Productive weekend

During the week I had a delivery of some lovely plants to get going in the garden, an olive tree, bay tree, lavender and a hops vine. They came from crocus and I'm very impressed with the standard of plant and how well established they are.




I'd also harvested some pepper seed from this mutant bell pepper *sniggers*



I'm experimenting a bit with the germination after my last lot of pepper seeds did nothing, so I've kept some moist and dried some out and have planted two trays of 4 seed types :)

The little tubs come from my graze boxes, and very useful they are too.



Next step is removing the unknown but pretty plant that climbs the trellis every summer. It had some very established root structure!




This was then replaced by the hops vine. There should be plenty of room for the hops to grow around the trellis, but we need to make sure it doesn't go over the top so regular pruning/training may be necessary to keep it in check.



Whilst planting the vine we saw what state some of the trellis was in due to the side hedge encroaching over. Some drastic pruning was done, and the trellis tacked back into place.




It looks a lot better for it, and will hopefully be a less shady place ;)



Finally, on to the neighbours overhanging tree. We knew this was going to be a bugger of a job, but the apple tree we planted underneath had started to bend out of the shade so it had to go. We don't possess a chainsaw yet, so with the power of secateurs and an old rusty saw we did our best.








After trimming all the tree back, we needed somewhere to put all of the leafery until we could afford to buy a/borrow a shredder. Steve transformed the pallet that had transported our topsoil into a handy compost box.



How to fit most of a tree into a pallet box ;)



Bye Bye Tree - Hello Compost Box




~ The next day ~


We started pulling up the hedge root that we'd trimmed back a couple of weeks ago and planted the lavender bush between the two fruit trees.



I planted a container pot each of carrots and parsnips.



A rooster potato that looked more for chitting than eating was planted too. There was just enough space to slot another compost bag in the row under the netting.



The large whitecurrant looks ready to bloom, so we netted that up to keep the pigeons off!



Abi supervised all of this of course ;)



We staked the apple tree, and tied it using recycled flax leaves from the drastic pruning that we gave the Phormium Tenax a couple of weeks ago. They seem to hold really well. Hopefully it will persuade the apple tree to grow upwards instead of sidewards.



It looks a lot better back there now the hedge and tree have been cut back/removed.



Back to the herb bed. The Rhodendron had to go!



We relocated it to a spot out in the front garden, it's established enough to be able to fare quite well out there. It will get some ericaceous feed when I feed the blueberries, just to keep it going.




The bay tree has taken the rhododendron's place. I'm keeping the bay in it's pot, but it has plenty of room to grow before it might need potting on.

Tada, mostly finished herb area. It needs a good weeding and a bit of a sweep. But we were tired and wanted to watch the F1 ;)



Next weekend is a fourdayer courtesy of Easter, so plenty of time to get lots of work done ;)