2024 - What I did today

I cut down all the dead in the cottage garden beds. Very pleased to see lots coming back.
Emptied a fish box. Reused what compost I I could from that in another fish box. Which I topped up and sowed onions. Sown flowers inside.

Started cutting out dead & pruning all my pots, that are waiting for new beds. And trying to put all the same varieties together. Started a little collection of plants for the sales barrow. Because really how many pots of exactly the same thing do I actually need!

Potted up some tomato seedlings and sowed some seeds to replace the failures.
Took some Taunton Deane perennial kale cuttings, now in water on the window sill.
Pulled up a clump of Three cornered leek (to keep it under control). It'll be starring in this evening's meal.

Potted on some chitted broad beans into root trainers. Found some forgotten modules of onion seed had popped so brought them out to the gh and light.

Emptied some compost from the bottom of the Hotbin - enough to fill 3 x 30ltr tubs. I'll leave it to dry off a bit in the GH, then sieve it a bit,
Did some chopping tops off raspberry canes, cutting dead wood out of a tayberry/loganberry (not sure what it is). Removed lots of dead stems from mints and lemon balm - general tidying up day. .......then it rained!

Went out to prune fruit bushes, got sidetracked by carpets of bittercress in flower so felt the need to dig up what I could. Got the red currants and gooseberries pruned eventually but I'm never very confident that I'm doing it right. Then attacked the thug blackberry to prune out the fruited brambles. I got away without it drawing blood this time but there is more yet to do. Some brambles had flower buds on them.

Played with compost this morning.
Set up a 3rd Wormery with various bits of bedding material, old horse manure and some worms that I picked out of the other 2 bins.
Pulled the leaves off a lot of white comfrey plants (need to stop it spreading) and added the leaves to the Hotbin with some coffee grounds.
Converted the Aquaponics thingy I acquired recently into a compost processing unit! The bottom part with the lift up lid will be used to store compost in the GH. The top part, minus the lid, is the right height for me to sieve hotbin compost into - with a bucket inside to rest the sieve on. Saves me bending over, shaking a sieve around and scattering compost everywhere, as has happened previously.

Next door house sale has finally reached a completion date. ATM we're watching a person's household being reduced to piles of 'stuff' being shoved into a clearance van. Sad really. After years of popping over there at least once a week and latterly once a day to either check on people or the empty house, it will seem very strange to have new owners next door.

That's sad, Jen. The end of an era. Hope your new owners are nice.

That's sad, Jen. The end of an era. Hope your new owners are nice.

The auld fella who lives next door to me in my semi is hardly ever at home now and stays with his son in Scotland. The upshot is I can have the telly on full blast for footy and boxing, which is usually late at night. The downside is that if he decides to sell, you can't choose your neighbours!