It’s finished already!!

I can’t believe that the garden is finished!!  The guys worked so hard for the two days, a few times today having to make a run for it to shelter in the shed when the heaven’s opened.  I’m really pleased with it.  We just have to get some kind of dog proofing around the veg patch and get some decent compost dug in as the soil is pretty depleted.  And we have to water the new turf every day for at least a week and not walk on it.  So here it is……..(click each pic for larger versions)

If you want a reminder of the before pictures they are here

We are so pleased with the results.  Look at that veg bed!!  I should get plenty in there next year.  I’m really happy with the lawn edging too.  They have put them in level with the turf so the lawn mower should slide over them.  The gravel is a little bit dirty but a couple more good downpours like we had today and it should be fine.

I can’t wait to get planting now!!!

And if anyone has any tips on stopping dog wee scorching the grass PLEASE let me know!!

Garden re-vamp: End of Day One

Wow, these guys are hard-workers.  They arrived before 7.30 this morning and didn’t stop until the rain got too heavy at about 3.45.  The old lawn was in the skip before 9.30!  And they’ve even put my bird box up.

So here are the day one progress photos……(click each one for a bigger version)

Looks a bit of a mud bath after the rain but it’s definitely taking shape.  We are recycling some things, such as edging the path with left over blocks from when the patio was done, and some old slabs that were down in the gravel are going round the back of the shed to put the grow house on.  The rocks will go round the bottom of the holly to make a bed for comfrey.  And at the risk of reintroducing self seeded weeds were are reusing the gravel.  There will be weed membrane underneath so nothing will come upwards but we’ll just have to keep on top of the ones that grow on top. Unfortunately there isn’t space to have kept the old turf and composted it down.  So that went in the skip with the forsythia and the holly prunings (and an old gate).

So we shall see what tomorrow brings…..

It’s all happening this weekend

Tomorrow is a big day.  The guys come in to do the garden.  So today I have been trying to finalise what I want them to do.

A couple of days ago I signed up to Garden Planner for their 30 day free trial.  They don’t ask you for any card details or anything so a subscription won’t automatically kick-in at the end of the 30 days, which is good if you forget and then wonder why there is money going out of your account!

I played around a bit with putting various types of veg into a virtual veg patch and lining everything up in lovely straight rows.  But there is also a feature called “square foot gardening” where it will show you how many of each type of plant you can fit into a square foot of soil.  (There is also a book available on this type of gardening which I may or may not have ordered – ahem!!)  Then I realised it didn’t only have to be the veg patch you could design.  So I went out this morning and took all the measurements of my garden, size of the shed, position of shrubs that are already there, and did a whole garden plan.  There are still some pretty vague areas such as how much lawn to have and how big the non-veg beds will be but I printed it off so I can scribble on it as things come to me before tomorrow.  So it’s pretty useful.

As you add veg to the plan it will give you spacing information and sowing and harvesting dates and you can set frost dates. You can also get it to remember what you planted where so that when you come to plant your veg the following year it will tell you where NOT to plant things because you had things in there this year.  Great if you forget to make a note of it and then don’t know where to rotate your crops to!!

So the heavy digging and renovating is happening this weekend and just in time because I got my garlic this morning from Organic Catalogue.  They only had one variety called  Vallelado so I ordered the smallest amount – 150g.  It wasn’t until a few days ago that I realised I didn’t know how much 150g of garlic was so when it arrived I was very pleased to find that I got 3 whole bulbs plus 1 clove.  Should be plenty enough for us if they all grow.  Plus I also have some Solent Wight coming with the onion sets from SimplySeeds.  I’ll be interested to see if I can taste the difference between different garlic varieties.

I also bought a bird feeder and bird box last weekend, so I’ll ask them to put the box up in the holly while they are trimming it.  We seem to get a lot of blue tits in the holly so hopefully one will take a shine to it for next spring.

One week to go…..

Take a look at these pictures of my garden.  Drink them in because in one week’s time it isn’t going to look like this anymore.

All the gravel is being taken up and the perished weed membrane underneath is all being replaced.  The Forsythia on the right is coming out and that is where my vegetable patch is going to be.  The whole lawn is being taken up and re-turfed, and everything else is going to be given a blooming good tidy up.  The old shrub stumps are being dug out, the holly re-shaped and the borders prepared for new plants.

The water butt and compost bin will stay in place but the ground in front of them will be levelled out and my small growhouse will go against the shed to the right of the water butt.

I am so excited about it all.  I’ve been reading all the magazines and books I can get my hands on, but now I just want to get on with it.  The onion sets and garlic should be on their way in a couple of weeks so they will be the first veg to go into the veg patch.  I shall need to put up some lattice fencing around the patch to keep the dog off, but hopefully that shouldn’t restrict anything too much as the light should get through the gaps.

Roll on Friday at 8am, that’s when the men are coming to do all the work.  This week I need to really decide on the final design ideas.