Hello Folks

Some of you may remember I said part of the plot fence broke a while ago. You may also remember I said I was "borrowing" the plot therefore could, albeit doubtful, get hoiked off at any time.

With this in mind I don't want to spend a lot but would like some sort of boundary/fencing. I was thinking about the items below any wondered what people thought, don't hesitate to  tell me it's a stupid idea

   

Hi Folks

I've seen people mention this, do the pots to the right look like they have issues?

   

Can't find a thread for this so decided to start one.

I am sure a few of us must be dieting and just wondered which diet was being used and how people were getting along with it?

Started my diet yesterday. I have used low carb diets in the past to good effect. What enthused me the most was Tyson Fury losing 10 stone and returning to take the heavyweight crown.

I am no Tyson Fury but I am obese (have been for the last 20 years) even though I class myself as quite healthy. I walk with dog for 1.5 hours each day and do all my caring responsibilities, housework, shopping,cooking and my favourite, washing dishes each day.

Yesterday I started my diet with a full English breakfast (no toast or fried bread of course) then fasted for the rest of the day apart from a bag of nuts.
Today I had four sausages and three scrambled eggs for brekky. Teatime will be chicken wings and kale.then fast aagain until morning. As you can see I am trying low carb and fasting, drinking loads of sugar free drinks as well.

Anyway, how are everyone else's diets going and what do they entail?

In 2016 we decided to build a hugelkultur bed - a mound filled with wood and topped with soil - in order to have somewhere for the plants that hated having their feet in solid clay but I didn't have room for in the vegetable garden, principally raspberry canes. The mound would have a north side (for the raspberries) and and a south side, where I intended to grow globe artichokes. The spot we chose is at the bottom of a gentle slope and has water running through it during the winter and after summer storms. It is also the spot where we were storing our uncut fire wood and as a result had a huge amount of rubbish wood that had begun to rot beyond use.

After removing the good wood and putting the gash to one side we measured out the size of the bed 3x2m approx, a size chosen because most of the wood we had was no longer than 3m. We then dug a hole in the clay to a depth of about half a metre - this is in to solid clay, the idea being that the base would hold moisture.

We filled the hole with big logs
     
topped them off with all the wood debris from clearing the log pile 
   
mostly to fill in the gaps, and then added a big layer of smaller poles
   
next went on a layer of horse manure 
   
Before we topped it off with the topsoil removed when we dug the hole. The finished mound
   
and seen from the other side of the meadow 
     
We duly planted raspberries along the back side and I used the front for various things - tomatoes, pumpkins, flowers. But I have to say that nothing thrived on the front, mostly because there were so many rodents and slugs living in the gaps in the timber! Three years ago I planted a peach tree, some strawberry plants and a rhubarb crown - all but the tree have vanished! So now it is just full of raspberries on one side and blackcurrants on the other. Five years after construction the mound is completley flat and I have to top up the soil to prevent the roots of the peach tree becoming exposed.
   
It hasn't really achieved what I wanted and was hard work to create; I also thought the mound would last longer. On the other hand this is the only bit of the productive garden that never gets watered.

This is some heavy (about 80kg each , apparently) duty recycling.

     

That’s a fairly big boot for comparison. I was going to stack 3 or 4 of them to make a planter. 

If anyone has any other ideas, just shout! Only found out I was getting some of them half hour ago 

Hello folks

I seem to have few issues with germination from my unheated propagators however my heated one isn't yielding much at all.

I appreciate there are a number of factors however my question is around watering, what's the score, do I make sure the soil is always moist?

These are amazing little harmless and incredibly cute creatures. Yet another species being driven to extinction because of us, the human race.  
I thought maybe some of you maybe interested. Knowing how much you all love and respect our native wildlife.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t realise how bad things were until I read the below link. 

https://www.pangolins.org/

I have been experimenting with using herbs and spices from my spice rack in a pan of water on top of the woodburner. I peeled an orange and added some Cinnamon but got very little aroma from it. I tried Rosemary from the garden and it did work but for a limited time.
I am now thinking of using an essential oil but don't know what 'flavour' to use. There appear to be hundreds on the go. Has anyone got any tips and recommendations for summat that won't be too overpowering?

TVM in advance.

In an idle moment I tried to imagine my garden drawn as squares on graph paper. A sort of Square Foot/Yard grid covering the entire garden where there were no curved lines, only squares
I've seen all the neat plans where beds are perfect rectangles and that's easy to imagine but, no matter how I imagined it, all I could turn mine into was a Crossword, where black squares were paths and white squares were beds.

What game would you play in yours? Chess/draughts, snakes and ladders, Monopoly..............

Answers on a postcard to...............

Maybe its just because I am a tight git, or maybe its because I can't be bothered to buy any more .Or possibly I have got my re-use /recycle head on.
The aluminium disposable pie dishes are now washed out and re-used for future pies. Am I alone in this or has it just dawned on me only that its an environmentally friendly thing to do. They could also be used as bird scarers on a string?

What else are they good for?