The Garden of Weedin'

Rockery

This is at the front of the house and at the moment has really suffered from the harsh 2009 / 2010 winter, which killed off a lot of the plants, but not all. The Rhododendron, Yellow Rose and Hydrangea have all done well this year. You can see the Hydrangea flowers just beginning to fade as we come into Autumn.

The Rockery

Dry Bed

The dry bed is a small bed just below the spare room window. I call it the dry bed because the eaves of the house prevent it from getting very much rain. We have tried lot’s of plants in this corner, but most of them die quickly due to lack of watering (more on that in a From me Shed post later). However, two Rosemary bushes have done very well here.

Fruit Garden

The fruit garden appeared already in one of the first blogs. It is currently a complete mess – although I have been working on it in the last couple of days. Next year it will play host to some vegetables as well as fruit.

West Bank

The West Bank

The west bank comes up the side of the house and has Foxgloves, Pampas Grass, Oregano, Camellia and other oddly selected plants as well as a Chestnut tree (never had a single conker from it!). It is the easiest maintained of all the areas of the garden, apart from perhaps the dry bed, although the Pampas grass gives a nasty rash. It is separated from the house by a section of lawn.

Lost Corner

This corner is not really lost, it just has a certain overgrown feeling to it for about two thirds of the year. Also, there is a rather poorly looking rose which I have begun to nurture with plenty of fertiliser and pruning to see if I can bring it back to life.

Main Bank

The biggest and toughest part of the garden. This has such a variety of plants in it from Crocissium and Campanula to St. John’s Wort and Laurel. Being on a slope, it has excellent drainage, which can be a real problem in dry spells. The main bank also plays host to the bird table, bird bath and a Buddha head.

The Main Bank

Orchard

The orchard is a bit of a misnomer (OK it’s a lot of a misnomer). It consists of five fruit trees strung out along the back fence from the main to the east banks. Two Pear trees, two Apple and one Plum. I have yet to see an edible Pear on the trees but the Apple’s have produced reasonable crops.

East Bank

The east bank is a raised bed at the north east corner of the garden. Unlike the main bank it is flat although being raised with only some closely fitted poles to support the soil, the drainage is still good. My favourites here are the Juniper and Fuschia and of course an Acer in the corner, which looks stunning when the leaves turn dark red as they are just now. The most easterly corner of this part of the garden is earmarked for removal to make way for a garage, which sadly will also see the removal of my man cave!

Shed

This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s my man-cave. You can see inside it here.

The lack of performance is mostly to do with my own laziness. The trees haven’t been pruned properly (i.e. at all) and so the fruit crop has suffered as a result. Worse than this however is that one of the Apple trees has now developed scab. The fruits, while fine on the inside shows bruises and discoloration on the skin, as do the leaves. While there are systemic chemical cures for this, I would prefer to maintain a more organic approach, which involves removing the infected fruit and leaves and making sure that they are disposed of. Ideally they should be burnt, but since I live in a suburban area it’s not really possible without some do-gooder neighbour phoning up the fire brigade. Over Autumn and Winter it is therefore essential to keep the Orchard area clear of dead leaves. Fortunately I can put them in the recycling bin for the council to deal with, rather than putting diseased leaves on my compost heap.

The Plum tree got a good pruning from my Father at the end of Spring (a touch too late) and as a result has provided 5 more plums than last year. Unfortunately these have not ripened. All the trees will be getting a proper prune this year to try and get more fruit in 2011. If I’m really lucky the Pear tree will produce something edible before it gets demolished to make way for a new garage.

I share my shed with a host of gardening tools, some DIY equipment and my wife’s painting stuff. (Let’s be honest it is her that does all the interior decorating). Oh, and a mouse – but more of that later.

The shed is the first stop on the way to the garden of weedin’ and the last on the way back. Often there are many trips in between to pick up whatever it was I forgot to take out in the first place. There are tools that get used every time I go into the garden, some that get used every week and some that only get used once or twice a year. The point is, there is nothing there that doesn’t get used. Well not much anyway, and I’m sure I’ll find a use for it someday.

Probably the most useful piece of equipment (so useful in fact that I have two) are the Tubtrug®. These are the most versatile buckets that you can buy and get used for just about everything, mostly hauling weeds. I also used them for sieving compost from bags and the compost heap, filling with water to wash gravel, hauling water, stamping down the weeds in the recycling bin (put on top of weeds in bin and step inside the tugger and bounce up and down). They get used for mixing compost and fertiliser, collecting leaves, providing temporary weed storage when the recycling bin is full, catching rainwater and hauling weeds (did I say that one already?).

The Tubtrugs® are flexible, meaning that you can carry them like a shopping bag if they are not to full, and having had mine for 3 years I think they are almost indestructible. They come in a variety of lurid colours, but I went for the more traditional (and soothing) green large Tubtrug® which is about the perfect size for gardening – I can just about lift it when it’s full of wet soil. They only cost about a tenner and stack neatly into one another – so two is probably a worthwhile investment.

Another advantage of the Tubtrug® appears to be that the mouse that I share my shed with doesn’t like the taste of them. This puts the tub in a rare category of ‘Things in the Shed which the Mouse hasn’t Tried to Eat!’

Next time in ‘From me Shed’ I’ll be looking at my three favourite garden hand tools, why they’re my favourites and what I do to keep them in good working order.

Our lawn is not particularly large but it’s bitty. There are two separate areas at the back and a large communal lawn at the front. As a result an electric mower would just be a pain in the backside. Also given the amount of rain we get, I would always be waiting for it to be dry enough to cut. And finally, I love the smell of fresh cut grass mixed with petrol fumes in the shed. It makes the shed feel even more manly.

I’ve had the Mountfield for two years and it’s coming time for it to get a proper service. Last year was a bit of a love hate relationship as the machine kept dying on me half way through cutting the grass. The problem was with the petrol cap which has a small perforation in the top with a check valve to allow air in. This had become clogged creating a vacuum and preventing fuel reaching the engine. Nature abhors a vacuum and so do lawnmowers. However, rather than unclog the hole I now simply give the petrol cap a half twist to loosen it off. This allows enough air to get in without dust and grass getting into the petrol tank, and the engine usually starts on the first or second pull.

I try not to cut the grass too short at any one time. The year starts on what I refer to as the third peg and then after a couple of weeks I drop it down to the second peg. The lowest setting is a bit too short for the lawn.

I had problems with excessive amounts of clover in the grass. I know that some clover is good for the soil, but this was getting excessive, so I’ve been using a 4 in 1 feed and weed powder from Evergreen. This has drastically reduced the clover (but not completely removed it which is OK). The other effect is to make the grass greener but as a result highlight how patchy it is. Planning for next Spring will be to borrow my Dad’s scarifier to lift the dead thatch and use some well sieved compost with grass seed to get some fresh grass on to it. That however is a long way off, so in the meantime it’s back to the weeds…

I had a fantastic crop of blackcurrants this year. Two bushes produced about 20 lbs of currants, while the Gooseberry bushes managed a respectable 7lbs and the Rhubarb has been flourishing all year long. The Raspberries did nothing of note, which I don’t mind since I cut back all the stakes to just above ground in the Spring, so what you see in the picture is one year’s growth. The Strawberries were very disappointing and I’m not even going to talk about the Cranberries – if it hadn’t been for a couple of small flowers I would have assumed they were dead.

The first job will be to cut back some of the Raspberry stakes and tie the rest to the wire along the fence for support. Then finish pruning the Blackcurrant and Gooseberry bushes as well as cutting the last of the Rhubarb. Note it’s always important to leave 2 or 3 stalks of Rhubarb on the plant, and I’ll just let these wither and die over the Winter before consigning them to the compost bin. I’m going to create a raised bed for the Strawberries which will allow me to have a poly-tunnel across the top, which will hopefully improve the yield next year. I also got an idea from a film called ‘A Good Year’ which involves putting Limestone pebbles or gravel around the base of the plants to hold in the heat and keep the fruit warm. The white limestone should also reflect the light onto the underside of the Strawberries so they ripen more evenly. Hopefully.

As for those pesky Cranberries, I need to improve the acidity of the soil locally, so will start with a liberal application of ericaceous compost. But first the weeds…

In my mind however the garden is split into 5 areas. The aforementioned rockery at the front. The sunken fruit garden which has Raspberries, Blackcurrants, Strawberries and Gooseberries (and also accommodates the compost bin). The herbaceous border at the side of the house which runs from the sunken garden to the decking area at the back left of the property and has Pampas Grass, a Chestnut tree and various shrubs and herbs. The bank at the rear from the left of the garden to the bird table which has all manner of shrubs from St. John’s Wort and Red Robin to Hebe’s and Crocissium as well as a Plum tree and finally the rear bank from the bird table to the right hand rear corner of the house which has Apple and Pear trees, Rhododendrons, and Broom.

The division has less to do with the types of plants that appear in each than my own way of dividing up the garden for weeding – which is what gardening is, right?

While we were lucky to inherit a fairly well established garden, it is by no means work free and the really bad Winter we had demolished a lot of the stock – although I was surprised at some of the things that survived.

Over the next few years there are big plans a foot to bring the garden up to snuff and since it gives me an opportunity to get out in the wild (no really there is a lot of weeding) do some photography and mess about with a blog, it finally seemed that this should be the theme here.

I hope to blog once a week about some of the on-going garden projects, and occasionally delve into more details regarding individual plants, plant care and general mucking about in sheds. By blogging I can keep a year on year track of what’s being done and also (with some luck and patience) get comments from anyone who wishes to contribute.