Two trees

This week we went to the largest local garden centre to choose two apple trees for our back garden.  What a difference.  Last time, as resourceful allotmenteers we purchased a Bramley from Woolworths for a tenner and an unspecified 'rescue' tree from a reduced bin in a superstore which turned out to be my lovely Grenadier.  This time, assisted by some garden tokens from my aunt, we went for Discovery (eater) and Scots Bridget a dual purpose eater/cooker.  We spent money.  Not only that, we also purchased the correct compost and took advice.

My husband quickly dug two holes in the lawn and planted them, with some home-made stakes before snow swept the north west.  Now they look as if they have always been there.

Paint Your Fence

The winter in London Essex could prove a challenging time for our small gardening business.  It is no wonder that a builder friend of ours told us it is called 'the kipper season', because men waiting for work sit in their vans amidst cigarette smoke like kippers.  At this season last year I recall one customer asking us to paint her fence.  Now it is time to attend to our own.

In honour of my birthday tea on Saturday my husband has been out painting the fence in a rustic brown.  Our good neighbours who erected it had already covered the other side.  There was not quite enough paint to finish fence and shed, but guests looking out of the patio windows will see that he has made a good start.   

Practice makes perfect. 

Cover Up - Land Drains

My husband's continuing excavation and removal of concrete slabs, as detailed in my last post, came to a sudden end today with the discovery of what we surmise is a land drain.   When the crowbar hit, he knew it was time to leave well alone. 

All the soil on the bed is now back where it was.  After all, we reason, the three beds at the front have deep soil.  We will grow the more shallow rooted stuff at the back.

Allotmenteering is (infrequently) the art of making things disappear when it is  inappropriate to dig everything up.

Crowbar and Concrete Slabs

Our new raised beds, as described in my last post were easy to assemble, once I had rotated the instruction sheet in my hands to match the kit on the ground.  Some people are able to do this in their heads, I am not one of them.

We duly lifted the completed beds and landed them on the lawn close to the spot.  My husband started to dig down - and hit concrete.  Of course, after nearly ten years of allotmenteering we should have anticipated this.  Before the annexe to our house, which comprises the 'new garage', downstairs bathroom and kitchen, was built, it possessed an attractive brick-built garage with its own driveway.  We are not sure if the bricks and concrete we uncovered were the remains of this or some other structure.  But they had to come out.

Initially my husband only dug to the width of the beds we had assembled.  Then we took a fresh look at the ground.  There was space for another three raised beds in parallel with the first.  Which in turn meant digging up the remaining concrete and very probably taking it to be recycled in the hard core area of the tip. 

This morninng we rang the obliging people in Dumfries and ordered another three beds.  As I write, my husband is out with a crowbar levering the offending material out of the ground.

Raised Beds - Recycled

The excitement of this morning has been the arrival of the three raised beds my husband ordered from a recycling company north of the Solway Firth.  This business, Solway Direct, collects surplus farm plastic and converts it into useful agricultural items of many kinds, included our three linked beds.

These are in our garage waiting to be assembled.  This stage will be another test of our joint instruction-decoding ability. In times past we have been known to jest that an additional exercise, which does not find its way on to any marriage preparation courses, should be the challenge of an item of flat-packed furniture, with accompanying instruction leaflet translated from a non-Roman script and printed in a very small point size.   I hasten to add that I do not anticipate any problems with our recent Scots purchase.

It was a happy coincidence that after the invoice arrived yesterday, paid in full, that my husband decided to go outside and bury our compost kitchen waste in a bean trench.  The plan is that the beds will be placed side by side close to the path edge of our kitchen garden and that beans will grow in the space between them and the concrete block wall which divides us from our neighbour.

Why plastic, you may ask after so many years of pallets?  Well, our neighbour on the other side of the wall told us that he was tired of his wooden raised beds rotting away in the wet conditions of the north west.  Also there is another consideration.  An allotment is not literally, on your doorstep.  You can enter the site confident that fellow allotmenteers are unlikely to compete in outdoing one another in their outlay.  Far from it.  However, upon looking out on the garden from the kitchen whilst washing up, or entertaining relatives to afternoon tea, one does wish all parties to receive an overall impression of order, tidiness and substance.

So onwards to planning of rotations, assembly, and building up the soil above the water table.