Martin's New Garden

My lovely neigbour is getting himself a nice new deck for his back garden. So he's very kindly let me have all the old decking that he's ripped up, even helping me carrying it round the back of my house.

   

My job now is to make a triple bay compost area with all that lovely wood

That'll keep me busy for a bit!

What a lovely neighbour.

I love free wood.

It's taken me a while to get round to it, but I've built those compost bins now.

It's a three bin system: one filling, one cooking, one emptying is the plan. Each bin is a cube 1.2 meters on a side, so about 1.7 cubic metres in each. Not sure they are big enough given the amount of debris I've generated in just a few months. We'll see...

   

There's still a decent amount of late summer colour in the garden. I should probably have done the dead-heading, trimmed the hedge and mowed the lawn before showing you though...

   

Impressive on all counts Mark

A few more pictures from today...

A few veggies. The potatoes didn't do very well, although I got back more than I planted. I've put some savoy cabbages under a net in their place. The runner beans have done fine and I've been picking for a week or so. The sweetcorn is just ripening now. For some reason the boy flowers finished doing their thing before the girls were quite ready, so the cobs aren't fully pollinated, but they are tasty enough anyway. The carrots in front of the greenhouse have grown beautifully.

   

The greenhouse has been a mixed bag. I didn't get many cucumbers or melons because of a vicious attack of red spider mites. The little monsters have even spread to my french marigolds - you can see signs of them in this picture. But at least they left the tomatoes alone and they have been lovely.

   

My front border is looking good at the moment, thanks mainly to some Nicotiana grown from saved seed and some Cosmos from a free packet of seeds. Mind you, those Cosmos were supposed to be a rainbow mix; you don't see many rainbows consisting of subtle variations of the colour orange! You get what you pay for, I suppose.

   

The front garden should be totally different next year if I get round to ordering the roses in time.

Looks great, Martin.

It looks fantastic. You've really got things going quickly!




<cries in collapsing house purchase>

Looking good Martin, you've achieved a lot in a short space of time.

Well done Martin, garden is looking great