Allotment and stuff!!!
- Thread starter tommy the cat
- Start date
Yes what you can mainly see is the dead ivy in the picture.
Anyway a few pics but little progress!!
Coppicing in the woods Sunday...
The first tree I've ever felled!
Bob in the picture who guided me through the process.
Taint pretty but we all have to start somewhere
Ok been doing a bit on the allotment.
Ripping down the 9" wood to 7" as not enough 9" to go around
Wood ripped
Pants of shame... Found in the garden?!
British Red and Toddy very kindly sent me some goodies!!!! Thanks ever so guys I'm really touched by your kindness.. I will return the favour some day.
Roughly marked out where the beds will go and started hacking at the brambles!!
All in all a good few hours in lovely sunshine and now I'm ready for me tea!!
Jobs to do : get beds dug and get in wood for raised beds and get the first earlys in!!
I've only enough wood for 3 raised beds 14 ft by 4ft but as I'm doing all this on no budget as the gf just got laid off work... the fourth bed will have to wait till some more wood comes my way.
Atb Dave
Anyway a few pics but little progress!!
Coppicing in the woods Sunday...
The first tree I've ever felled!
Bob in the picture who guided me through the process.
Taint pretty but we all have to start somewhere
Ok been doing a bit on the allotment.
Ripping down the 9" wood to 7" as not enough 9" to go around
Wood ripped
Roughly marked out where the beds will go and started hacking at the brambles!!
All in all a good few hours in lovely sunshine and now I'm ready for me tea!!
Jobs to do : get beds dug and get in wood for raised beds and get the first earlys in!!
I've only enough wood for 3 raised beds 14 ft by 4ft but as I'm doing all this on no budget as the gf just got laid off work... the fourth bed will have to wait till some more wood comes my way.
Atb Dave
Glad the seeds got there okay DaveHave fun with it.....oh....you are!
Thanks my friend im well chuffed!!!
I'm looking forward to getting more time on the land.
Dave
This is a great thread, my in-laws planted cherry and apricot saplings twenty years ago, they can now barely cope, the neighbours are invited to help themselves to as much as they can pick, we still end up with forty to sixty big jars of compote and jam from each tree.
That's looking very good indeed there.
I'd compost every thing you can and get & it rotted down and worked into and happed over those beds Spuds are a good way of breaking open ground.....well, you dig for putting them in, they get happed up with more digging and they're forked out again digging things over
Looks like you've got loads of leaf litter around too, good stuff
I like my garden, but there's no getting away from it, between buildings and trees it's all shaded at some part of the day; your's looks like you've got good Sun
Best of luck with it.
M
I'd compost every thing you can and get & it rotted down and worked into and happed over those beds
Spuds are a good way of breaking open ground.....well, you dig for putting them in, they get happed up with more digging and they're forked out again digging things over Looks like you've got loads of leaf litter around too, good stuff
I like my garden, but there's no getting away from it, between buildings and trees it's all shaded at some part of the day; your's looks like you've got good Sun
Best of luck with it.
M
Yep loads of leaf litter Mary lots of Oak leaves any reason this would be a problem ? ( tanin)
The plot is shaded by two oaks some of the day but that's what I have to deal with.
Monty Don said recently not to fight nature... so going to work with what I've got rather than fight to get plants to grow that are not suited to the plot.
Thanks for the blackcurrants got to work out where to plant it.... Tomorrow ill plant it into a large pot untill I can decide where it's going?
Leaf litter for mulch or should I bag it for leaf mould?
Thanks for everyone's interest in the the thread hopefully we can all learn a little from it...
Dave
The plot is shaded by two oaks some of the day but that's what I have to deal with.
Monty Don said recently not to fight nature... so going to work with what I've got rather than fight to get plants to grow that are not suited to the plot.
Thanks for the blackcurrants got to work out where to plant it.... Tomorrow ill plant it into a large pot untill I can decide where it's going?
Leaf litter for mulch or should I bag it for leaf mould?
Thanks for everyone's interest in the the thread hopefully we can all learn a little from it...
Dave
I'd bag it or pile it up, or better yet kickstart a compost heap with some of it. I have brandling worms in mine. I lifted the lid on one the other day and I jest you not, a rope of them as thick as my forearm peeled off the underside of the lid rim Must have weighed at least a kilo
If you can site yours somewhere where they'll soak up the sun, they'll run hot rather than worm worked, but the heat will kill weed seeds too, while my cold ones don't get hot enough to do that; I have to watch what I put in them.
BR's the fellow for the compost bin stuff though
The blackcurrants will be fine in a pot for a while; you can contain them in big ones, but they don't fruit so well.
The garden looks like you've put a power of work into it already
cheers,
M
Must have weighed at least a kilo If you can site yours somewhere where they'll soak up the sun, they'll run hot rather than worm worked, but the heat will kill weed seeds too, while my cold ones don't get hot enough to do that; I have to watch what I put in them.
BR's the fellow for the compost bin stuff though
The blackcurrants will be fine in a pot for a while; you can contain them in big ones, but they don't fruit so well.
The garden looks like you've put a power of work into it already
cheers,
M
Thanks for that 😃
I'm doing so much reading my heads swimming with information!
I've started a compost( pallet bin) off with some manure,kitchen scraps and a bit off old leaves. The second pallet has fresh manure ( I've got 10 more bags coming tomorrow) I'm thinking of a third pallet bin so I've got one for fresh compost rotting ,one cooked and one for the manure.....
I'm going to get a tonne aggregate bag off a friend solely for leaf mold for next season.
Just wish we had more light at the moment as there seems to be never enough time.
D
I'm doing so much reading my heads swimming with information!
I've started a compost( pallet bin) off with some manure,kitchen scraps and a bit off old leaves. The second pallet has fresh manure ( I've got 10 more bags coming tomorrow) I'm thinking of a third pallet bin so I've got one for fresh compost rotting ,one cooked and one for the manure.....
I'm going to get a tonne aggregate bag off a friend solely for leaf mold for next season.
Just wish we had more light at the moment as there seems to be never enough time.
D
I have mixed fresh manure with uncomposted material (grass clippings etc.) and rotted it all down together - worked really well. You need a big old pile to get the heat up and speed up the rot process. No harm mixing manure and other organic material.
I know the feeling
We cut down ten trees yesterday
I hated seeing them come down, but they were becoming too big for us to prune, and while Son2 is here just now, we just got on with it.
It's the clear up that's the pain now.
I'm going to plant willows and I'll coppice alternate stools each year. That way I'll still have trees, still have privacy, still have the birds and insects and be able to keep on top of the growth and have basketry making supplies easily available too
That willows like water is a blessing in my sodden wet garden
M
We cut down ten trees yesterday
I hated seeing them come down, but they were becoming too big for us to prune, and while Son2 is here just now, we just got on with it.It's the clear up that's the pain now.
I'm going to plant willows and I'll coppice alternate stools each year. That way I'll still have trees, still have privacy, still have the birds and insects and be able to keep on top of the growth and have basketry making supplies easily available too
That willows like water is a blessing in my sodden wet garden
M
Willows don't half grow though (species depending). We had a huge weeping willow in the garden - big enough to fall on the house. We had it professionally pollarded down to maybe 15'. Not a twig or leaf left on it. Its back down to the ground in two and a bit years.....maybe six or seven foot of growth in a year! Call it 200cm a year.....5mm a day!
Lovely trees - but I would probably prefer a goat willow now - mind you they are pretty vigorous too. Still, copice them right and you can keep on top of them with a Laplander!
Lovely trees - but I would probably prefer a goat willow now - mind you they are pretty vigorous too. Still, copice them right and you can keep on top of them with a Laplander!
I've done a fair bit of willow cutting, so I'm mostly sure that I'll have no bother with these ones. 2metres in a year would be excellent I can manage that kind of growth with decent pruners
The Geans we cut down to yard high stumps will shoot the same way the willows do, but this time I'll prune them back year on year instead of letting them grow. Similarly the copper beech, but the leylandii and the column type firs, they were just totally out of control, even if they were full of bird nests.
The handiest tools we used taking all these trees down, and some were nearly 10 metres tall, were the little laplander saws The trees were too close to the fence to get the bowsaw in easily to many of them.
Just good, robust tools.
Sorry, TtheC, total thread sidetrack
Mary
I can manage that kind of growth with decent pruners The Geans we cut down to yard high stumps will shoot the same way the willows do, but this time I'll prune them back year on year instead of letting them grow. Similarly the copper beech, but the leylandii and the column type firs, they were just totally out of control, even if they were full of bird nests.
The handiest tools we used taking all these trees down, and some were nearly 10 metres tall, were the little laplander saws
The trees were too close to the fence to get the bowsaw in easily to many of them.Just good, robust tools.
Sorry, TtheC, total thread sidetrack
Mary
It's all good reading Toddy.
Not thought too much about non edible planting but there are places in the hedges where the gaps could do with some attention..
Not thought too much about non edible planting but there are places in the hedges where the gaps could do with some attention..
This is what I'm trying to dig out.. there's lots!!!
Not massively happy that the soil is quite clay'y!!
Weird I lived not 5 mins walk in the same street and my soil was lovely!!!
I'm guessing people had improved the soul at the old house and not at this one!!!
Couple of hours digging you can see all the roots I've dug up to the left of the wood
Well I'm off work tomorrow so gonna crack on.... I'm taking a leaf out of the old gardeners handbook and taking it steady!!! We're all to rush rush with stuff like this which usual ends up with people being worn out before the works done... I however will be drinking lots of tea and watching the birds between work !
D
Looks hard going
Our garden is on heavy Lanarkshire blue clay. It's brilliant for bricks and tiles, and if you can get it opened up with organic stuff, it's very fertile. Don't walk over it much when it's sodden wet though.
Beds and compost, lots and lots of compost
Horse manure and used stable straw is excellent if you can get it.
It's the right time of year to do that kind of work though everything's just about ready to break out in green
atb,
Mary
Our garden is on heavy Lanarkshire blue clay. It's brilliant for bricks and tiles, and if you can get it opened up with organic stuff, it's very fertile. Don't walk over it much when it's sodden wet though.
Beds and compost, lots and lots of compost
Horse manure and used stable straw is excellent if you can get it.
It's the right time of year to do that kind of work though
everything's just about ready to break out in green atb,
Mary
Just dig every well rotted organic thing you can get into it Dave, and borrow a rotovator to work it in. A few tonnes of well rotted horse muck and straw will soon sort that out!
In five years itll be lovely
In five years itll be lovely
Thank you guys.... now I've got to get tonnes of well rotted manure/compost and a rotavator!!
My cousins got a rotavator.... manure/compost ill have to have a think about😄
D
My cousins got a rotavator.... manure/compost ill have to have a think about😄
D
Great time of year for it. Look for any riding stables or dairy farm. They will have all have had animals inside over the Winter and have tonnes of the stuff. Offer to buy some - normally they will say "take all you want for free". You want a couple of cubic metres for the size of your beds.
