Phaedra's 2023 Adventure

[Phaedra]

I have a whole bunch of Stella d'Oro daylilies that need dividing, but I never would have thought to take small cuttings for potting up. You are a great role model Phaedra. Do you ever sleep??

Yes, I do sleep.
My brain is shutting down now after another busy Saturday, haha. Good night!

 

[meadow]

You mean each column? Basically, I want to have a rough idea about how many days they need, from sowing to germinating and harvesting, how many seedlings I prick out and survive till the end, how many I can harvest, etc. I also use this chance to check their names in Chinese, English, German and scientific names.

I also want to find the patterns and build my succession plan.

Thank you so much!

 

[Phaedra]

The weather is nice today, and we used the woodchipper to process what I pruned last week. Very satisfying - many greenwoods just became a small pile of fine woodchips.

I used them directly on the path, and we will keep this process going on from this week as the spring pruning also starts.

 

[digitS']

That looks as though the machine did a very good job with the wood.

I bought a chipper years ago and learned that they require a lot of power. I didn't have all that much work for it but it wasn't up to the tasks beyond the smallest of branches. Even corn stalks didn't work well because they would bind up in the machine and feeding them through one at a time didn't accomplish much.

I finally sat it out at the curb on garbage pickup day and someone stopped to pick it up.

Steve

 

[Phaedra]

That looks as though the machine did a very good job with the wood.

I bought a chipper years ago and learned that they require a lot of power. I didn't have all that much work for it but it wasn't up to the tasks beyond the smallest of branches. Even corn stalks didn't work well because they would bind up in the machine and feeding them through one at a time didn't accomplish much.

I finally sat it out at the curb on garbage pickup day and someone stopped to pick it up.

Steve

Steve, this is a similar story we had with the famous BOSCH chipper (for corn stalks, my first intention) - Looks great, but the performance sucks. Bosch might work well for other equipment, but for gardening devices, sigh.

(The chipper in the photo is NOT recommended.)

I am relieved to get one really delivered. It can handle fresh leeks, corn stalks, or greenwood by chopping them consistently for all kinds of beddings or balancing the green and brown materials in the compost.

 

[Phaedra]

Received new foxglove seeds for the cut-flower garden - three among four are from the British company. I did miss the good old days before Brexit (Or Brexit saves me a lot?).

Lisianthus seeds are difficult to find here, and I don't know why.

I would also grow Petunia for our window boxes and hanging baskets. However, I didn't realize that these two colors are a bit too similar.

 

[digitS']

I have bought Thompson and Morgan seed, Phaedra.

The company's US operation was bought out by an American company.

With all the economic problems the UK is experiencing, what does that mean for the EU consumer of British products - availability, prices?

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

That looks as though the machine did a very good job with the wood.

I bought a chipper years ago and learned that they require a lot of power. I didn't have all that much work for it but it wasn't up to the tasks beyond the smallest of branches. Even corn stalks didn't work well because they would bind up in the machine and feeding them through one at a time didn't accomplish much.

I finally sat it out at the curb on garbage pickup day and someone stopped to pick it up.

Steve

You must have bought the same one that I recycled some 20 years ago. It never really worked, either.

 

[ducks4you]

I think my toaster is a Bosch. That is probably why it still works.

 

[Phaedra]

The idea itself works. The protected area has much less frost on the surface.

It can be taken as two layers protection, too. I turned the bottle and saw the lower side (facing the soil) has nothing on the surface. Only the upper side facing the sky was covered by frost.

I am just thinking about how to make it even more flexible. Besides, such settings should also work if I want to use them as the roof for the chicken run?

We will have another cold front this weekend, but after that, the temperature will become milder again with longer sunlight hours. The new plants propagated from the cuttings last year are so ready now.

Autumn raspberry, I just pulled basal shoots to more or less prevent the mother plant from spreading. One pulled piece has pretty nice roots, so I potted it on. The growth above the ground looks limited, but the roots are well-developed during the winter months. Now, it sends more basal shoots.

It's a nice signal, so I removed the spent old stems and leaves. Three new stems would be sufficient to do some good jobs for this year. I guess I will do the same process, clone more plants, but grow them in the pots.

Roses from last autumn pruning

My 2016 birthday gift - although we can't keep the garden in Cologne, the cuttings propagated from the plants there will become part of our story here.

Black currants from our neighbor in Cologne
I believe we could harvest a lot of black currants from this year.

New seeds!

And chatGPT did good work in providing the information I needed.

It also knows how to end a dialogue properly, interesting.