Pond Life
Posted: Sat 16 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden 1 Comment »This morning, our lovely garden maintenance man came round, and we now have a small pond in the garden.
It’s been part of the plan for a while, but we hadn’t got round to getting it done. And now it is.
It’s not really planned to be a decorative/ornamental pond, more of a wild-life one, so we’ve had to think about the best ways to make it work. As it is, it’s got railway sleepers round the edges (which we’ll then probably cover with wire in order to stop Hound getting into it) with gaps so that animals can find their way in/out without too much hassle.
The main things we expect to use it will be the copious numbers of frogs and toads we’ve got in the area – I’d be very happy to have it get populated with frogspawn every year, but have no idea how long that may take – and possibly the odd hedgehog or whatever. That’s the plan, anyway.
Of course, now we also need to buy some plants to put in it – again, nothing massive, but enough to keep it oxygenated and clean. I don’t know whether we’ll bother with fish in it – we might, we might not.
But all the same, we now have a pond. That’s quite cool by any estimation.
Rain
Posted: Fri 15 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden Leave a comment »Out of interest, am I the only person who’s been pleased that it’s rained this week?
There’s a reason for this, rather than me just being a grumpy anti-sun person – it’s that our water-butts were beginning to run low on water. I’ve written before about our collection of water butts – enough to hold about 1,850 litres (roughly 400 gallons) of water all told – but the levels were getting pretty low all round, due to not having had any rain in a while.
So yes, I’m generally happy to have had a couple of days of rain – all the water-butts connected to proper drainpipes had completely refilled, although the ones linked to the greenhouse didn’t do so well. We obviously still need to work on that a bit.
Anyway, with the water-butts happily full again, I spent some time this evening moving water up to the butts by the greenhouse, two watering-cans at a time. It means that the larger butts are back to being about half empty again, but if /when we get more rain (which is the current prediction) then the larger ones attached to drainpipes will fill up again a lot ore easily.
But still, yes, I’m happy that it’s been raining. Go figure.
More Garden Activities
Posted: Sun 26 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden, Plots & Green Stuff Leave a comment »Following a (much-needed) lazy day on Saturday where very little at all got done, we’ve been a lot busier today. Continuing on from last weekend’s work, we’ve done…
- Built two small(ish) raised beds (2m x 1m x 20cm)
- Put together one higher raised bed (2m x 60cm x 90cm)
- Moved two tons of bark-chip to cover the rest of the veg patch (and some of the chicken run)
So another productive day. The new version of the veg patch is pretty much complete now, with the exception of actually planting stuff. That’s most likely the work next weekend (as well as filling the new raised beds with earth, so that’ll be another ton of dirt moved) and then we’ll be done.
There’s still other stuff to do, of course – but the new version of the veg patch has been one of the big jobs on the list for this year, so it’s good to be nearly done with it.
Mind you, we’re both knackered now.
Bark Chip
Posted: Thu 23 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 1 Comment »As part of our ongoing alterations to the garden and veg-patch (primarily based around using raised beds for growing stuff, rather than the main veg-patch underneath) we’d also ordered about 2 tons of barkchip to cover the bits unused by raised beds.
It got delivered yesterday – slap-bang in the middle of the entrance to the driveway, so no vehicles can get past it. A bike might be able to, but nothing else.
Thankfully we’ve got a horse-shoe drive, so can use the other (much narrower) entrance to it. But you do have to wonder at the sense of leaving it there, rather than on the 20-odd-foot long length of verge between the two drive entrances.
Still, it defines what we’ll we be doing this weekend. Happiness, Joy etc. etc.
Upside-Down
Posted: Tue 21 April, 2009 Filed under: Green, Green Garden 1 Comment »I don’t think we’ll be getting any this year, but I love this idea – growing tomatoes upside down, using a hanging-basket bracket, and letting gravity do the work instead of needing to use canes etc to support the growing plants…
Garden Work
Posted: Sun 19 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden Leave a comment »So this weekend, the workload between us has involved…
- Making of two raised beds, as detailed yesterday
- Filling both raised beds with earth/manure etc. (Pretty much a ton between the two)
- Redistribution of water from the massive water-butt down to smaller (emptier) ones around the place.
- Painting of the garden shed
- The first grass-mow of the season for the prairie (AKA the back garden)
- Strimming round the edges
So, not really all that busy then. *ahem*
Raised Beds
Posted: Sat 18 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden Leave a comment »Among other things, today we’ve built two raised beds (technically three, but two have been joined together to make a double-height one) for the veg patch.
It didn’t start well, but i the end everything combined OK and the last two went together in about 45 minutes each.
They’ve been made from 7″ x 1″ planks (so the double-height is 14″ high) and will work to be part of our new plan for the veg patch – reducing the workload by covering most of the patch in weedproof membrane, and using the raised beds for our crops/veg.
It means we won’t be using all the space, but it does mean we should be able to get on with growing stuff, rather than ending up with a patch that’s primarily great for growing weeds…