Another New Garden Toy

I have been wrestling with the fact that our vegetable patch will be expanded this year. Which is good news, of course, as I will be able to grow much more. But part of that soil has been under wraps for too long.

From the third fence post from the right at the back, will be the expanded vegetable plot. That's 12+ feet. About 5 ft down to the lawn.

The situation was, it was under a tarp. Not good for soil. Sure, it kept the weeds down, to a certain extent, but it is hard as a rock when it's dry. Very, very difficult to dig over.

Do any of you remember it looking like this?

I realised that the dryness of the soil was a problem, because it dries like cement. So last weekend, I put the sprinkler on it for an hour or so.

In an hour I managed to dig a couple of feet of it with a fork. Seriously hard work.

I was considering renting a smaller version of "the beast" which we used to dig over the entire garden when we first moved in. But then I thought, hey, why don't I just buy one? Surely we'll use it again and again, to dig over the ground for the vegetable patch every year?

I found it - I almost bought something off e-bay, but this tickled my fancy more and I was outbid anyway. Here is a link, and do look at the video if you get a chance; I would be interested to know if any of you have tried this?

http://www.clifford-james.co.uk/ProductDetailInfoWithoutOptions.cfm?ID=GF741&ShopRef=68&Prime=Yes&shopListRec=33257

I am so, so excited to get this baby and do some tilling. Ready for all the vegetable plants I have ordered from Sutton's! A job lot of 160 plug plants, 12 different varieties from beetroot to broccoli. Bring it on!

Burn Baby Burn

Well, you see, in conversation over the barbeque last weekend during the power cut, your man upstairs, ever resourceful, had a very good suggestion. He said "I noticed the Hippo Bag there" (they know it well as they renovated their bathroom, and yes a Hippo Bag can hold an entire bathroom suite) "and I was thinking, actually, most of that could be burnt, in one of those cans specially designed for, well, burning."


http://www.harrodhorticultural.com/HarrodSite/product/Composting_Composting%20Accessories/GCO-380.htm


This is the sort of thing. What a super idea, and it frees up the Hippo Bag for, well, anything! But we're thinking of the rubble and soil when we chop back the "ugly front" which I am so longing to do, all in the hopes of putting up some sort of wall, and then some decking tiles down on the patio.








So, lo and behold, husband and I pop to the garden centre on Sunday, and I'm thinking all the time of this burning bin, and back we come and sitting outside the house, is the bin! Him upstairs was very excited about the prospect and didn't waste any time.


Husband had already half emptied the Hippo Bag again of the wood fence panels after that conversation last weekend (which, to be honest, burn like cardboard) to make more room, which means the wood that I had so labouriously carted to the front was back at the side, but only for a short time. I can forgive the fact that I loaded up the Hippo Bag last week on my own, encountering I don't know how many, and how many different kinds of spiders in that pile. Still, no harm done.


It burned!






Oh my how it burned, and most of it, too. D. upstairs was very keen and to be honest does love his fires - husband joined in as much as he could although he had much work to do inside; but all in all the boys were very happy. I was very, very happy! Look!








Tree branches gone, very little left now, except the last bits of wood (she upstairs called him in early evening, else he would have been there burning away to his heart's content until the sun went down).



That ridiculous Ice Cream Cone thing is gone. I actually took the pickaxe to it on Saturday, and it shattered into satisfyingly small pieces of plastic, now ensconced in the Hippo Bag.

All very, very satisfying. And now I see ...

I have my work cut out for me. That patch back there, is in a terrible, terrible mess. A lot of back-breaking, satisfying work to come, preparing that section for several more rows of turf, and a planted border.

I have so many ideas for the border. Not least those Peonies I am carefully looking after until such time as they go in the ground. But oh my ... there is some work to do!

Surprise, in a nice way

Spring, perhaps, has actually sprung!

I read a report last Saturday saying that the weather was going to turn around this week, and by the weekend, way hey, we might actually have some decent weather. Like, spring. And today, yes on the radio, they said, 20C (that's 70F) degrees for the weekend. Fingers crossed!


Well, long about 3:00 in the afternoon on Sunday, there was a sudden turn. Sure it was warmer than Saturday out there, but I still felt a chill in the am. I thought, right, I'll do something else, whilst I'm waiting. Washing, for one.




I do love the smell and overall cleanliness of washing hung out on the line. Maybe an old fashioned thing, but here in the UK, a dryer is not a given. So mostly, my washing is hung over radiators during the winter, but in the spring, summer, autumn ... it's out there in the sun! I haven't had this much fun with my washing for a long time!



Gosh I'm sorry, how ... uninteresting.

What I did manage to do, in the end, was a major cleanup of the soon-to-be beautiful (hah) back border. This took much more time than expected, as I don't think I was aware of how much stuff there was back there.




One of the big problems was, that behind the old fence, and now the new fence, someone, or several someones over time, had dumped a load of junk. (And well you may ask, where on earth did that large Cornetto thing come from??).



There is a path from the side road leading up behind all our gardens. One good reason to install a much better fence. I'm not saying that someone actually came up the path to dump all that, stuff (for lack of a more choice word I might use). But all that junk, it used to push on the old fence, at the right, so husband in his wisdom decided that we must get that stuff out of there, bring it out, and cut it up. All well and good. And we had an old fence to cut up too. All good. And he chopped down some of the tree on the left side, which overhangs the part of the fence we didn't actually replace.



This "tree" is actually a Buddleja. Now, I like Buddleja, it has a lovely flower and a lovely smell, and attracts butterflies. But I won't have one in my own garden, because I find them a bit, well, messy. Gosh they grow big, and I've never encountered one quite on this scale. So I'm happy it's there, but not actually in my garden.




There is a lot of stuff lying around there there in that back border.


If I'm completely honest? I was really tired of looking at this out of my kitchen window every morning.



So what I managed to do, by the end of the day, was make this

become this,






with a pile of this

by the side, which we must get rid of, at some point, however we do it. A Hippo Bag is a much more cost effective way of getting rid of this kind of thing than a skip, and that is what we are looking to do. We used to do this, before the lawn was down

But that is out of the question now! And fairly dubious anyway, I realise. Still, the guys loved it ...

By the way, as a side note, the tarpaulin you see has done a brilliant job of keeping the weeds down over the winter. Just a thought should you have a patch you don't quite know what to do with yet, but don't want it to become overgrown again, having spent so much effort rotovating.

In any case, onwards and upwards, I believe!

To any English readers, I would like to wish you all a Happy St. George's Day. It's something I think is right to say, and I wish we could all fly the St. George's Cross without impunity. It's like, Thanksgiving Day for Americans, or Canada Day for, um, Canadians! I'm proud of my own English heritage.

Cheers all!