July Garden Updates, Dividing Plants, Soil Test & More 🌺🌳🌱

What was you going to tell me about this bed? I just need a bit of colour, you spend all your time over there and neglecting this area here. Yeah, I agree. It's because I don't know what to do with it, because it's just so hot and sunny and nothing seems to thrive very well. I was thinking, the sundial, has it had its time? Has it? Yeah. Well, if you think it has, I don't have any feelings for it either way. Ah, what's this say? I don't know. Well, I could put it somewhere, couldn't I? It doesn't have to be bang in the middle. We've never used it as a sundial. What time is it? Let's go and have a look at the sundial. No, well I could stick it in the border somewhere, couldn't I? Yeah. Hi everyone, it's Jeanette here from Enthusiastic Gardener. It's too hot to garden. I wanted to do so much today, but it's 22 today, 22 degrees, and it's expected to be 29 later today. I'm hot already, so really it would be better if I leave it till the end of the day. I watered all the garden this morning, very early, about 6 o'clock it was, and there's loads of weeds, because we've had sunshine all week, which has been marvellous. So we have weeds aplenty. Now I'm thinking, it's too hot for gardening. So I'll show you a couple of the things that don't take much effort. Let's do that. Put my sunglasses on. Take you round and show you a few bits. First of all, I'm really, really pleased with my fountain that I moved last week. Here's my fountain, and I've had that on so much, and I think it's very pretty. I've got a video actually of what it looks like in the dark. So I'll show you that, because it does look very nice. This is what it looks like in the dark. Very pretty, and it's just such a gentle noise, which is very calming. And also, do you remember my wind chime? Well, I couldn't help myself, and I've painted it, which I think looks very pretty. So that's had a little paint, and it's got a different colour on each tendril. What's the word? And then when I sit here, in my yellow chair, with a view of my fountain and the noise of the fountain, it's very nice. I had so many plans for today. Let me show you how my snout's doing as well. The snout area, where I planted all the lamian, that's doing very well, and I'm very pleased about that. So my snout. Another thing I don't think I've shown you before is I moved this glass, which I bought in Portugal, hung it up here, and it's really pretty. It moves around in the wind, as you can see, and it captures all the sunlight. So I think that looks nice. These are supposed to be for hanging baskets, these hooks, but I'm not a fan of hanging baskets. I did have them up there for a couple of years, but I just find they dry out so quickly, and I don't think I'll do hanging baskets again. Well, it's the next morning. I didn't actually do any gardening until about 5.30 last night, and I didn't film it. I just came out, did some deadheading. You can see that the sundial has gone. We've taken that out, so I think I'll sell that on Facebook Marketplace, because I did try and dot it around in the borders, but can't find anywhere where it looks as if it hasn't just been dotted in. And this is nice. This is my Eremophila, and it's putting on new little flowers, so I think it's quite happy. That's the one I got from my Save Me section. So I just wanted to mention thank you to you all, because so many of you kindly confirmed my question in my garden tour. Is this a ninebark? Yes, a resounding yes from you all. It is a ninebark, and June Jenkins even said it's probably the lady in red. Beautiful little three-pronged leaves you can see there, and it will have flowers, little pink flowers. Just trying to get out the sun, which I think is the beginning of the flowers there, just about see. And it should grow about 1.5 metres tall. That's what confused me, because this, I've had it maybe two years, and this is as big as it's got so far. And as you can see, it's a beautiful red colour, turns darker red later in the summer. So thank you, thank you for telling me that. The other thing that happened yesterday is my friend Edie. You may remember we visited her courtyard garden last summer. She came round with a carrier bag full of this. She'd just dug it out of her garden. She gave it to me because she'd bought something new. This is a cotinus, and it's called a young lady. It's a dwarf cotinus, smokebush. So I've put that in there, quickly wanted to plant it. Behind, you can see, is some dusty miller. I've moved my three-ball topiary, which was just over here. It was standing there. I've moved that over there. I trimmed back this erythema, which is what has given me all this new space. I took away, there was a lot of dead in the middle, so we left with kind of half as much as what we had in the first place, but that will give it a rejuvenation. So I did that, I deadheaded roses, just a couple of things like that. My job for today is to dig up the carex, the three carex, and also the three blue fescues. It's quite early this morning on a Sunday, so get it done quickly. Take them over to my potting bench, tidy them up, clean them up a bit, and divide them hopefully, put them elsewhere. Let's do it. Well, that came up easily. There we are. I've decided I'm just going to cut it all, give it all a trim, put it in a pony tail and just cut it all easier. Just pull out the dead ones. I think I can divide that there as well. Here we are, we've got two smaller ones here. I think I'll put them in a bowl of water just while I do the rest. And we should end up with lots of wonderful little plants like that. Another little one. And while I do the others, I'm just going to set these in this little bucket of water so they can have a nice drink while I do the rest. Well, I'm very sad to say these are just not savable. They're just falling apart. As I try to divide them, there's not enough left. So it's a case of I shouldn't have planted them where I did plant them. Too hot, but a lesson learned. However, I do have lots of lovely little Carex plants which I'm going to leave in this bucket, soaking in this bucket of water for a good part of today. Can't plant them out yet, it's far too hot. They've already been through enough stress. So I'll plant them out later on tonight when the sun's gone and I'll show you where they've all ended up. Well, another question that I've had quite a bit recently and I don't know the answer. And I've been gardening for many, many years and I've never tested my soil. But the question I've been asked is what type of soil do you have? And I don't know. So I've been online and I've ordered this kit from a company from Amazon called Garden Tutor. I'm not recommending this one in particular. It's just the one that I've decided to buy, a mid-price range because they range in all different prices. And you just get these testing strips. So pH stands for potential hydrogen and anything below 7 you have acidic soil and anything above 7 you have alkaline soil. And it says here in this little brochure that I've been reading up on that the ideal gardener would love to have soil of 6.5. So we'll do a test. Cut down about 6 inches and you take a little sample. So I'll do that for lots of different areas. You can test each area separately or, which is what I will do, you get lots of samples from all different areas. You put them in one container, mix it up thoroughly. Then you take 8 tablespoons of your soil into a jar or decanter or something and you take 8 tablespoons of water, ideally distilled. So I thought I'd boil mine. You mix it all together. Minimum is 30 minutes. Maximum is 8 hours you can leave this solution in. Then just before you do your test, you mix it up again according to this and then you dip your strips in and you match them to one of the colours along here. And they look like this. And you get 100 in here. You don't really need 100. They look like that. And then you match it to one of these. So I'll do that and at the end of the video I will reveal, the ground reveal, what type of soil do I have. And I'll be interested to find that out as well. I have just finished planting the Carex's. I don't know if you can see them. We have a little group in there, a little group in there and a little group there. So hopefully I've given them a new lease of life. Hope so anyway. Now let's do the soil test reveal. Richard is here to verify the science experiment. Okay. Don't dip it in your tea by mistake. No. Ready? Get in the mud. Three seconds. That's three seconds. Give it a really good shake. Vigorous shake. Dip it in the water quickly. Dip it in the water to get rid of any excess soil. Then wait for one minute. Oh Richard. One minute. Right, I'm timing. It is now. Okay. Let's have a look. I'll rate that one 7.5. 7.5? Yeah, I'll rate you that one. I think you're right. Unless you'll do the same. Yeah. 7.5. 6.5 being your target soil pH. And a pH of 7 is neutral. Most plants prefer a soil between 6 and 7. So we're slightly alkaline. This video actually started yesterday morning on Saturday. And it's taken me all this time because of the heat. It's now Sunday evening. Yep. I concur. It's Sunday evening. It's the longest video that has taken forever. But I hope you're having fun in your garden. Do you have any comments on the garden, Richard? It looks very nice. Do you have anything you'd like to share? Any plans for the future? I might go on a cruise. You do have one project coming up, don't you? I do, yes. What's that? Your mum's decking. Yes. I've got to rip up the old decking. It's rotted. Unfortunately so is the infrastructure underneath. So I've got to rip the whole lot out and start from scratch. You might see a bit of a video. I won't be rushing around with the camera. I can't imagine you'd be taking a tripod and moving a tripod around. But we can see the before and we can see the after. Yes, you can. So that would be good. So that's exciting. And then of course there is one more project. We're painting the fountain and the water feature. Yes. Poor Richard. When's he going to have time for golf? Well, that's it. That's it. Okay, well thank you so much for watching. I'm Jeanette. I'm Richard. The Enthusiastic Gardener. And Enthusiastic. Have a fun week and we will see you hopefully next week. We will. Thank you for watching. Bye.