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Garden Projects Although we have been here for 13 years now there's still lots of work to be done. We started by building a house out of the barn which was on the site and which alas still needs some finishing touches. About 3 years ago we started on the garden or "building site to become a garden" and thought it would interesting for us (and maybe even to you as well) to record work in progress on the remainder of our garden projects, documenting our successes and failures along the way. Driveway Project Finishing the area along the side of the Driveway
2 loads of top soil arrived yesterday at £50 per load (29 July 2008) to fill the borders at the back. The driver was very helpful in tipping it into 3 separate piles to save us a lot of donkey work in spreading it about. On top of the soil we also tipped about ten barrow loads of cow manure left over from our Dexter cow keeping days which has still not rotted down properly despite the cows having left for pastures new some two years ago. This is strange because it was a good mix of manure and straw and then covered with tarpaulin to suppress weed growth. The top couple of inches (5.8 cm) has turned into a wonderful crumbly black compost but dig any deeper than that and it looks fresh as a daisy! Note for the diary - study compost making techniques to improve performance in this area in future. Yet more topsoil was needed to finish the job and luckily we found this from old piles of earth hanging around the place.
The picture left shows the pergola splaying out such that the posts nearest the entrance to the shady nook are farther apart - we found this looked far better that having them parallel coming off a circle. What this will look like once the overhead timbers and trellis work goes in only time will tell.
Building a Polytunnel We have also just started our Polytunnel project (well seeing as how the builder was already here doing the driveway) - the land is so heavy, wet and exposed that we raise everything in raised beds - this year due to the excessive rain early on, nothing went into the ground until late May - a polytunnel therefore makes sense for us if we want decent crops of vegetables. After trawling the internet we found a really useful site for building your own polytunnel namely Alan's Polytunnel which gives a step by step guide to building a polytunnel capable of withstanding gale force winds. We also found two other sites worth mentioning for general gardening advice - one is the gardening forum at the Grapevine which seems a friendly place where you can ask questions and not get your head bitten off by fellow posters, this forum directed us to a blogspot at Evington Hilltop which has some useful advice for allotmenteers and supplies links to good mail order suppliers for all things gardenwise. Anyway, back to the polytunnel - after digesting Alan's
advice we decided to have a go at building a polytunnel ourselves and
build something around 18 feet wide and 40 feet long so here goes..... Whilst out shopping we happened to see some water board men working in a field so we stopped and asked if they ever sold off offcuts of alkathene pipe. We were in luck because they did have about 100 meters of condemned pipe (pipe which had been dragged through the ground so often it was scored and no longer fit for carrying drinking water) and they could let us have it for £50. Again on our travels we spotted a scaffolding firm at work on someone's house, so we stopped and asked if they had any old scaffold pipes they didn't want - they directed us to their yard where we were able to buy for £20 enough pipes to do the job. With the wood and other bits and pieces bought at local auction sales and accumulated over the years this means we now probably have enough materials to complete the framework of the polytunnel. So...... Second job - clear the site
Right - same site looking west. The polytunnel has to be squeezed in between the field gate, just visible centre left of the photo, and the raised beds off photo to the right and leave room for a path either side.
The site was cleared and levelled within two hours and there is just about enough room to build a tunnel the size we want.
The plan next is to knock a couple of pipes in the ground 18' apart and put the blue pipe in place to see how tall the structure will be - that way we can estimate how much polythene we will need to order (and maybe re-think the size of the thing).
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A current project is to develop an area to the side of our driveway which
will incorporate a car parking space, new shrub and flower borders, a
tree/hedge bank and a fence to keep the sheep out. These sheep, who are
rarely troubled by their owners and live almost permanently on the roadsides,
really enjoy our hostas and other prized plants and shrubs. Indeed, this
year hardly anything at the front of our house flowered thanks to these
woolly bundles of trouble picking off our blooms as soon as they attempt
to show their faces to the sun.
As
you can see from the pictures we have already started work having had
the site levelled and the remains of the builders rubble carted away (very
conveniently to the farmer next door who has a large hole that needed
filling). We then laid some weed suppressing membrane over the site and
had chippings tipped to form a car park over part of the area. You will
see from the photo above left that there is a shady nook at the top end
and we immediately thought of a seat with some aromatic shade loving plants
around might be a nice place to have coffee on hot days.
What
to do with the proposed hedge bank running along the back of the new beds
to get it ready for planting up was the next problem as the area was overgrown
with long grasses and bracken. We are both a bit long in the tooth so
weeding it and digging a planting trench 18m long in this stone riddled
area is not an option. We have hopefully solved this by treating with
Roundup to kill off the long grass. This seems to have worked very well
as only one application was necessary (see picture left taken two weeks
later showing treated area against the long grass on the roadside verge).
Next job here is to loosen the topsoil on top of the bank and then add
compost and manure to make a decent planting mixture where the trees and
shrubs are to go. Then we will cover then whole area with weed suppressing
membrane until we are ready for planting up. Our only problem at that
point will of course be how to identify the areas that have been prepared
for planting under the membrane - oh, if only life was simple!
As you see, we now have the 3" half round timbers to contain the
raised beds in place and we've left the posts long to make it easy to
attach windbreak netting to protect the newly planted beds over the winter.
You'll see longer posts in the left had corner - these will be used to
make a small pergola leading into our shady nook.
Left
- the site looking north-east before work commenced - you can see the
existing veg garden around the greenhouse in the background. 
After
clearing the scrap and invading chickens off the site we got our neighbour
to visit with his digger.