Rain and Blogs

A night of stormy winds and vast amounts of rain, but the raised beds are still looking good. Garlic hasn't been destroyed overnight, so fingers crossed it all beds down ok.

I'm slightly surprised that the polythene in the greenhouse holds up so well in this kind of weather, but all good so far :)

I've found one of my favourite companies www.wigglewigglers.co.uk on blogspot, they're over at http://wigglywigglers.blogspot.com. They do a fab podcast too.

I really recommend giving them a look/listen, great prices, great service and they know what they're doing :)

Beds are in!

Well, today the weatherman lied! It was supposed to a sunny dry but a little bit cold day, it turned out to be a blustery, freezing, random showery day.

But we got the work done regardless.

4 beds in, one bed dug over and a greenhouse bed created. Also one of the compost bins emptied, mostly used and the rest chucked into the other bin.

The compost bin has been working better then I ever thought it would, we started it off as just somewhere to put food waste so we weren't throwing so much out. We never thought we would ever be gardening, hehe. It's worm city out there, and the slugs have vacated the premises since I've been chucking my coffee ground out there too :)

Planted out the garlic into one of the beds when we were done too, just because they'd exceeded my expectations and were already getting too big for their little pots.

It looks fab out there, should get some good wet weather over the next few days to 'bed' the soil down a bit.

We put the wood together, dug out the bed around it, turned the turf over, added a layer of newspaper, a couple of barrows full of topsoil, some compost from our bin then some more topsoil. All raked in and firmed down a bit, not too much because it was getting so wet out there.

Pics below

Greenhouse bed being prepared, there was a ton of gravel chucked down over some fabric that all needed removing.

The turf being lifted from outside. It was amazing how much moss there is instead of grass, we're going to have to get some lawn sand sorted for it I think.

Hubby putting the beds together.

Abi's discarded wellies, it was too cold for her outside so she had some biscuits, juice and the Disney channel.

Beds in progress



Tea Break!!



Greenhouse bed starting to take shape.



More outside action.








Compost Cake!! Nectar cards are not compostable, apparently
















One completed raised bed!



Look, there's another one! ;)




Showing the newspaper lining over the turf.

Garlic being planted out



Finshed greenhouse bed



Outside raised beds!! Ta Da!!






One solitary chive plant in my greenhouse bed. Moved here because it was an outside plant whose space has been stolen by a raised bed ;)

Delivery :D

The raised beds and topsoil have both arrived

Raised beds, 4 x 1 x 2m beds.

My little girl wondering why I'm stood outside taking photos of bits of wood.

One very large bag of topsoil. Wonderful courier man brought it all the way down the drive for me :) I highly recommend www.dandystopsoil.co.uk, wonderful customer service and great prices. They called me to double check my delivery date, and even rang and gave me an hours notice for delivery this morning. That's always really useful when you have a little one running around.

My little girl...erm...licking windows...lol

The compost aerator is here too, I'll take some photos of that when I give it a go. Which will not be today because it's blumming cold! I also got a free turtle bag from www.wigglywigglers.co.uk, great service as always from those guys.

Just waiting on the wheelbarrow to turn up now :)

Also, it's supposed to snow today!!! Snow, in October!!! Brrrr

Brrrr

This weekend, we took the Saturday off again. This is mostly my fault...I'm tired, ill and a little bit pregnant it seems :)

I'll have to make sure I wear gloves everytime I'm touching the soil, but other than that I can carry on with my veg plot plans. Just need to make sure I have plenty of tea breaks :)

On the Sunday, we fixed the Greenhouse again! We decided to removed the window frames completely as they were more rotten than we thought and just use the bare panel to polythene over. This way all the panels are the same, and it works. No more dripping on the greenhouse floor :)












We have two compost bins now :) The second one is already a third full but that should compress down quite quickly. I have an aerator coming from www.wigglywigglers.co.uk with the raised beds order so that should speed up the process a bit.

My garlic is going better than I thought!! I'm going to plant it straight out into the raised beds at the weekend I think.

Herbs doing well too

Gratuitous shot of my little girl playing with leaves, just because... She has fab new wellies :)

This coming week we have the top soil, raised beds kit and wheelbarrow being delivered. Saturday we're going to get it all done, my sister and her partner will be coming to give us a hand :)

Busy Busy Day

It was supposed to have been a productive weekend, but we took yesterday off to catch up on some sleep after seeing Bill Bailey in London.

So today, has been extra productive

Hubby cutting up Polythene

After taking all the glass out. We kept the panes in at the bottom as they're in pretty good nick.

My attempts at raking up leaves. Filled 3 bin bags to make leaf mould over the next two years, half hour after I finished it looked like I'd never even touched it..so the rest will be going in the compost next week. The trees the leaves are coming from look like they have a couple of weeks more of falling to do.

Polythene starting to go up. The job was a lot more difficult in practise than our initial idea, but was worth it I think. Lots of nails, silly corners, running out of staples and having to use our 'study' stapler to finish off...it was fun ;)

Sellotape works really well as a patch when you accidentally rip a big tear into a pane too ;)

I started to plant some seedlings into bigger modules while Hubby finished off. Coriander, Parsley and Chives.

Abigail was loving being a big ball of chaos outside :)

And finally....Look at my Garlic!! Shoots from 7 of the bulbs already, woot!

So all done for now, next weekend we need to restaple some of the edges and probably reinforce a couple of the panes of polythene.

I need to spend some times this week sorting out the greenhouse interior. Just to get some workeable space in there. I'm possibly going to convert one side into a sheltered raised bed. Either way I need to remove the existing gravel from in there, Abi keeps trying to eat it :(

Time for a hot bath and a bit of World of Warcraft methinks :)