Thursday 12 May 2016

More Garden Prep

Today, has been a pretty productive day for me, for a change.  I think I'm finally getting into some sort of routine now I've been at the CS a month or so and on the days I'm not there, I try hard to get on with as many jobs as I can in the house or garden, so that at least it feels like I'm progressing from one week to the next. 

After walking the dog and then heading off to the gym, I stopped off at my favourite local grocery store on the way home and picked up this 567g bag of Organic Cacao Powder on special offer for £7.49. 


I'd wanted to treat myself for a while and had bought a similar sized bag of Chia seeds the week before for even less, so I decided this week to take advantage of this being on offer.  It should take me years to get through this amount, but it was good value, as a 100g pack costs over £3 in a health food store.  

I also bought some almond milk, lemons (I've taken to drinking lemon juice in hot water to try to kick start my metabolism) and my favourite avocado and houmous dip. When I got home I whisked some of the cacao powder into some of the almond milk and chia seeds, ready to have for breakfast tomorrow before I go to the CS.  I need something decent for breakfast to try to help sustain me whilst I'm there. 

As it was still lovely sunny, after having some lunch I decided that I could no longer put off going for the manure, so I gathered some bags together and headed off to the horse riding stables.  It was nice to walk through the stables and see all of the horses.  The farrier was there giving some of them new shoes.  It amazes me that living so close to the centre of London, I still get to do things like this.  

It didn't take long to bag up the manure and when I got home, it went straight into the second bed and was mixed in with the bale of compost I bought yesterday.  We just need a couple more bales of compost now to finish off this bed and then it can be planted into.  I'm going to put beans, peas, courgettes and cucumbers in here, if I can fit them all in.  I've got to grow the plants from seed yet though.



A parcel had arrived for me while I was out and it was the weed suppressant fabric I'd bought on eBay, so I laid a bit more of it on the path in front of the bed. It wasn't quite as heavy duty as the roll I'd bought from B&Q, but it was plenty good enough for our project and was half the price.





There's just this small area where all these flowers are growing to do, but I'm going  to wait until they have all flowered before I dig them out and level it all off, as the white foxgloves will look very pretty when they flower.  

This is where I'm hoping to put a bench, but as I don't have one yet, there's no hurry and a few flowers will look nice in the mean time.  I may, of course, change my mind yet and decide to keep all or some of it as a flower bed.

Next, I decided to do another garden job, namely wash out all of my dirty plant pots from last season. I know that I'm very slack on this front, but I always leave them until a warm spring day, as it gets me outside and into the sunshine.  There was this box full, plus some others scattered around the greenhouse and garden.  




I got my washing station ready, which is LB's old baby bath filled with warm soapy water. and a bucket of cold water for rinsing.  This system works brilliantly for me, as the baby bath sits securely between the arms of this garden  chair.  I have to change the water a couple of times, but used it to wash out other boxes and bins, before pouring it down the drain.  The whole job took a good few hours to complete though, as I had to wash virtually every pot I owned.

Once washed, I stack all of the plastic pots by size and colour (I'm a bit of neat freak about this) and then they stack neatly into my old kitchen swing bin.  


Once I put the lid on, although it doesn't completely protect them from rain, it stops leaves and other debris getting inside, so they stay clean until I'm ready to use them. As you can tell, I'm all for re-purposing things in the garden.

It felt really good to get these jobs done today and once I've bought some potting compost, I will be ready to start sowing seeds and growing some of my own vegetable plants to go into the new beds. I'll post again when there's been more progress.

1 comment:

  1. You are sure getting a handle on all those gardening jobs. I do love how the raised beds are looking.

    God bless.

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