Hello all

Hey all!

I live in manchester but from the south. We bought our first house last year so i'm very new to gardening in all regards. Last year i started growing herbs from seed and selling them on ebay but that little business venture soon dried up :(

I've wanted to get into composting so was going to buy a bin from www.recyclenow.com/home_composting, but i changed my mind and decided to build one from scratch from wood. That was a few weeks ago, and i'm glad i've built it in a modular fashion because i can see it already filling up way too quickly I just cant wait 9 months for my fresh new compost :(

I initially wanted a compost because our soil is so clayey and it gets pretty water logged. Also because the last people want a low maintance garden they put some breathing layer on the soil then covered it with loads and loads of gravel. So i'm still in the process of getting rid of all this gravel of my borders before i can do anything with it.

I look forward to talking everything gardening.

 

Hiya NewbieGreen welcome to the forums I'm sure you will enjoy your time here, full of lovely friendly people.

Good for you to build your own compost bin once you get started on here I'm sure others will give you some more ideas to have a go at too.

I live in South Yorkshire and are cursed with the clay too but plenty of good stuff added to it will soon sort out the sticky stuff!

It's such a shame when people choose the low maintance garden but then again other than getting rid of all that gravel at least you can start afresh with your own ideas.

Good luck with the removal of that gravel!

Helen.xxx.

 

Welcome to g c NewbieG enjoy the forum.

 

Welcome to GC NG.Plenty of things going on and people to help you out with any problems you may have

 

Hi NewbieGreen and a warm welcome from me too.

 

Hi NewbieGreen - I removed gravel earlier in the year from my front - the trouble is disposal isn't it? I gave up on the idea of taking it to the tip and just put it behind the fence in the scrubland. (I guess I could have hired a skip but that would have been overkill !) Now I use it for drainage in pots - but I'll need a lot of pots to get through it... How are you getting rid of yours?

I don't really go for low maintenance either, but I recently gravelled the bottom of an elderly lady's garden. At 130 ft long, the bottom half had been nettles for 10+ years. So membrane and 5t. of gravel was the only way to go for her. I wished she'd let me be more adventurous with the layout though - I had a full plan drawn to scale that removed the straight path down the middle etc... I think she probably felt guilty about me doing so much work on it but I was quite enjoying having a project.

 

Cheers all!

I've bought some tubs to take my gravel to the dump in, but the annoying thing about taking it all to the dump is that i seem to be spending much more time in the car than at either the dump or my garden.

Once i've moved all the stones together it only takes 5 mins to fill my containers, 2 mins to empty them, but 30 mins round trip to the dump especially if there is a queue to get in.

I certainly learnt a lesson after i cleared the first border though. Dont lift up the membrane until all stones are cleared in the area.

On the first border i still have stones in the soil where i eagerly lifted the membrane to soon, but the next border i did doesn't have a single stone in now because i had more patience to wait till i'd cleared the stones.

 

why not put the gravel onto freecycle? theres bound to be someone out there wants it and they come and take it away too! smiles all round!

 

Whats freecycle?

 

Its a webiste where you can get rid of / pick up stuff for free - instead of throwing it away at the tip. Not a bad idea that.

 

http://uk.freecycle.org

 

Hi Newbie green and a very warm welcom to GC from me also enjoy!

 

Welcome to GC hope you enjoy all the advice and friendly banter.

 

Hi NewbieGreen and welcome to you

 

Hello and welcome.