My first garden!

Thingydoodahs have got to be more interesting because we don't know what they are......yet!

 

The anticipation ......

Are they big or small
Upright or floppy

Only one person knows, and he ain't here ! ! !

 

He's left us in suspense Anthony......perhaps he's gone to get the pics?

 

Riiiiight... sorry for the suspense! I've been very busy but I come bearing pics as promised!

First of all... WTF IS THIS????



AAAARRGGHHHHH It stings my eyes when we make eye contact

As expected, the skip arrived and the coldframe was collected so I went out while it wasn't raining. I managed to get the skip filled with the huge pile of old turf. Once moved, I raked the soil, broke up all the pieces of dirt and pulled out any roots I could find. That includes a huge tree stump I stumbled across! My spade's slightly bent now though.

The garden now looks like this (4/5pm)



The potatoes are in the sun to try and dry them out. They were pretty wet

Now, I bestow upon you, my thingydoodahs!

Number 1: I think it's a gooseberry plant. I have 3 of these. Low, long stems that spread across the ground. Extremely thorny/spikey!





Number 2: Budlheia? Only one of these. Kind of self supporting...




Number 3: I've got 2 of these, both have barely any roots and are apparently self seeding.




TADAHHH! I hope the suspense was worth it!

 

Hi Rad,

Don't look at that thing in the sky too much, it's an alien ship that can teleport you to a different time and dimension..

No 1 is a gooseberry

No 2 I've seen it before but I can't remember it's name:(

No 3 is Buddleia, but, you say you've got two of them and there are three of them there

You know the long wide border on the right of your second garden pic, what's this being used for ?

I've had a thought ( and yes it did hurt ).
Instead of throwing away all your old turf, why don't you bury it there. It makes good compost. Or you could create your own composting area there somewhere.

 

Ok, a lot to respond to...

Alien ship, got it. Duly noted

No1: Glad I got that right!
No2: ...
No3: There are 2 of them. They are together, in the same photo, with the white door frame in the background.

I put one photo in the wrong place which I've edited out. That was actually a close up photo of No2. It's been a long day!

The wide border is going to be where I land my chopper. Either that or I will move the raised beds from the living room out into that space, with some plants in between. It's all in my head... I just need to make it a reality!

Careful with all that thinking... don't strain yourself!

I've thrown away about 10 cubic yards of turf and rubble. That's the equivalent of a 6ft pile of turf from one end of the garden to the other. There has been literally tonnes of it taken out. You think I can disguise that in the garden somewhere?

The reason why I've got rid of it is because It was riddled with dandelions and the roots were several feet long. I just needed to get rid of it and start fresh. I've gone through it and weeded it today and it's pretty much plain soil so the plan seems to have worked.

Another reason is that I didn't want to wait for it to decompose. I have a fairly small compost box ready to be set up (maybe tomorrow) and I will be clipping the hedges round the front soon so that will be my first batch of compost. I've also saved up my gerbil cage sawdust. I give them toilet roll tubes, cardboard boxes and tissue and they rip it up for me. So taking that and adding it to the compost heap will be a good carbon source

Righty-o, I'm off to bed! Absolutely shattered!

 

Woke up to the sound of someone trying to break down the door Turns out, the postlady was here with my new Cold Frame! That's strange considering I only sent the other one back yesterday... they obviously knew it was damaged when it was despatched. So I'm going to get that set up in the living room and wait for the rest of my post to arrive.

I've got some fish coming for my fish tank, which I added some more plants to yesterday night. There's more flora in this tank than in my entire garden!



The fish need to go straight in the tank, so I can't go into the garden until that's done.

As for the seeds from V&M, they have all been despatched too which is nice! Thanks @Scrungee for the tip off!

 

Innuendo.....On here never!
I'm just off to get my thingydoodahs out!

 

Don't forget to water them or they'll start to droop

 

FWIW, I think 12 Strawberry plants in each tier is too many. I'm thinking 6 is plenty. Btw, what type of fish are you keeping?

 

I was told they need hand rearing but I can try watering too!

 

The reason I was going for 12 is because there's a bundle deal on a website I found. There's 12 of each type of strawberry plant which is convenient. I will go with 6... thanks for letting me know. THIS is why I signed up on GC. Can't trust anyone trying to make a profit

As for the fish... in the tank I showed you, there are now 30 Celestial Pearl Danios, Red Ramshorn Snails, Assassin Snails, 10 Yamato Shrimp, 2 Crystal Red Shrimp and 2 Otocinclus.

I have another tank which has a single Blue/Green/Purple Delta Tail Betta fish. It will kill anything that lives with it which is why it's alone. It even tries to kill it's own reflection... stoopid feesh

And then my soon-to-be-wife has a small tank with Red Cherry Shrimp and a few Chili fish (which are only 1cm long!

 

Ermmm! Has nobody told you that raised beds and cold frames are usually kept in the garden Rad?

Picture No.2.....The leaves look like Buddleia, the flowers I'm not sure about. One for the id forum I think.

Oh good, a helipad, ideal for landing the GC helicopter too.

 

I was looking at the all the stuff that needed putting together and decided I needed a drill. So I went out to get one. The trouble is, I go to the DIY shop (not sure if I'm allowed to state their name) which is on the Euroway Industrial Estate, M606. This shop is well known for getting new plants in and making it look nice and pretty, but they get too many and keep putting the old stock on clearance prices. So my new drill looks like this...



It's in there somewhere!

Came home, started putting together the Cold Frame which had the worst set of instructions I've ever seen. I've decided that next time, I'm going make everything myself instead of buying it in kit form. That includes the lawn! I could have done a better job myself. But what's done is done... moving on!

I also tested out the new sprinkler and hosepipe. The sprinkler has 8 different settings so I was acting like a bit of a kid

Lawn watered, skip gone, raised beds built and outside... happy days! There's also a bit of colour so my fiancee is getting excited about the garden too!





You're not supposed to walk on the lawn for a few weeks but I just had to walk down the lines in between turf pieces just to make the lawn nice and level.