What's happening in your garden today?

Mr_Yan said:
So I've heard. There is a line about 5 to 10 miles east of here where the pure sand ground turns to pure clay. As it is I dig more than 6 or 8 inches deep and I am digging in beach sand. I've only made it 5 feet deep but it's sand all the way down. Give me a clamshell style post hole digger and I can dig a fence post hole in less than 10 minutes.
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You should start a gardening show called " I dream of drainage".
 
Tetters said:
Can't guarantee more flowers, but I think if you leave them in you may well be lucky. The vast majority of my perennial bed was pecked off my new beds two years ago by a large family of partridges. I left them all alone, they bushed out beautifully, and I ended up with far more flowers than usual.
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Thank you Tetters, I'll leave them and see.
I know that some perennials can be trimmed to make them bush out and shorter.
 
Dirtmechanic said:
You should start a gardening show called " I dream of drainage".
Click to expand...
Yeah, that 5' hole was for a dry well pit that 40% of the surface area of my house's roof drains to. I put a garden hose running into that hole for 20 minutes and couldn't see the water level when looking down that pipe with a Mag light. I've never seen the popup overflow topper open in the 2 or 3 years it's been in place.
 
Today I noticed a bit of leaf curling on a few of my tomato plants. I can't tell if it's too much water, because of the rains, or maybe not enough water. I'm inclined to think maybe too much because I turned the sprinklers on tonight for a bit and within 10 minutes I had water already standing between the rows. With our sandy soil, that's not something that should happen.

All of my broccoli plants are producing tiny broccoli so I'm guessing we'll be harvesting those heads in a few weeks from now. A few of the squash will be ready within the next day, or so, and many more coming in the next few weeks there too. One of the cucumber plants is taking off big time, but the others are still taking their time. Also, yesterday, we finally got our watermelon plants in the ground, and also planted a few more from seed. Never grown those before, either, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm going out of town tomorrow, and won't be back until late Sunday night, so it'll be up to my boys to tend to the garden over the next several days. Again, I'm hoping they'll keep me posted with photos if they end up harvesting anything. Next week we should be making some strawberry jam, so y'all be on the lookout for me showing off that process!
 
Mr_Yan said:
So I've heard. There is a line about 5 to 10 miles east of here where the pure sand ground turns to pure clay. As it is I dig more than 6 or 8 inches deep and I am digging in beach sand. I've only made it 5 feet deep but it's sand all the way down. Give me a clamshell style post hole digger and I can dig a fence post hole in less than 10 minutes.
Click to expand...
I have solid Weald clay, If I dig a hole more than about eighteen inches deep it will fill with water unless it has been dry for ages. I haven't gone deep enough to find out, but I'm told it is solid rock a couple of meters down. I am almost on the crest of the hill here, but I have had to dig drainage channels, anything like heavy rain and some areas of my garden become ponds.
I have made a new bed, about 20ft x 4ft. I dug out a spit deep and filled with wood, then put the soil back with paving slabs around the edge. I took out the clay as I went and piled it against the slabs, there was enough to make a wall the height of the slabs all around and I hav planted primroses and alpine strawberries in it. When it has rained a few times and the clay is settled I'll reclaim the slabs and just have the clay bank around it, it worked very well on the last bed I made.
 
They like a fluffy white fabric hat across summer here. Not much you can do about ambient temps but few gardeners understand the relationship water has with infra red heat, something plants of all types abhor. If you search you can find pictures where entire forests are shown to be reflective of the invisible heat that makes up half of the ground level heat they deal with and it is invisible. Wanna see a graph to further explain? Guess why they use water in nuclear reactors?
 
So today I:
  • Programmed more of a PLC
  • Drove around and programmed a few industrial robots
  • Baked and frosted a double layer chocolate cake (This link)
  • Graded and skreeded most of the sand for my paver patio
  • Made a simple chicken curry for dinner (this one from a British food blog)
As Robert A. Heinlein famously wrote, "Specialization Is for Insects".

It's kinda hot, 85 F here with full sun, and I sweat through 96 ounces of water working on that patio. I've been going full boar for the last 13 hours 39 minutes. I'm tired and need more salt.
 
Planting out time, four moneymaker tomatoes, a couple of courgettes and eleven sweet corn. I have lots more tomatoes in containers, these are later ones in the garden, There are also more courgettes to plant out, but I just moved a compost heapso where it had been was about the size for the first two. The sweetcorn I planted eighteen seeds as the first lot I planted only one came up, and then it died. Eleven should be reasonable for the two of us,I don't know what I did wrong the first time. I haven't grown sweet corn for years, last time it was very poor, but I am hoping the new cultivars that are supposed to be suited to our climate do better.
Hoed, watered, picked up the burnt clay and ash from my fire to deal with later, swept up, those sorts of little jobs.
 
Took all of the spring bulbs and plants out of these and put in some snapdragons, Erigeron and fuchsias in. Changed the first 8in of compost with new.
IMG_20240519_140450_(864_x_1536_pixel).jpg
 
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Dirtmechanic said:
They like a fluffy white fabric hat across summer here. Not much you can do about ambient temps but few gardeners understand the relationship water has with infra red heat, something plants of all types abhor. If you search you can find pictures where entire forests are shown to be reflective of the invisible heat that makes up half of the ground level heat they deal with and it is invisible. Wanna see a graph to further explain? Guess why they use water in nuclear reactors?
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Yes please Dirt, Zigs and I would very much like to see your graph. Zigs will probably understand it all, but I'm thick when it comes to all this scientific stuff, and I'd like to learn. :giggle:
By the way, what's a fluffy white fabric hat? We'd use shade cloth.
 
Tetters said:
Yes please Dirt, Zigs and I would very much like to see your graph. Zigs will probably understand it all, but I'm thick when it comes to all this scientific stuff, and I'd like to learn. :giggle:
By the way, what's a fluffy white fabric hat? We'd use shade cloth.
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Shade cloth that is white. It can be 50f cooler than a black cloth. Household sheets can be seen in the countryside but they do not hold up long. We only have about 60-75 days of really intense heat here Today felt like one. They said it was to be 88f but I never checked.Screenshot_20240519_203856_Chrome.jpgScreenshot_20240519_203941_Chrome.jpg
 
I drug out the 8ft cattle panel tomato cages for the indeterminate tomatoes. DW said we did not need as many tomatoes as last year but she brought 2 more than I had caged last year so I need to make up a couple more. I need to cage the bell peppers too.
 

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