**** Gardening Time ****

[is that my watch]

Well what with the weather being so kind of late I have been doing odd jobs around the garden that needed sorting. Like chopping down a couple of half dead trees. so being a curious guy. I am wonder what others members are doing so why not a gardening thread.


What's your favourite plant / flower say or what are you really proud of lately maybe a hard to grow hybrid is doing well in the garden or maybe a new breed of fuchsia say or you have built a new pond or arbour etc etc


maybe a few photos of your favourite plants and flowers?

here is a conifer not sure of the Genus as found it when disposing of some old pots it was about a inch high at the time and I decide to see if I could grow it



and a mixed seed pot with wild flowers can't remember the name off the top of my head




and I just pick up.




dark eyes trialling fuchsia









miss California a bush fuchsia









and is it a old wife's tail that if you leave a small area to grow wild it will stop the slugs from eating your flowers ?




Ismy

[hayday]

I don't do much to the grass other than cut it. Don't really see the point as long as it's green and well trimmed. I was about a month late in ripping weeds and dropping mulch in the flower beds this season so I've been paying for it. Finally at the point where I'm ahead of the weeds so it's just a matter of spending a few minutes here and there ripping them up from the beds. Reclaiming the edging of the beds because I was bad the last coupla years and didn't do much gardening work. Got the flower pots done and the flower beds mostly done; still have a little more mulch to drop and edges too mark. Mostly I reclaimed the beds and planted a coupla new plants and shrubs. I have a big maple tree in the back yard to have felled before it falls on its own, and the house, otherwise it's mostly trimming back a few tree branches here and there. The only real landscaping project is around our "new" deck. We raised our ground-level deck so now I need to fix that area by installing a short (two-step) retaining wall and back filling it with dirt and seed, maybe plant some shrubs though that part may have to wait until fall and better planting weather at is has gotten a little too hot here to plant. I've been busy since school got out.

I'm about 85% done so I've moved on the the "enjoying" phase of gardening/lawn care.

-hayday

[is that my watch]

I don't do much to the grass other than cut it. Don't really see the point as long as it's green and well trimmed. I was about a month late in ripping weeds and dropping mulch in the flower beds this season so I've been paying for it. Finally at the point where I'm ahead of the weeds so it's just a matter of spending a few minutes here and there ripping them up from the beds. Reclaiming the edging of the beds because I was bad the last coupla years and didn't do much gardening work. Got the flower pots done and the flower beds mostly done; still have a little more mulch to drop and edges too mark. Mostly I reclaimed the beds and planted a coupla new plants and shrubs. I have a big maple tree in the back yard to have felled before it falls on its own, and the house, otherwise it's mostly trimming back a few tree branches here and there. The only real landscaping project is around our "new" deck. We raised our ground-level deck so now I need to fix that area by installing a short (two-step) retaining wall and back filling it with dirt and seed, maybe plant some shrubs though that part may have to wait until fall and better planting weather at is has gotten a little too hot here to plant. I've been busy since school got out.

I'm about 85% done so I've moved on the the "enjoying" phase of gardening/lawn care.

-hayday

yeah got a lot of weeding to do too the weathers been all over the place and that has seem to make the weeds go mad got to do that the weekend plus the iron table and chairs could do with a metal brush and a paint. got to cut back some trees replace the slats in the bench and bet there's more still to be done but so worth it at the end

[hayday]

The good and the bad of yard work is that it never ends. You can literally start and stop at any point and it won't matter.

-hayday

[is that my watch]

true but keeps you fit and active and suntanned

[scottjc]

I have a lot of grass to keep under control and hate the feeling of obligation that this brings.
We grow quite a bit of fruit plus I have a small polytunnel with tomatoes, chillies and sweet peppers.

[tribe125]

and a mixed seed pot with wild flowers can't remember the name off the top of my head

They look like true geraniums to me, sometimes referred to as cranesebills. They do grow wild but are more standard garden plants than wild.

We have one, that I took as a memento from my mother's garden. It was already well-established in her garden when she moved into the house in 1950, so might actually be 75-100 years old. No surprise then, that the true geranium is also called a hardy geranium.

I have great affection for our plant, having known it all my life. We left a good clump in my mother's garden, hoping that it might persist far into the future.

[is that my watch]

They look like true geraniums to me, sometimes referred to as cranesebills. They do grow wild but are more standard garden plants than wild.

We have one, that I took as a memento from my mother's garden. It was already well-established in her garden when she moved into the house in 1950, so might actually be 75-100 years old. No surprise then, that the true geranium is also called a hardy geranium.

I have great affection for our plant, having known it all my life. We left a good clump in my mother's garden, hoping that it might persist far into the future.

similar but the hardy has a black centre and the leafs are slightly different just can't think of the name now I will have to start laminating little cards to put in the pot because there some that are so hard to pronounce

it will come to me but do love me some geraniums I got trailing in hanging baskets and a couple of pots of the standard germanium with the black rings on the leaves love the bronze leaf begiona and love nexus and of course my roses love my roses also like mimulus they are truly wild flowers them


p.s
good call it was a sanguineum which is a hybrid mix of geranium and a wildflower

[tribe125]

You've had me out in the garden with a torch.

And then back in to scour the internet. It was your mention of dark centres, because ours don't have dark centres. When browsing some of the 300 varieties of geraniums, I came across 'geranium clarkei', and I could immediately hear my mother talking of 'the clarkei'. My mother died just over a year ago, so you've helped retrieve a memory. The clarkei is a type of true geranium and comes from Kashmir. It can be white or purple - ours is purple.

I found, in passing, that true geraniums needn't have a dark centre. I also looked up sanguineum and found it described as a British native wildflower, rather than a hybrid.

Geraniums are bewildering though, with so many varieties. I could have checked things out with my uncle, a research horticulturist, but he died two months ago. Still, the flowers live on - or at least this one does, at maybe 75 years. There's no doubting that it's a hardy variety.

[tribe125]

You've had me out in the garden with a torch.

And then back in to scour the internet. It was your mention of dark centres, because ours don't have dark centres. When browsing some of the 300 varieties of geraniums, I came across 'geranium clarkei', and I could immediately hear my mother talking of 'the clarkei'. My mother died just over a year ago, so you've helped retrieve a memory. The clarkei is a type of true geranium and comes from Kashmir. It can be white or purple - ours is purple.

I found, in passing, that true geraniums needn't have a dark centre. I also looked up sanguineum and found it described as a British native wildflower, rather than a hybrid.

Geraniums are bewildering though, with so many varieties. I could have checked things out with my uncle, a research horticulturist, but he died two months ago. Still, the flowers live on - or at least this one does, at maybe 75 years. There's no doubting that it's a hardy variety.