Well, it’s been a while (again), no? Here we are having been in our glorious new house for SEVEN FREAKING MONTHS - how did that happen? Well anyway, we have, and so here we are at just the right time to start focusing on the garden!
First up - some scene setting. Our sellers liked being “in” the garden but also liked it being fairly low maintenance, so we inherited some plants (the most fabulous campanula, a large and possessive lavender, some ornamental grasses (bleurgh - not a fan), a very pretty jasmine, some foxgloves, and invading through the fence from next door a winter jasmine (hurrah - as our cuttings brought from our old one which in turn was originally bought in memory of HRH The Cat and Jazzlet-Doglet didn’t survive) and what might be a honeysuckle - we’re still waiting to see on that last.) We also inherited some gaps where some of their favourite plants used to be, and a fair number of quite determined weeds… there is a small lawn, and then quite a lot of patio - far more than two people who enjoy sitting outside, but only need a relatively small area to do so, needed, so a plan was hatched…
A couple of weekends ago, lovely-Steve-the-Handyman came round with an assortment of tools and a good deal of determination, and cut/prised/bashed away at a roughly 4’ x 12’ area of patio - to create a new vegetable growing bed. It turned out to be a little more challenging than he (and we!) expected - in places the concrete base was over 3 inches thick, and there was more hardcore and rubble than you would even believe underneath it! Eventually though after about 4 hours of his time, one ever so slightly poorly drill, a fair bit of swearing, several chunks of slab and concrete that even he and MrEH between them struggled to move, and a further 5 hours of our time the following day involving a lump hammer and brick bolster, plus 4 tip-runs (and several more still needed) we ended up with a hole in the garden that would shortly swallow what felt like sufficient compost to keep a small garden centre going for months. And THEN, we ended up with this…
And yes, we’ve already started planting in it! In true “EH Style” we’ve gone as frugal as possible - and our planting is designed and planned to provide us with foodstuffs which either we use a lot of, or which are expensive or difficult to buy. In the back right corner is a redcurrant. We had one at the flat, and briefly debated whether we could move it, but had to decide that it wasn’t going to be practical. The new one was acquired from the half price section at our local branch of a large orange DIY chain, and doesn’t seem to have objected to the lengthy delay in planting it’s had to face while we got our act together with the garden! The other large plant in there is, as you can probably spot, a rhubarb - high on our list of “plants we want when we have space”. Along the edge there are a couple of small sorrel plants. - which won’t mind the shade that the rhubarb will undoubtedly (hopefully!) end up casting…
 |
| Sorrel… |
… and a thyme, which should quite enjoy what might end up being a fairly sunny and liable to be dry spot in that corner, as well as clambering around the edges of the slabs a bit to soften things. The other end has courgettes - three plants, which from past experience is enough to leave us needing to eat a LOT of courgettes AND casting around trying to find folk to give them to. We’ll also be getting some potatoes in there (excellent for breaking up the soil in the bed’s first year) and also probably some rainbow chard - we’ve grown this before and it’s a really good versatile leafy summer veg. I will probably also be adding some more bits here and there round the edges - almost certainly more herbs - I’d like a fennel for the back left corner, and I already have thyme seedlings on the go ready for more edge-softening… the back “might” get raspberries - that one still requires thought.
Elsewhere in the garden we have also been busy - and busy reusing resources we already have so far as we can. Having removed a big chunk of patio in one place, we’re now increasing it’s size a little elsewhere - a line of reclaimed slabs along the “top” end now have herbs in pots on them…
…and some more are being used at the bottom end to widen the path there and make the area more user-friendly. It won’t be the most aesthetic result, but it will be functional. More reclaimed slabs have been used to line around the edges of the compost bin - we had a bit of an annoying vermin issue there when we first arrived - and the whole and part bricks and blocks we dug out of the new bed have been used to make a rough and ready “wall” across the back of the new bed to avoid any risk of a garden fork skewering the electric cable that runs there. Three gooseberry plantlets carefully dug up from the flat are all settled in and doing well, sadly it’s starting to look like the Bay we also brought with us might not have survived, although we do still have a spare in a pot if needed.
Lots of sowing of seeds has also been happening - the mini greenhouse (bought for a bargain price in Wilko’s closing down sale - the price was so good we bought a spare one, too!) is full to bursting…
…masses of potted-on tomato plants, sunflowers, a big pot of miniature round carrots, various herbs (parsley, choices, that thyme, coriander, lots of basil) and various other odds and ends.
In one of the raised beds on the other side of the garden we have a little thicket of Broad beans - SO nice to be able to grow those again as they are one of my favourite veggies!
Meanwhile a trough of cut-and-come-again salad leaves and spinach is going great guns on the patio table - we’ll be able to start lightly harvesting from that soon, and I will be getting another trough of each sown at some stage too I think. The table is enormous, was left (with our agreement) by our sellers, and is far bigger than we need, so we’ll be using a good bit of it for now for various pots of salad we think - hopefully it might keep them out of the way of slugs and snails and will also make them super-easy to harvest too.
Still to get sown in a few weeks will be more beans - runners this time, and back to our long standing favourites “Polestar” there. Most of our seeds were bought at the end of the growing season last year for very reduced prices - we’ve always favoured this, and as long as they have enough date left on them to enable them to be sown the following year it can be a good way of making home-grown even more affordable. Once the shops want to clear the space for other goods, they often sell seeds at rock-bottom prices so it’s well worth keeping your eyes open. Other little money-saving ploys in the garden include using the run-off from water for washing up (our boiler is in the loft so it takes an age to run through hot) to fill watering cans - as we are now metered we are paying for it, so I’d sooner it went on the garden than down the drain!
So there you have it - your whistlestop tour of our little fledgling garden. It’s not huge - just an average sized town garden really, but it’s plenty for us to be getting on with while we get back into the swing of having proper growing space again. Just so you know, this entire post has been written sitting in the garden too which has been rather delightful. From my comfy seat in the corner it’s rather nice to survey the space which is hopefully going to go a good way to feeding us, as time goes on - and yes, of COURSE I’ve been enjoying a cup of tea, too!
No comments:
Post a Comment