Garden Clean Up - Part 1

A few weeks ago I posted about the need to clear up our garden.  It's been a bit neglected for a year or so and now that Spring is on its way, and the days are getting slightly warmer, I have been itching to get out there. 

Here are some before pictures.   The Christmas tree in the foreground is a live rooted one I bought from a nursery on a holiday in Wales a good few years ago now.  It is growing pretty well and might be able to come inside eventually when it gets a bit bigger.  It gets moved to the bottom of the garden once Christmas is over, where it seems to thrive until the following festive season, when I'll bring it out again and decorate it a little so we can see it from the patio doors in the kitchen.  The bare bush closest in the picture is a blackcurrant bush I got when Ribena were doing a promotion in Bristol probably 4 or 5 years ago now.  We were passing through on our way to Cardiff and they were giving them away so I managed to bag one and brought it home with us.

Anyway, I digress.  I started the clear up this weekend by emptying the used grow bag onto the borders.  Now I know that many people might advise against this, as you can spread any diseases borne by the tomatoes into you border, but I've done it for a few years now to no real detriment and there isn't really anywhere else I can get rid of it, as you cannot put soil in the brown bins in our borough.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but I do it.

I also emptied the soil from a few containers that were no longer being used and needed throwing away onto the borders too and  having done these couple of jobs, this cleared the corner where I want to put up my new small greenhouse, so that I can at least get sewing seeds for the allotment.  The old wooden staging it was all sat on could then be cut up for firewood, which is a shame but it is rotting, our garden is small and we just don't have room to put it anywhere else.

Prior to emptying the soil onto the borders I needed to weed, dig and hoe the borders. Once tidied, bulked up with soil, the garden on one side at least started to look a lot tidier (if still pretty bare), and I could then get on with putting up the greenhouse, thus clearing yet more clutter from our dining room. (Hooray!)

The new greenhouse was a present to me from my other half for Christmas, chosen by me, might I add.  I was looking forward to putting it up, but when I opened the box I found that the wrong instructions had been put in, for a much larger and totally different greenhouse.  I was a little irritated to say the least.  Whilst my other half contacted customer services, who were not particularly of service (I won't mention any names here), I endeavoured to work out how it all went together. 

I think I managed to put it together okay, in the sense that I used all the pieces and it seems sturdy enough.  There were, however, a couple of unresolved issues which hopefully I might be able to resolve when the instructions actually reach us. It fits perfectly into the space left by the wooden staging though, which is great, and is just deep enough for me to go inside to do my sowing and growing, out of the cold.  I'm really pleased with it and I even managed to get to the garden centre for some compost and sow some seeds into trays.  I sewed a few tomatoes, fennel, sweet peas, camomile and a few other flowers that I'm not sure will germinate as the seeds were quite old, but we'll see.  Here's a photo of the greenhouse insitu with the 'door' open.

Following on from doing all of this I sorted through all my seeds and now have a whole host of others to sow, both in the greenhouse and at the allotment, when I get the chance.  I also took the time to put all the seed potato tubers in a tray for chitting.

Part 2 of the garden clean up is yet to come, namely the other side of the garden, but this will need to wait for another day and another post I'm afraid.  It does feel good though to have made a start and the view from the kitchen is a much more pleasant and less guilt-inducing one.