pots]

Planted out more pre- chitted parsnips.

[Florence Fennel]

Transplanted some pansies, planted dahlias, bare rooted lupins and baby's breath. A hosta blue mouse ears also bare rooted and pricked out 120 marigolds. It is so nice to see dirty fingernails!

[Mark Rand]

Gave the horsetails their 'special' feed Bwahaha (been battling then for 39 years, they haven't admitted defeat yet )

For Andraste You just had to ask, didn't you?

Where the littlest raised bed used to be:-


The furnace and some ingot molds


Scrap hard disk drives from work turned into ingots.


Some castings poured. Note the teacup on the steps to No2 greenhouse. Most important part of the equipment.


A cast switch box for one of my machine tools and the pattern the mould was made with, before cleaning up.

[Bren In Pots]

That’s interesting Mark thanks for posting your photos.

MrPots started gathering items to make a forge after seeing some at Elvaston castle woodland fair, he already has an anvil and tools but he got sidetracked with other projects.

This afternoon I cleared out some of the kale that’s finished some for dinner this evening the tatty bits got composed.

[Jungle Jane]

Earthed up some of the potatoes. Planted out some lettuce in the trug covered with a shelf incase birds eat it,I don’t know if they would but the little sparrows go from pot to pot on the patio,what are they looking for Watered some plants with seaweed,the strawberries are changing from flower to green fruit at the moment

[Mark Rand]

Dug out the last of the hedge stumps in the front garden. hacked 8 feet of height from the two pyracanthas which had been taking over the front. Still need to cut the trimmings up for shredding and burning. A bit of a pity to do it at this time of year, since they would have been in full bloom in another week or so, but the job needed doing.

[Peanut]

I had quite a successful day today. I finally sorted out my home sown herbs that have, in the case of thyme, been in little 9cm pots for 3 years! I planted up a large 50cm pot with rosemary, sage, thyme and oregano and the rest of the thymes have been popped into 11cm pots. Still have a few more herbs to pot.
Mowed the lawns.
Potted up the chitted early xtra sweet sweetcorn and mini munch, nimrod and la diva cucumbers.
Watered the overwintered calibrachoas, gerberas, pelagoniums and agyranthemums..

I'm now waging a full out war with the bl**dy muntjac who has now begun eating my strawnberry leaves and ripping the bark off my hibiscus. I watched it, whilst sat under a pile of black netting, yes I did look absolutely ridiculous, then I followed it around the garden for 30 mins, hoping it would show me how it got in. It finally disappered behind the hedges where it sounded like it scrambled over the fence into next door's garden, which is open to the fields behind us . I have no idea how I'm going to stop it getting in if that is it's normal path.

[Plot70]

If that muntjack has been pinching your food crops then it surely is time to catch it and recover your food plants via the cooking pot.

[Jungle Jane]

If that muntjack has been pinching your food crops then it surely is time to catch it and recover your food plants via the cooking pot.

If foraging for food to survive deserved a death penalty,which it doesn’t. There’s alot of wild animals,they can go where they want,they’ve never had a rule book of what gardens they can’t go into,protect the area they will understand that kind of language.

[Plot70]

Deer of various species were introduced for shooting like pheasants. They get sold off to butchers for onward sale anyway like pheasants do.