August Cottage Garden Tour - New Ducks, Fruit Harvests & Summer Perennials

Music Hello and welcome back to our cottage garden. It's time for our August tour now and you've joined us on a lovely sunny evening at golden hour and the light is particularly lovely. Don't be fooled though we have had quite a windy and grey and miserable month so far. It's been really good for the grass and for the new plants but it hasn't been that enjoyable to spend time outside so we've been definitely making the most of it when it's like this. August so far has been a month of celebrating so it was my birthday a couple of days ago and we went for a picnic in one of my favourite gardens and then we went to Wales and went on one of the fastest zip lines which was amazing but the weather was awful and we basically went on a massive zip line through a storm so it was cold and wet but still a really really fun experience. We also hit our YouTube milestone of a hundred thousand subscribers so thank you so much if you've joined us recently and also thank you to those of you that have stuck around for longer as well. We're so so over the moon to have gotten 100k and next week we're getting a plaque from YouTube as well so I might be able to show you a video of that if it arrives before I get this video out but otherwise I'll show you it on a post on YouTube as soon as it arrives. If you watched our last video you'll know that this year our vegetables have been a little bit slow but thankfully we've had some really nice harvests from our fruit trees which have still made it feel like it's worthwhile. So we had some gorgeous peaches and some damsons from the trees that line the garden. The damsons are still going and we're getting a good handful of those every day. We've had some cherries from our dwarf cherry tree, a couple of figs so far with lots left to go and some raspberries as well from our raspberry canes. So fruit harvests have been really really good so far and thankfully as I'll show you later on the vegetable patch seems to be catching up too. Before I show you around the garden though please do subscribe if you enjoy watching these videos it really helps the channel out and if you'd like to support us further you can join our patreon and you'll get your name in the credits at the end of the video too. The link is in the video description. Now let's have a look around the garden. So in this lower part of the garden I finally finished the yew hedge that I've been talking about for the last probably four months. I had three or four more hedges to get in and it was taking me ages to get them in just because they were so heavy but I bit the bullet and got them in. Unfortunately I did lose a couple of our rose plants in this process and I know you're not supposed to move roses in summer. It was a risk I was willing to take in order to get these hedges in. I think I moved about seven roses two of which I believe have died. One's definitely died the second one is clinging on for dear life and I don't think it's going to make it. The others are all fine which is kind of miraculous but sadly we have potentially lost our really beautiful Olivia rose Austin standard which had been in the ground for about four years and it had reached a really lovely size. I've still got it in the ground behind me but I just don't think it's going to make it so I will replace that in the winter with a bare root rose because it was one that was really really beautiful and I definitely want to keep in the garden but unfortunately wasn't able to save it this time. I think it would have been fine if I'd moved it in the winter perhaps but I didn't want to wait I wanted to get this hedge done so it can start growing. Then we took a trip to our local nursery and picked up some cottage garden perennials to fill the space in front of these hedges and this isn't going to be a permanent planting because these hedges will get quite big they might dominate this border within the next few years so this is kind of a three to five year plan I suppose until these hedges get really nice and big but we've got cottage garden favorites in here some geraniums at the front we've got some lovely delphiniums that are this really beautiful soft pink colour absolutely love that colour. We've got four roses which I've moved from a shadier part of the garden where they really weren't very happy and I think they'll be much happier here for the sunlight. We have some lupita and some salvias here as well. The smaller plants like the delphiniums I've put two or three in one area so that it pads out the space faster and then the things that will spread quite quickly like the salvias and the lupitas I've just put one in and hopefully next year they'll look a bit fuller but borders never look great when you've just planted them so it doesn't look that interesting right now but I'm hoping next year this will look really lovely with the other borders that I've planted they do look quite good after just a year so watch this space and this will look lovely next year I hope. Behind me you can see we have a mallow that survived the winter and I planted loads of mallows around the garden and only two of them survived so we've got a pink one behind me there and then a really really lovely soft pink one at the top of the garden that I'll show you when we get there too. We've also got lots of yarrow that's flowering at the moment and spreading really successfully which is great. The lambs ear plant is flowering too and the lavender is flowering as well and that variety is called headcot and we have seen the pollinators pick back up in the last couple of weeks which is a massive relief because if you watched our July video we couldn't see many pollinators at all and we were scared that something has gone awfully wrong but thankfully the numbers seem to be picking up a bit now. Now let's move up the garden and I can show you another area that I've recently planted. So you can see here we're under the shade of the smoke tree that's above us and when we first moved in it was dappled sunlight here but this tree has grown quite a lot and shaded this area out almost entirely and so I've had to rethink about what I've got planted here and a family member gave us some hostas from their garden which were really really lovely and in pots really nice big root systems so we lifted them out of the pot and divided them and we've got most of them in here. Again this is a case of it's not looking particularly lovely now that it's newly planted and that the plants are recently divided you can see some of the old foliage isn't looking too happy but the new growth at the base of the plant is starting to appear and it's looking really lovely so again next year this should look really nice but I wanted to show you a kind of work in progress anyway. I've also popped some evergreen ferns at the back these are semi evergreen so they should give us some interest over the winter. I love ferns and I think they're really really beautiful so I can't wait for these to grow and I think I will try and get a mulch of some wood chips down on the soil as well to stop the weeds from germinating because once you've disturbed the soil it's quite likely that you might get some weed growth and I can see a few things popping up already so I will try and get some wood chips down but really really happy with these hostas. We only had a couple of plants before so it's good to have a bit more variety in the garden and a nice way to make use of the shade too. Before I got these in the ground this is where I actually had the roses that I've moved into the area that I showed you at the start of the video and you can see they just wouldn't they weren't happy with the lack of sunlight here as this tree above us got bigger but that's the thing with gardening you do have to adapt as the conditions change and so hopefully this setup will be more rewarding for the plants. I just wanted to quickly show you the progress on this new border that we planted in spring because I have been showing this to you in every monthly tour. I also have been mentioning that these were Echinacea but it turns out they are Rudibechia. I think I planned on planting Echinacea and then must have changed my mind at some point. So these have started flowering now and they're really really lovely. The yarrow is flowering as well. We've got the Japanese anemones are also almost ready to flower so maybe give this a week or two and it will start to look really showy. But I am so excited to see the asters that we've got at the back of this border. I think I've got about two or three there's two or three different varieties in here and a number of plants but I'm really excited to see these because I've never grown asters before and they're such a generous flower for the end of summer as everything else starts to dwindle they should give us some really lovely pops of pink and purple. So I'm very excited to see those and it shouldn't be long now they've got lots of buds on the top and one thing that's really amazed me in this border so far is the perennial sunflower at the back that's just started flowering not quite in full bloom yet but this was one that we bought from someone's back garden in a really tiny pot I'm gonna say a litre or two I think it was probably just one litre but it's given us a really sizable plant even in just a few months of being in the ground so obviously came from a loving home and some good quality soil and can't wait to see this develop. I've had to be quite sorrow with weeding this area because again the soil was really disturbed when we got the new hedges in and weeds are popping up left right and center but I'm just keeping an eye on it and doing a bit of work when I get time but it's starting to look lovely and the flowers are well on their way so I hope to show you this in full bloom in the next video so you might notice that our duck flock has increased in size by two and so we picked these two new ones up from a farm nearby and was called them Dolly and Patch and so Dolly is the lighter one and Patch is this slightly darker one but they look very similar in terms of their markings and the only difference is one is slightly darker than the other and they're the same age from the same batch of eggs so they are remarkably similar and sometimes they even move in the same way when they're walking around the garden very much in sync with each other they were very shy when we first got them so I think we got them about a week or two ago now it took about five days to integrate them with the other ducks and we had to have a divider up in the house so that they can look at each other without getting too aggressive it's quite hard to introduce new ducks to a flock without the original flock getting agitated so we had to be quite sensitive about that but four or five days in they'd completely accepted each other and we could remove the divider and they'd become one group and the new ones are a lot less shy they're not tame yet but they wouldn't have done this within the first week of getting them they would have run and hid under a hedge it was quite sad to watch how shy they were at the beginning so it's really really lovely to see them out and enjoying the garden now they're girls and they're Indian runner ducks like the others so they should lay eggs probably next year now it might be too late in the year for them to start we might get a few random eggs over the winter we'll see and if you watched our last video you might remember we were telling you that our duck Coco potentially had a tumor and was potentially quite poorly she seems way better now so we're not sure what's going on there she might be completely fine who knows we're just going to keep an eye on her but she seems really well and happy as you can see in front the new ducks do differ from the old ones in some ways and we've noticed that they're a little bit more destructive around the garden so our original three they're actually quite delicate they don't eat our vegetable plants they left a lot of things alone in the pond but the new two will eat absolutely everything and they are not frightened of going into the polytunnel or the shed or places where we might have seedlings so we're going to have to be a little bit more cautious now and what we're doing with our tender plants and our vegetable plants and keep things protected but we had all of them on the pond and the new two have stripped the pond bear they've eaten absolutely every pond plant that we had for some reason the original three didn't care they left the plants in there but we're gonna have to figure out a new routine with how we let them use the pond I think seeing as we have the new ducks we've also got our friends to build a new house for them so it looks a lot nicer than the one that me and Aaron hastily built when we realized that they were foxes in the garden we need to keep them safe when we're not out here with them he's done it in the same style as our shed so it kind of looks a bit like a cloister it has arched windows it's not finished yet so this is a sneak preview it still needs some roof tiles and some heavy-duty mesh to go on the front so it still looks a little bit weird where we've got our old chicken wire in there but it will get better you'll also notice that it currently looks really dark and we are going to ask our friend to put a skylight in just to let us more light in there because I think it is just far too dark and we didn't realize just how dark it would be when we put a roof on so we'll get that sorted one thing that was important to us with the new duck house was changing the watering system so at the moment they have a small kind of paddling pool in there that we change the water every day and it gets very muddy and it's not great for them in winter if they have to go into flock down so we've had some water buckets built into the side that ducks will have enough access that they can dip their eyes and nose in so that they can clean their eyes and flush out their nostrils but they won't be able to climb in and splash and this should keep the pen more clean and we will let them onto the grass so that they can have a splash and they can go in the pond and get clean properly when they're not in the pen it should mean that their pen is much more hygienic and easy to maintain the ducks have actually started molting as well which is quite early it's normally the end of summer or the start of autumn they will drop their feathers and grow new ones and while they're doing that they'll stop laying because their body is busy growing feathers so that started and does mean that there's feathers all over the ground looks like a duck has been attacked by a fox but it's normal it's just part of their process so I imagine that's been triggered by the cooler temperatures we're really excited to have these new ducks though it's always good fun getting a new pet and we can't wait to learn more about them and get to know their personalities a bit but let's leave the ducks down here where they can have a forage and I will show you how it's going with our fruit and veg in the polytunnel so August is probably the best month in the polytunnel for things like tomatoes and cucumbers and you can see we've got loads of tomatoes now that we're just waiting for them to finish ripening if you watched last month's tour I mentioned that I was actually worried about whether or not these were going to get pollinated due to the lack of pollinators but I've seen so many insects in here this month has been really reassuring I have left the polytunnel to be quite weedy and wild I did a massive clear up in here today so this is actually about as good as it gets but it was very weedy but one thing I have noticed in doing that is that there is a lot of insect activity in here and I think that just brings in the food chain and ultimately it brings in the predators too so it means there's a really healthy ecosystem in here and it kind of takes care of itself and we don't really have much in the way of pests we do struggle with the cabbage white caterpillars but I am really embracing them this year and I'm letting them eat whatever they want to I just think there's such a concerning lack of butterflies if they want to eat my crops they're very much welcome to if it means that they're going to survive in the garden I'm doing things like leaving cauliflower leaves in the ground after I've harvested the cauliflower so that the caterpillars have something to eat and you'll notice looking around there are loads of caterpillars but I'm really glad to see them I know some gardeners disagree with that but they are very much welcome in here everything's catching up it does get nice and warm in here even when it's not too sunny outside so the cucumbers are doing really well now it looks like there's one that's even ready to harvest it's slightly later than I would have liked but I'm still really really grateful that it's here you'll also notice that the grapevine has really put on so much growth this year it's been amazing I think I got that one in the ground about three two or three years ago sometime in the pandemic as a cutting and it has absolutely thrived this year I'm so pleased so I'm going to train that over this crossbar here and then next year hopefully we should have some to harvest there's no sign of fruit on there this year but I still think it looks really really beautiful in terms of tomato varieties we have three this year so we've got this yellow pear drop variety I can't remember the exact names we've got a beefsteak variety which I believe is this plant here and the slightly unusual shape and then we've got bog standard red tomato variety as well I should remember the names I do apologize but there's an assortment of different types the understory is planted with things like nasturtiums parsley chamomile different herbs and the idea is just that there's strength in diversity there's also some marigolds in here to help with predator control for the tomatoes they're a really good companion plant for tomatoes and then we've got some courgettes at the front which we finally started harvesting from this week and courgettes are an amazing thing it feels like the minute you start harvesting from them they will not stop and you can be out here feels like every day picking a new one so really really handy to have a couple of courgette plants on the go at the back of the tunnel I've got some dahlias that I've left in the ground for two or three years now they're not edible at least the plants aren't edible but the tubers actually are though I've never eaten them I leave them in here just because I don't want to dig them up and I know they'll survive frosts in here but might move them one day to make it more of a productive space the parsley has just sprung up loads in here as well and it's smelling really amazing I absolutely love parsley so that's something I hope to harvest soon but I'm really pleased with everything in here it was quite a concerning start to the year and it's really a relief when you see that things work out at the end up in the orchard the apple trees are doing really well and we are able to harvest a few already the fig tree is also doing really well this year and I love when that happens because figs are one of my favorite fruits I'm thinking about putting another fig tree in because I love them so much we don't have any pears this year sometimes trees have funny patterns they have years off I'm not worried about it it still looks like a really healthy tree and the understory is being left long for the insects and if you sit there you can hear the grasshoppers chirping and you know that there's loads of activity and that they're grateful for the overgrown grass in terms of planning ahead August is the time to start sowing greens for overwintering so I'm going to be sowing some cavolo nero and some chard to fill up the space in the tunnel and as usual I'll be growing loads of broad beans so that we get an early harvest of those but also so that they can fix some nitrogen back into the soil I don't normally start my broad beans until September October time so no rush on those but I will get some chard and kale seeds going soon but I'm really looking forward to harvesting these tomatoes as they start ripening it's one of my favorite things in the garden I just find them such a rewarding plant to grow and thankfully no signs of blight yet even though we've had some cold and damp weather so keep your fingers crossed for the tomatoes and I'll show you how we get along with those as they start to ripen I thought I would also show you these borders before it gets dark and although they aren't finished and they're not really giving a nice full impression like I would like them to there's definitely some gems in here that I want to share with you so this is the mallow plant that I referenced at the start of the video this one is called Barnsley baby and I planted this last year I think possibly the year before but I chose this one because it has these really gorgeous dainty pink white flowers and I really really love mallows but they don't always survive a frost so I'm glad this one has made it and it's just starting to look really lovely as it's beginning to flower we also have some rudabecchia in here that I grew from seed started two years ago it's always really rewarding when you see something that you've grown from seed become a really big colorful plant and this will come back every year so I've got some on both sides initially I wasn't super keen to grow yellow plants in the garden but I think as you get to the end of summer and there isn't much flowering you do just long for any color at all and so I do feel like it's quite welcome in the end maybe in the long term I'll swap these out with something pink like Echinacea but for now I'm really really happy with them and they barely cost me anything at all because I grew them from seed again up here you can see the yarrow is doing really well there's some on both sides mostly on this side though and this area is a little bit difficult to garden because the light conditions are so different on either side this side gets way more Sun and that side gets more shade so it's difficult to achieve symmetry thankfully in the cottage garden style you don't really need a lot of symmetry but I do try to mirror things a little bit where I can so we've got the perennial sunflower on both sides and this is just getting ready to flower now again really looking forward to seeing that it's normally closer to September when it starts to look really showy we've also got a few more hollyhocks they're yet to flower quite late but I think because I grew those I grew those from seed they might be slightly out of the rhythm with the rest of the garden this year but where there are gaps in these borders I'm always grateful to receive recommendations so if there's anything that you think I should grow here please do let me know that's it for our August garden tour though I hope you've enjoyed having a look around today and if you haven't already please do like comment and subscribe it really helps the channel out we'll see you for another garden tour next month when we will have finished the duck house and we can do a reveal and we can enjoy those late summer blooms too