Saturday 22 August 2009

Soil improvement




Our soil here is clay, about 12 inches of very much clay soil over 5 feet of pure clay. Also the area is badly drained which doesn't improve things! We put one line of drainage throught he worst bit which had made a lot of difference but some areas are still under water in the winter. There are clumps of iron in the soil, there were lots of worms of the bad kind, none of the good kind and it was either pure mud or like concrete.

I dug over most of the soil at the start and added in a few bags of soil conditioner from B&Q which has been quite good. I'm not giving them an advert but they are 5 minutes away so got a few visutes a week from me throught the first year. It would be cheaper to buy in bulk but I didn't have the money in bulk! Anyway it improved the soil a lot.

In the spring I had some birthday money to spend (on the garden,yeah!!) which went on some nice pots and a litre bottle of E.M. - Effective Microbes. If you haven't tried these before or heard of them, read up now and buy a bottle! What make healthy soil? A good soil structure, earthworms, and a thriving population of microbes! A womans best friend?

The formula for E.M. was devised over 20 years by a Japanese scientist Dr. Teruo Higa in a bid to reduce our reliance on artificial fertilizers and pesticides. The aim is instead to promote life and help ailing ecosystems.

When the bottle arrived I mixed some up (it goes far, you use it at 1% concentration in water) and watered a few tomato plants with it. In the morning I went into the greenhouse to check and it was like a cartoon, my eyes nearly popped out of my head at the difference!! It was like the plants had been in the gym over night, hard to explain but imagine an Olympic athlete full of energy and life compared to most of us on a Monday morning, going through the motions.
(Really shouldn't have used that phrase, I have dealt with other peoples motions, bowel ones, on a Monday morning and it ain't good).

Which takes us neatly onto the subject of poo!! What else does a girl need but poo? I purchased some goats poo through my local L.E.T.S. group, West Lothian which may have improved my soil and the herbs are meant to love it BUT my car still stinks on a warm day, two years later.
No, I like my poo closer to home so I got a couple of rabbits instead and a worm bin.

I like rabbits anyway and I must like worms 'cos I used to eat them (Iwas a baby, give me a break). The rabbits eat the bits and pieces from the garden like dandelion leaves and grass that I won't eat, then their poo feeds the worms. This year I got a 3 buckets of great looking compost from the worm bin plus lots of worms in the compost heaps and there is always plenty of rabbit poop and bedding for the heaps as well. Works great all round. Also it feels good having a kind of loop in the garden of ........ Plants - us/rabbits - worms/compost heap - soil - Plants.

One good thing about rabbit poo is that it can go straight on to the soil as it is well digested (twice) by the rabbits and so doesn't do any harm. I used it last winter as a mulch for a lot of plants to keep the worst of the winter of them.

I have also dug in left over compost from the tomatoes and molehills that I collected from the football pitch. And don't tell anyone, but after the donkey rides at last years Gala day there were some "presents" left lying so I took them home for the garden too. I got spotted doing it as well, and even I thought it was taking things a bit too far.

The soil now is much, much better and the plants are healthy. I keep watering the E.M. into the soil and spraying it about, I am sure last year it stopped the tomatoes getting blight. They showed all the signs of it, I sprayed like mad and the plants went healthy again. Also, I have to say it, when it has been watered in and sprayed around the garden is like the best ever sparkly fairy kingdom!!!! I am not quite sure what happens but something does. I put some E.M. in my muesli but it didn't turn me into a fairy. I maybe went a bit nutty though.

for E.M. and worms try http://www.bubblehouseworms.com/

Saturday 15 August 2009

Compost Heaps



I dived into the older compost heap, the one in the secret garden, on Thursday. Good job I was off work that day as the weather has been rotten since.
I dug around and got a few pounds of nice looking potatoes, not tried them yet, plus a load of compost. Some of this went into the polytunnel then the rest got bagged up in old compost bags for next spring. I am hopeful that I might not have to buy any compost next year, the first year in the garden I was down to B&Q nearly everyday!

I left half of the heap as it is thick with nettles, good for the butterflies.


I copied some information from this website about nettles (one of my favourite most useful plants) http://www.nettles.org.uk/



Let's take a look at those you may see in a sunny nettle patch.


Red Admiral - Vanessa atalanta
A common sight in gardens in the autumn where it will feed on Buddleja flowers and fallen fruit. Migrates from Africa each spring.


Small Tortoiseshell - Aglais urticae
The adults are frequent visitors to garden flowers.


Peacock - Inachis io
Unmistakeable resident butterfly with large distinctive 'eye-spots' on the wings.


Comma - Polygonia c-album
The comma was struggling in the early 1900's but has made a remarkable comeback and is moving steadily northwards.



I have had mostly Cabbage White butterflies and a couple of the Tortoiseshells but not much else. The numbers of bees have been down this year as well, last year the secret garden was buzzing with dozens of bees, this year it is more like a dozen over the whole garden.

Most gardens can fit in a little clump of nettles in a corner and they are easy to keep under some control, just keep cutting them down for compost then leave the last lot to pop up and flower and leave over winter.

Very nutritious too in the spring, it is easy peasy to add a few leaves into your soup or indeed your soap but don't eat the soap.


The potatoes on the compost heap are a free gift, any potato peelings I put on near the edge of the heap then when plants appear they grow out the sides and when they are ready I am forced into digging over the heap otherwise I won't get fed.

I am not sure why I have had no problems with slugs at the spuds but although there are plenty of the wee blighters on the heap they don't seem to go for them.


http://www.nettles.org.uk/


Wednesday 12 August 2009

Plans, Wishes and Reality





This is the plan of our garden, we added the bit on the right side or as I like to call it "The Secret Garden". It isn't very secret but it is fairly hidden and had not been used at all in decades.

The first dig around to see what the soil was like made me think it was ok. Turns out, that must have been the dump corner as the rest of the soil was terrible!! Very heavy clay full of streaks of iron and under that is pure clay for a good 5 ft.

Add to that a lack of drainage for the whole area and I had to change most of the ideas that I had.

A tropical jungle was out, so was rows and rows of perfect looking veggies. The slugs see to that one.


My first step was to sit looking at as many photos of gardens as I could find, ones on the web that I liked the look of I put together in a folder. This was actually one of the most useful things that I did as sometimes it is hard to form a concrete picture in your head of what you are aiming for (no concrete).

Most of all this helped me realise what I really didn't want, which is flat, dull and full of overbred lifeless plants. The photo above was one I found that I liked, lots of colour and height.


My wish list:
  • to be eating lots fruit and veg out of the garden
  • for it to look a least a bit wild and jungle-ish.....lots of climbers, lots of height
  • loads of herbs and flowers for cooking, and for using in soaps and creams etc. including the weird, unusual and poisonous!
  • a couple of compost heaps and a worm bin
  • wildlife friendly, lots of bees and butterflies please
  • looks good and fairly low maintenance

......and a hammock to enjoy it all from, still waiting for that one!

A start


This is a bit like starting my garden when we moved in, where to start?

I am intending this as a record of all the hard work and enjoyment that has gone into the garden so far and hopefully well into the future.

I went looking at the house as it was advertised as having a large garden, when I looked at first I thought it looked not a bad size, then the sellers pointed out to me that there was more around the corner.....LOADS MORE!!!! Jackpot, I ran home and started the process for buying. I won't go into all the heartache of thinking that we were going to lose it, I was nearly on my knees praying.

Anyhow we moved in at the end on January 2007. I am thankful now that I took photos of each area of the garden as the difference even at the end of the first summer is amazing.

At this stage I had no real ideas of what I wished the garden to look like but more knew what I didn't want.