Tag: gardening

June 9, 2012

Recycling II

Earlier, I mentioned that South Kestevan had started charging for collection of garden waste.

I wasn’t completely right, in that I said that the charge was applied from April. In fact, they only applied it from this week. However, lack of communication from South Kestevan meant that there was a lot of confusion as to when the scheme started, and many assumed it started from when the stickers to prove you had paid went on sale. This confusion apparently extended to the guy who refused to empty my bin one week, but not to the chap who emptied it a fortnight later.

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May 29, 2012

All I need now is a nice bottle of chianti…

As I mentioned earlier, I have been very impressed with my broad beans, and although they are a long way off being fully developed pods, I wanted to give some a try. So I picked some, and podded them. As they were so young, I didn’t bother skinning the individual beans, I just did them in a saucepan for 4 minutes.

Garden to table in about 20 minutes, and quite delicious.

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May 26, 2012

Minding my P’s and Q’s

Actually, just my peas. It’s a lovely day outside, so I have been spending some time in the garden.

During the “wettest drought in UK history”, I must admit I’ve not been doing anything out there, or even thinking about it much. During my negligent period, there have developed a scattering of weeds in the gravel, but these pulled easily, as the membrane stops them taking hold.

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May 16, 2012

Recycling – a retrograde step

South Kestevan, my district council, has a fairly good record for recycling; both of plastics/paper, and of garden waste and green kitchen waste.

Up until this year, you could leave garden/kitchen waste for collection either by purchasing authorised bags (which cost 50p per bag), or by having a big green bin.

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March 31, 2012

Self watering vegetable troughs

Yes, I’m afraid the half-stripped room that was part of the reason for my holiday has been temporarily abandoned, as the good weather led me outside instead.

I have four 6′ vegetable troughs in my garden. Two are filled with soil/compost, and already planted up, so I will leave them for now. One is empty, awaiting filling and planting, and the final one is full of soil, but not planted.

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March 29, 2012

Fun with furniture

I really enjoy moving furniture arround, and trying out new layouts. However, my lounge is more or less sorted now, so I’ve been playing the same game in the garden. The garden dining set I bought yesterday arrived early this morning.

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn’t sure if it would over-dominate the patio, and so I tried several different arrangements, including placing one of the benches in a different bit of the garden. However, in the end, I decided it looked ok lengthways down by the BBQ area, so that is where it is living.

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March 29, 2012

It must be spring – a trip to the garden centre

Since picking up the car, the last few days have been a mixture of doing stuff that I said I was going to do (like stripping walls) and going off for a drive, “to see how it handles”. But what the hell, I am on holiday.

Had a brief visit from Tim and Nev on Tuesday – they were doing a job for a neighbour, so popped in to put a couple of grab-rails in the bathroom for me. Showed Tim the Gallotone and 6-string banjo, and he had a brief play.

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November 7, 2011

Overwinter vegetables

Having finished the garden, and got my 4 veg troughs in place, I wanted to plant them, of course.

It’s taken a while, because of my car problems interfering with my trips to the garden centre, but I’ve managed to get some plants in – one trough is full of garlic and onions, while another has two rows of broad beans up the centre (and can be planted with something else, either side, in the spring). I had some onion sets left over, so I have planted the remainder at one end of my “Weed garden” – the trough filled with soil from my old weed-infested veg plot.

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October 15, 2011

The Weed Garden

When the guys were clearing my garden and my existing raised beds, they bagged up all the good soil for future use. I am very grateful for them doing this – it would not have occurred to me to ask, but it was a great thing to do – both in terms of saving money, and simply not wasting good soil.

I reckoned I had enough soil to fill two of the four troughs, together with a little added compost, and my plan was to fill those two troughs and plant them with winter veg, while leaving the other two troughs empty until spring.

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October 14, 2011

More Garden Pictures

For anyone who is interested, here are some more pictures of the garden, now that the main features are in place. The seating is a somewhat temporary ragbag, until I buy more furniture, but it is plenty good enough for now. The troughs are still yet to be filled and planted. I plan to do one or two of these this weekend, but leave the others until spring – there is only so much that can be usefully planted at this time of year.

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October 1, 2011

Garden Update

As of yesterday, the rear patio is laid. Still lots of stuff to do, including pointing etc., but I thought I would post a few pictures.

There will be a BBQ area with some seating behind the garage and a table with seating on the main patio. The gravelled area is going to have 3-4 large vegetable troughs, giving me approximately 6m2 of growing area.

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September 29, 2011

Lots of stuff happening here…

Lots of stuff happening here, but I haven’t been finding the time to write about it.

I have a visitor staying with me – Sovay is a collie belonging to and , who are off for a few days. It has been pretty painless, apart from her thinking that my trying to get her to bed last night was actually a really fun run-around-the-room game. Am blatently using her as an excuse to get out more regularly for walks.

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