The Big Clearup

The last couple of weeks haven't just been about sowing seeds, we've done loads more too, but haven't had time to post on here.

Brambles & Bushes
A week or so back, we had 3 lovely sunny days, 2 of which were spent in the garden doing a major tidy up. Most of this was clearing brambles. We'd started this a couple of weeks earlier and now we've mostly finished. We even cleared the brambles from the stepped beds down to the lawn - these beds haven't been cleared for years.

The stump of an old tree or bush has been throwing up shoots for some years now. These had reached about 6ft tall and some were 2 inches thick. We chopped this down and bagged it up too.

We took about 30 bags of brambles and "tree" cuttings to the dump.

Pots & Seed Trays
We also finished sorting the pots and seed trays etc. There are hundreds of pots of all shapes and size, dozens of trays, loads of troughs, and considering how many seeds we're sowing, I'm still not convinced we'll have enough pots!

Greenhouse
We emptied the greenhouse and washed it down inside and out. We used Jeyes fluid, diluted - I read on a forum somewhere that Jeyes fluid kills off nasty bugs etc. A quick hosing down after and it was nice and clean! Everything was put back neat and tidy.

Weed Control Sheeting
Today we put some new weed sheeting down on part of the veggie patch. A friend of mine is an upholsterer. He got me a 100m x 1.35m roll of the black fabric that upholsterers use on the underside of settees - it's exactly the same stuff as normal, decent weed control sheeting that you get from the garden centres, but much much cheaper to buy the 100m roll from a fabric supplier.

We also put weed sheeting on the 3 stepped beds one side of the steps down to the lawn. We put planks of wood across the length of the sheeting to stop it blowing away, and then put several carrot troughs on it to hold it all down. The stepped beds will be full of pots and troughs this summer, especially tomatoes.

A slight warning about weed control sheeting - we picked up some weed control sheeting from the pound shop, but it was so thin it was see through, so we took that back. Weed control sheeting needs to be dark so that it blocks out the light, which stops the weeds growing through. See through sheeting is just useless.

Compost Bins
We reorganised the dalek compost bins last week. The first large black one was almost filled last weekend. The smaller green dalek was half filled during the week - we compost all our veggie peelings, tea bags, banana skins etc, so the bins do fill up quite quickly.

All the veggie peelings etc are wrapped in newspaper and taken down to the compost bins when we go down there. I've been told we need a mix of green (veggie peelings / veggie leaves, grass cuttings etc) and brown (newspaper, cardboard, loo roll tubes etc) to make decent compost. I now rip up normal cardboard, old egg boxes etc and add that to the compost bins. I don't bother with the glossy cardboard though.

Today I cut the lawn for the first time this year, and the cuttings have filled both bins to the top. Everything will start rotting down and compressing, so there should be enough room for more peelings etc over the next couple of weeks. I'll need to find the front cover for the 3rd dalek before the grass is cut next time, probably in about 10 days time.

I want to get the first pallet compost bin dug out over the next 3-4 weeks, and then turn everything from the 2nd bin into the first. There must be some half decent compost in the bottom of both and we're really going to need the pallet compost bins soon.

Fence
The long fence I had replaced a few years ago has been wobbling. 3 posts have rotted through. I'm disgusted - fence posts are pressure treated and should be guaranteed for 10 years. My son and I spent an hour or so digging down to get the remains of the bottom part of the post out of the ground. It turned out it was only concreted halfway round, so the workmanship was poor anyway.

As we need trellis for the grapes and kiwi, I've ordered that plus 3 replacement posts for the long fence. And as we're putting the new trellis up and removing the old fence that divided the plot from the lawn, we've decided to site the trellis a few feet further up the garden to extend the veggie patch. We don't really use the lawn much so makes sense to me!

And now I'm going to settle down for steak and chips .... well deserved I think!