What I did today 2018

[Chris11]

Bag of Starbucks used coffee grounds gone in one of the compost daleks.
And still tidying up the greenhouse.

[Small pumpkin]

Potted on lots of chillies
Finished laying slabs on another path and filling the gaps with stones.

[self-contained]

Potted on my french sorrel. Put the best seedling into larger pots and then didn't have the heart to destroy the weedy ones. So, they have now been stuck into a small tray of compost to see if I can grow them on enough to get a couple of servings of baby greens. Probably not the best use of my window-sill space, but they looked so sad...

Watered some plants

Pruned the buddleia in the front garden and did a bit of tidying up out there. I'm not a huge buddleia fan (can't eat it!) but hopefully the pruning will help it look better than the straggly mess it was last year. It was my first time using my nice new loppers. Turns out, I rather like lopping things Hmm, the shrubs in the back garden had better watch out...

[Martin H]

Pricked out 18 tomato seedlings now that they have their first pair of true leaves. They'll have to sit on my kitchen windowsill next to the peppers until the nights warm up a bit.

[bikermike]

Planted out my early and 2nd early spuds (Sharpe's Express, foremost, and charlotte respectively). My trial beds seem to be working (made by turning over the turf), but I did need my bulb planter to cut through the double layer of grass. gave them a bit of a hoe first (with small person assistance - the hoe is about twice as big as he is...)

Planted cabbage, sprout, swiss chard and spring onion seeds in my last propagator.

the sunflowers and round carrots I planted with my son seem to be sprouting (and he's not forgotten about them).

Garden is waking up now, which is nice.

[1Bee]

The days are blurring, but essentially I've just been digging the Monster Bed which was a no-dig pumpkin bed last year. It's about 6' by 18' and will probably be split up in later years. On the plus side, there's much less glass than I was expecting.

On the minus side, we are now digging out the bottom of a 2+ foot deep pit, out of which we have pulled:-

Two large tubs worth of misc scrap including a large pile of S springs (from furniture)
Two window frames
The bottom hinge of a farm gate (two foot long and rather heavy...)
A wheel rim. Like, an actual car wheel rim.
The axle from an old barrow (site manager says it looks like it may have come from one of the local pits, long closed now)
An enamel plate.
The rims of three large galvanized buckets and sundry other bucket fragments.
Three door handles
Two iron spikes
8 foot of heavy guage wire
6 foot of barbed wire
A bundle of chicken wire
A pitchfork head
A billhook head
A chrome handlebar of some sort
The corner of a polytunnel cover

I think I'm bottoming it out now, and I'm hoping that's where most of the crud was, as the rest of the bed has had just the average amount of crud for a virgin dig.

The 7yo has been absolutely epic and helping haul it out, while I've been having kittens keeping him away from the more hazardous items. The only injury so far has been a shallow spike into the palm of my hand through my glove. (Yes, I have cleaned it thoroughly and yes I am up to date on anti-tetanus jabs...)

And on the plus side again, I haven't hit subsoil yet. That's some GORGEOUS top soil my tatties are going to revel in.

Planted out Charlotte tatties (in bed 1, not the Monster Bed). Re-covered with black plastic for now. Cultivated onion bed in bed 2.

[bikermike]

blimey! that's quite a pile. Nothing of any use I assume?
How far down till you hit coal?

[1Bee]

I've kept a few interesting but non-hazardous bits for the kids to mess about with. And the gate hinge is a perfect weight for flighty black plastic...

[bikermike]

what state is the wheel rim in? lots of people use them to wind hosepipe round (OK, you have to put it round it manually, unless you get the bearing as well, but it's still potentially handy)

[bario1]

Spent a couple of sunny hours down the plot yesterday and today.

Yesterday I got the incinerator fired up and burnt all the scrap wood, rotten wood and prunings that I'd piled up over the winter. Today I raked the ashes into this years brassica bed.

My mission this year is to remove all visible plastic from the plot (barring the polytunnel, netting/cloches and the compost bins). Over the last few years I've been collecting 'useful stuff' (some might say cruft ) like leaves, gravel, rocks, manure, woodchip, shredded cardboard, coffee grounds etc etc, the list goes on. It's all good stuff, but I never get round to actually using it, and the result is my plot resembles a builder's yard more than a veg garden, with stacks of old fertilser bags, bin bags and rubble sacks everywhere!

So I made a start on using stuff! About 12 bags of gravel (less than half of it!) went into the drainage ditch that I've been meaning to fill since 2014... a whole builder's bag of woodchip (now semi composted) went on my fruit bush area to cover the ugly weed fabric, as well as a few trugs into the compost bins and some to mulch my blueberry bushes in pots. Three bags of manure were added to my asparagus and sweetcorn beds. A couple of bags of sand were emptied onto the asparagus bed as well.

I also chucked out 6 empty chicken manure pellet buckets... I'm never going to reuse them and they're just an eyesore blowing about every time we get a storm.

Still got some of those big red recycling boxes and a load of plastic fish crates to get rid of too...

The plot already looks a lot more harmonious, and I've still got piles of bags to get through... but it feels nice to chuck all that horrible plastic into the bin.

[bramble]

Planted out my potatoes today.
Arran Pilot and Pentland Javlin.
Dug over and took out the weedxfrom the middle of the garden.
Pruned and tied in my huge Golden Showers rose bush which is fan trained against the wall.
Watered all the Sweet Peas.
The garden looks so much better now but I am exhausted.

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

Started the tidy up of the chilli/Tomato house! Still a lot to do!

But the beds are now ready!



Time to sow some early salad crops!

I hate it when the waters not on as I can't tidy up after myself!

[Bex2012]

Im so far behind its shameful! In my defence my last few weekends have been either too wet or Ive been helping my parents pack for their forthcoming move.
I have managed to sow some flower and pea seeds, as well as pot on some plug plants I bought from aldi. My OH drilled drainage holes in the 30+ mfbs I got my hands on, so if I get some compost at least I can put things like the dahlias in, and move stuff up into them. The potatoes might have to go in bags this year.

[1Bee]

More scrapheap digging...



Can you see what it is yet?



Yup. A milk churn.

I'd actually started planting the tatties, deciding that is keyhole plant the last couple of feet as I'd never finish digging up scrap. Got one tattie in, then 'clunk' hit this two inches down for the next hole.

Never mind. All in now. Planted far too close, as usual...

[Small pumpkin]

Moved a few more tomato & aubergine seedlings from the propagator into pots.
Planted the rest of the spuds in to spud bags.
Now back to the house work and chilli sauce making