Filed under: Doing | Tags: charles dowding, no dig, raised bed, raised beds, rocket gardens
The bug has started to spread around my family – my dad was talking this morning about sharing an allotment with a friend and my mother and stepdad have decided to sacrifice some of their lawn for some raised beds :-)
I would more normally used recycled scaff planks for raised beds but my mum had already plumped for a B&Q kit. It was rather unnecessarily high so we cut into two and filled up with compost that my mum has been hoarding for a while. Once filled we temporarily covered with plastic to stop cats, squirrels and others diving in for a cheeky dig.
I have recommended that she buys one of Rocket Garden’s excellent growing kits from here which i have now used on a number of occasions.
I have also set her some homework of reading up about salads – for those of you not familiar with Charles Dowding then please have a read of his site and perhaps even buy his book – http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/Books-Salad-Leaves-For-All-Seasons
Filed under: Doing | Tags: burning, digging roots, garden riddle, laurel, lime tree, pallets, pruning tree, raised beds, tree
A huge day – we had eight people getting stuck in this week including the epic Dean ‘I like digging holes’ Firth and Angela ‘I live next door’ McSherry.
I started off by showing Dean a huge root which needed digging out and gave him the pick and a spade whilst I climbed up a nearby lime tree and began pruning branches overhanging another neighbours garden which had been causing some distress.
victory over the tree root
a spot of light pruning for me
The Pogo crew arrived a little later and made a riddle, which is basically a massive garden sieve, out of a pallet and mesh. With it we got all of the rubble out of the rear bed which had obviously been used as a dumping ground by the builders when the roof was replaced many years ago…
making a garden riddle
Using our home-made garden riddle
Around this point I hit the wrong button on the camera, so I must apologies for everything being a little blurry from here on… Austen pruned the laurel tree which is apparently not a good thing to use in compost as it contains arsenic! We found this out just after we had spread all of the cuttings all over the main bed – doh! We had a go at burning some cuttings but that was aborted, and Dean and Ben got all alpha-male digging in the pallets to edge the raised beds at the rear.
Trying to burn things
Building the rear beds
Austen up the laurel tree
