Novice's Garden - trials and tribulations

Hope you'll forgive me posting another topic. But I found it inspiring reading about other peoples' experiences with new gardens and thought I'd show some of mine in the hope of getting some advice. Help. I've never dug or planted anything in a garden before in my life.

As will become abundantly clear.

Story so far is that I bought a house two years ago on a green-field site. I don't know what was on it before but judging by the fields nearby it could have been rape and winter grass.


This is when I signed over the spondoolies, with a babba on the way. A wire fence makes it windy city but it's south-facing.

It's flat at least (nicely compacted by lorry wheels!).


And no weeds! That's the thin earth top layer been sprinkled on top to hide them. Bit rubbishy soil too - full of stones. But if only I'd been able to plant grass seed down then!


Builders' thunder box. You can also see the neighbour's garden. He's had a year head start and has concentrated on getting screening firs up. And lots of pebbles to keep the weeds at bay. That's cheating! He moans about the soil. Says it's just clay, poorly drained, gets flooded 'cos his neighbour's land is higher. Cracks in the Summer, everything dies. I think he's exaggerating a smidgen. I just want to move in.

But t'was not to be. The owner's wife had divorced him and put a block on the sale. Baby arrives.


Babba Cacadore

But now nowhere to live, borassic, new baby; family living in one-room bed-sits, fighting the house agents in court to get the deposit back....... Nightmare.


West towards neighbour's house. This is where the terrific winds come from.

But, the clouds go away, the sun comes out and suddenly we get the house. Garden is now like this:

West towards neighbour's house
Can't afford a mower at the start and what with moving and all it just gets higher and higher until it looks impossible.

Another before:

And a year later:


Interesting things growing in it though. Weeds, but lots of different types so perhaps the soil isn't too bad. Some even look like, yes, maybe, incy, tiny trees.

Neighbour suggests getting a flame thrower.

 

I bet your neighbour wasn't exaggerating about the soil. Dandelions don't care. They have one of the longest, strongest tap roots of any weed, and will think nothing of punch a hole straight through compacted clay to find water and nutrients far deeper than most plants can reach.

Still, if you turn them all under, they'll improve the structure of the soil. People will tell you not to rotavate when there's so many weeds as you'll just spread the roots about more, but they're already there, so you may as well. Then its just a case of keeping the weeds down as you build the garden you want.

You've probably figured by now that you don't have much spare time to sort it all, so please, do yourself a favour, and don't try to tackle it all in one go. You'll just grind yourself down (I know, been there, done that etc etc). Get one bit close to the back door sorted out nice for your new baby to play on, and just expand out over until you've got it how you want it.

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner Cacadores. Congratulations on the arrival of your baby, so cute!

I presume you are looking for inspiration on how to make a start on all this? As Clueless1 says take it slowly and sort the garden out bit by bit. Having said that, you really need to get something substantial going regarding your boundaries.

Seeing that the area is flat, your garden will need protection from high winds or plants will suffer. Are you thinking about a solid fence or hedging? Ideally, if it's hedging it should really be planted first, it takes quite a while to grow but is ideal for a windy situation as it will take the brunt of high winds.

As Clueless said it would be best to turn the soil, rotovate or hire somebody to do the job for you perhaps. This will make the soil less compact and easier to work with when it comes to planting, it will also help with the growth of grass, should you want a lawn. If the weeds grow back later they can be dealt with when the issue arises.

If you think flower beds and plants will be to much to deal with at this point while the baby is still really young, then just get a lawn layed over the whole area and when you have more time you can start planning beds.

I'll leave it there for the time being, it's more than enough to think about.

Have a look at the threads in the 'Garden Projects' section they may give you inspiration. Good luck!

 

Thanks for that.

I was quoted a horrendous sum for rotavating it all and I don't have the money. But it's good advice to start off bit by bit and to get something nice to look at where the babba can play.

This is my day-dream of a sunny arbour:


Trouble is, the back door area is the most compacted soil of all. I started digging one bed and it was like iron. So I've been learning. I water the ground, then put some of the fork in and water the holes. After a day that loosens the earth and I can prize out some of the stones to get the top two inches of weed turf off. Then I wait for rain. Then I dig down another couple of inches and so on. I broke the fork handle and had to shape another one. I'm on me second spade too but it's a nice stainless steel one this time.

Thanks for the kind reply. Yes, inspiration to start and motivation to keep going when the results are slow.

Here's the site:


Here's my plan:


No money for fences so yes, I'd like to have screening plants up around the boundaries: trees and hedges. I need trees to block out the sight of those horrible houses you could see being built in the second picture up top. They're right by my back fence. And hedging to deal with the hurricanes.

Ok, gales!

 

A rotavator is is easy enough to use, and you can hire one for around £35 per day. One day is more than enough time with a decent rotavator but if the ground is as hard as you described then it may struggle.

For the rest of this year, I reckon you'll get along fine with an old blanket laid on the floor for the baby to roll about on, and some soft toys, on the rare occasions when weather permits.

If you know that the drains etc are suitably deep, the job will be much much quicker if you buy yourself a pick axe. Mine was only about a tenner. A pick is lethal though, so if you go down that route, then remember the 2 golden rules. 1) Never, ever, drive the axe directly straight down from above your head, because if it hits something springy, it will bounce straight back up again. Always swing at a slight angle coming across your body, so that any rebound bounces away from your head, and 2) always make sure your in a good stance, you don't want to chop your own feet off.

How about putting in some super fast growing shrubs/small trees around the boundary first, then over time, you can introduce a better range and take out any you don't like. Buddleja will put on 10ft in its first full year and will thrive in the conditions you describe. Maybe some nice birch trees and/or rowan. I used Elderberry trees just because I got them for nothing and they grow really fast.

I like your pics and your plan. You've obviously put a lot of thought into it, and I think knowing where you're going with it is more than half the battle. I look forward to see your work in progress pics

 

I agree with what Clueless has had to say. Well you've obviously got a plan of how your garden's are to look, a good idea and you can 'tweak' the plan as you go along if necessary.

Sounds like a job and a half with your clay soil. If there's no water restrictions in your area, you could leave a sprinkler on gently overnight and that will soak in and make it more workable for you the following day.

 

Hi Cacadores,

It would help the members advice to you if you could put your location in your profile.

As staff, I can see where you are but that is in confidence, so it is up to you.

You've got a great sized garden there, i'm sure we will all love to help you to get it how you want it

 

Thank you for the kind reply. I didn't look forward to digging at all and although I'm doing one bed at a time rather than turning all the soil (I'm holding off on rotavation until I'm ready to deal with a lawn), my beer glass arm was in remission for two weeks. Now I quite enjoy a dig. My wife's hairdresser's aunt has a farm so we piled down there and got a load of cattle manure which I'm putting in deep. I came back from the stall and the babba was smiling at something. A just-decapitated cow. Yukky! They're somehow ..... different in the country. H.I. has to get her hair done again soon so we can have some more poo.

Yes. Fast is good, even if going for deciduous means partial screening. The parish owns an unmanaged wood nearby and they don't mind you taking saplings from the path. So I got a nice birch. Hope I got enough root up with it. [/quote]

Thank you. Yes, watering before a dig is the key. And keeping the cat off when it's done!

Thank you very much. I'll see how it goes. I'm not sure I can manage the garden the size it is - hopefully it'll get easier if I can cover large areas of it up!

 

Be nice if part of it was a wood - then I wouldn't have to do anything!

Re: Vegetable patches.

Anyway, before I could get on with my plans, her indoors decided she wanted a herb patch (b). This was in January this year. So I started with a small area, about two by one and a half foot wide. That was hard enough to dig, through compact clay, but I managed to take out two foot of soil, fork the bottom, put sand down for drainage, then some soil, then a peat and compost layer. Then I started on two larger beds. 'Double-digging' just didn't work with this clay so I left all the soil above ground for a few weeks for the frost and wind to break down.


The second and third beds (a and c) had peat and compost put 1' to 2' down. Eventually I mixed up the rest of the soil (except the lowest compacted soil, which I left out) with some peat and compost and put it back in, with a bit more sand for the herb patch (b). Despite chucking some of the lower soil, the process still lifted the earth in the beds by two foot! The parish dumps oak leaves from the park near the local wood so I got some of that and spread it on top to keep the weeds off.

So here's how it looks now:

Bubba Cacadore's sunflowers. They are full of ladybirds and honey bees. I should follow one like Pooh to find out where the honey is! In the middle there's leek.


Marigolds (or those the little Cacadore couldn't reach at least) in front of the remains of the peas. Are these supposed to keep the pests away from the veggies?


Herbs in front (b). Underneath there's a compacted soil wall between them and the veggies where the marigolds are, to stop the herbs taking over. Her Indoors planted chives and parsley, which came up well. And dill, which didn't. She's never planted stuff before either. We had some little slugs and black fly around there but they went when it got warmer and cobwebs appeared. The only pests there are now are ants and birds. Is that good?

The Veggies (a) were peas, leak and now runner beans, which taste fantastic. Strange to think they came from Mexico. I could eat them all day. The radishes hardly grew but no matter. Carrots are on their way.

And this is the strawberry bed. In the spring I lay corrugated perspex over them like a cloche, held in place by bamboo canes.

One end there are one-crop strawberries and at the other end there's a repeat-crop variety which has produced better fruit so far. We have them with ice cream. Loverly.

What you reckon? I never imagined my trouble would be able to produce so much from so little. Perhaps my digging helped. Any idea why the radishes and dill failed but everything else came up great?

 

Well, light the soil is not and it did retain the rain a couple of times so it could be that. Have to keep them potted next time perhaps. I remember now I put a polythene bin-liner over the inside of the herb bed where it's nearest the vegetable bed, to stop the herbs bolting.

Re: Compost

So we did manage to cut the weeds eventually. Worst were all the woody weeds which H.I. did with shears and they went into a huge pile. And I had to do something with the grass cuttings.


Hense the compost heap. Now the dried thistles come in really useful to make plant stakes or carbon layers between the grass cuttings. It's just made of 1m covered metal stakes from the D.I.Y. centre and chicken wire. Pesky neighbour complained that the compost heap next to his wire fence would leak smelly muck into his garden. Not that it did. He just worried it would. Blow it. Spent all afternoon shifting it one foot along. Still, he did give me two trees. One's still alive.


We're lucky to have so much useful stuff at hand. Nearest is some of the hay the harvesters left behind on the field over the road. I'm using it for layers in the compost heap, for temporary paths and to supress weeds around new beds. Then oak leaves that the parish dumps in the wood. I'm using these as a mulch around plantings with hay on top to stop it blowing away when it's dry.

At the back is the compost heap which is about a yard and a half square (140cm sq), some of which I've already begun mixing with soil to use in beds. The moist black goo is not fully broken down so I do it with a spade in the wheelbarrow. As I mentioned elsewhere, the heat really took off about three weeks ago when I put some corrugated perspex over it and in the middle it smells mildly like manure. Is that how you're supposed to do it? I wonder if it's big enough.

I love the smell of compost in the morning.

 

Re: Sand Pit
The babba is now a toddler and the question arises as to how it’s possible to do any gardening at all. So the next project was a sand pit to keep her occupied. Had a look at the plastic sand pits you can buy and they are horrible. In the shape of fat cartoonish frogs in the wrong colours, or monsterous dogs. Ugh. The nice wooden ones are shallow, expensive and difficult to fit a top. For the money I might as well make my own I reckoned. I’d be interested in if anyone else has made one and if they reckon I’ve done it OK.
Here’s my first plan (I’m sorry I can’t get it to come up the right way).

So I started digging and digging. And digging.

And had a rest. And reckoned I don’t need such a wide base at the bottom since it’s all got to be dug. And as it was I’d gone down four and a half foot. So I plumped for a stepped hole and filled the bottom two steps with hardcore left from the house building around us, for drainage. Drainage is to stop bacteria living there then getting into the toddler. Then gravel, then stone shards from the same source to stop the sand slipping down.
Revised plan:


This uses 5‘‘ by 1‘‘. I made a lip for the frame to stand on. The frame helps to put on an anti-cat lid. As you can see I had to make soil bastions inside to keep the pressure on the frame, as well as stones hammered down between the outside and the soil.

Finished thing is one metre square.
If I did it again I’d just not make a square hole, but a square with corners 6‘‘ down that the frame could rest on. That would make it easier to get it level. Mixed size builders‘ sand was put on the shards and on top, sharp sand intended for swimming pool filtration, which is lovely and white. I reasoned it’s going to get mucky so it may as well start looking nice. To make it perfect I would have put some polythene bin-liners around the upper inside, to stop the occasional bit of soil coming up.

Critical test by her highness:


Passed. Phew.

 

Hey. Enough of that! Actually the neighbour wrote us a letter when the dandelion seeds started blowing over his side. Beautiful. Just like snow it was. Since then I've been more assiduous in cutting them before they can seed and now they've been replaced by clover which is at least an improvement. I can't really deal with it while I'm trying to get screening plants up. I reckon the way to go is to mark out an area and turn and seed it with grass and when that's up and running do another bit.