new garden - deciding how to start!

It sometimes feels as if we will never get there, but when I look at the angle bed, as we call it, I can see that things are getting better. Instead of the tangle of silver birch, willow, rose suckers and vicious brambles, we now have a few miniature roses, English marigolds and sunflowers (I didn't know that the roses were pink when I sowed a few spare seeds in the bed!) There is also a clump of ornamental poppy plants filling out - many thanks, Sheal! Really looking forward to seeing them flower!

The herb bed is very close to being dug over now. Hubby worked hard at it over the weekend, and I made some more progress this morning....

The veg bed is a little hit and miss. We lost the autumn sown broad beans to the late snow and cold, and similarly lost w few of the spring sowing, so we ended up cropping one meal, from just three plants. They were delicious with sweated chorizo! The runner beans refused to germinate. I think because it was too hot. I re-sowed the area with French beans, and now of course both sets have germinated :-0 but are still only growing their second set of leaves. I'm obviously aiming for late-crop! The sugar snap peas were lovely, but are now struggling with the heat and drought. My gold rush courgette plant is cropping well, and keeping us well supplied!

We were tempted again to a chilli plant, and this year it has the company of an F1 toscan pepper, and a mini orange pepper. Already got more chillies than we can use, made ratatouille with some toscans, and enjoyed lightly blanched orange mini-peppers, stuffed with herb cheese, as part of a mezze supper.

The replacement water barrel pond is doing well. The yellow iris survived the winter in storage and flowered well, the water mint is finally coming back, and our new water lily is settling in well. The surface is well covered with water lettuce. Does anyone need a plant or three?!

Time to brace myself, and get out there in the heat to do some gardening!!

 

The garden and vegies sound as if they are coming on well despite the issues you have, just keep telling yourself Rome wasn't built in a day!

I'd forgotten about the poppies, mine have been flowering for a few weeks now and if you take off the dead heads they will continue for some while. A word of warning, the pods after flowering have a really horrible pungent smell and if you handle them without gloves it takes forever to get rid of the smell. I snip mine off into a plastic bag and tie it up as the smell is that strong. I don't compost them either as I don't want them coming up everywhere next year.

 

Very nice place to start a garden design

____________
Harold @ Rubber Bark

 

the selection of pepper plants, and the "old" barrel



the "island bed, with the daylillies much happier this year!

the apple trees survived their first pruning year with me

the woodstore area
another shot of the angle bed, which was a thicket of thorns last year

 

the veg bed, with embarrassingly empty runner bean frame


a little tamer in the top bed

this weird bed is semi under control now


the steep bank, with a few extra plants in, but disappointingly short of wild flowers

As you can see by a lot of these pictures, we are mostly just holding back the growth, as I concentrate effort in a few targeted areas. But at least we have a few more flowers.

 

It's all coming on nicely Sian and you'll see the difference looking back at these pictures next year.

 

nearly got to the other side, with the digging and rubble removal

and finally, it has all been cleared. You can see why we're calling this the Eye bed.

the pile of rubble is slowly going down, but I'm fast running out of places to put it all!

Hopefully, in the next week or so, the Eye bed will be fully revealed. It's about 10' x 25', I'd guess. Once we've added the compost set reserved for it, I have to think about how I will plant it. I have a fanciful idea of a cross-section path, from corner to corner, with a circle in the middle. This will allow access for havesting the herbs, encourage people to "explore" and enter into it, and will also use up some of the mountain of bricks I have salvaged from the rubble!

 

I know it's hard backbreaking work but there's something very satisfying about ground preparation Sian. I had to dig up the whole of my back garden, it took me three years bit by bit and that had all sorts of things buried in it as well as rubble.

I look forward to seeing your bed when it's planted up.

Below is the eye bed I dug last year, I tried to fill it with mainly annuals for this year and I will gradually turn it over to perennials.

 

Wow Sheal - I would love for this to look as lush as that in a year!

I have finally got all the rubble off the actual bed, and so I can now get some idea of what is ahead of me...

 

Thinking about it, it was earlier this year I dug that bed. It was my rose bed I dug last year. They are mainly annuals in there and always good for a quick fix and bed filler. It's looking a bit sad now as the plants are coming to a finish and will be pretty much empty in the next few weeks. Sadly we're going downhill to autumn again.

Your sand content looks worse than mine......sorry, you probably didn't want to hear that! But the bed will come good eventually with loads of compost. Enjoy planting it!

 

Alleluia!!
We have started planting in the eye bed!
the Kilmarnock willow is now in the centre, and a layer of good compost is layered over the whole bed, at least 3" in depth, in places 6" in depth. I know we will need to infill each planting hole with compost, to feed any plants, but the whole area will be getting a general addition of bacteria, grubs, worms, etc, to work through the sand/sandy soil over the winter. Can't be a bad thing?!
and a near-arial view:

wonderful "Latest news" update. I have been authorised to go spending crazy on my visit to the UK early next month. Brace yourself, Wyevale, I'm on my way!!

 

What a difference Sian! Isn't it great when it gets to the planting side of things, it makes all the hard work worth it. Enjoy your spending spree!

 

Ty Sheal and Armandii!
The layer of garden compost is really a mulch, rather than dug in. Every plant will be planted in an enriched hole, with compost added and mixed with the sand beneath. But we don't have enough compost to get that effect, when turned through. My thinking is that I have added a layer of bacteria, micro-organisms, and worms, etc, to be worked down into the sandy soil below over the winter. It should improve the structure, and health of the soil, with nature doing most of the hard graft for me.

Today's tasks are
to mark out my possible brick path across the bed = nice task
to rotate the remaining 3 compost bays, now that we have completely emptied one bay onto the bed = hard graft, but very satisfying when it is done!

 

Fancy swapping gardens Armandii?