Gardening A gardening update and catching rain Just realised I haven't done a gardening update in a while. We didn't do much planting last summer - a combination of events, but with a bit more time this summer we're hoping to get more done. Anyway the garden now looks like this ... So the layout and the hard
Gardening Compost Bins Lids - Part 2 Managed to get more work done on the compost bins this weekend. It's getting important to get as much done as possible now. Come October we effectively lose half the weekend as we support a local horse club and their activities run on Sundays. Battening up the lids Last weekend
Gardening Compost bin lids This week we're building lids for the compost bins to keep the weather off the compost - but ironically inclement weather stopped us from completing them this weekend :-) It wasn't much to be honest, but even drizzle isn't a good idea when your working with untreated wood or thinking
Gardening Putting fronts on the composting bins Spent a very pleasant Sunday afternoon working on the composting bins. It's nice to be able to make at least some progress on them each week, it stops the project stagnating. This week's target was to get the bins squared up and get the front cladding on. Squaring up the
Gardening Plans for our composting bins Now the raised beds are finished ... or at least ready for soil ... and we've tidied up the bottom of the garden, it's time to think about the composting bins. In an ideal world we'd have 3, so you could have the standard: filling, maturing, and using; setup. But we only
Gardening Raised Bed Number 2.5 Another Saturday means another chance to work in the garden :-) This time we finished off the second raised bed by swapping the extra tall sleepers for a shorter one. And started on the third. However rain stopped play in the afternoon. It's not that we mind working in the
Gardening The right tools and KISS (2nd Nov 2014) This weekend was better. Thankfully payday was midweek so we were able make a trip to the local reclamation yard, J. Brant Reclamation Ltd [http://www.jbrant.co.uk], on Saturday and buy the rest of the sleepers we needed. This was a big investment, both in money and in
Gardening Nothing to show Another weekend but this time we didn't manage to make any progress in the garden :-( We're a bit disappointed about this as we're trying to make sure we make some sort of progress each week even if it's only small things. We don't want the project to stagnate. OK
Gardening Saturday Gardening, Fettling, & Mushroom Bed (Part2) We pressed on with the garden today. First item on the menu was to cut the remaining sleeper for the base of the second raised bed. It was the sleeper for short sides so it need to be cut twice to produce two 50" beams. Again, it was done with
Gardening The Mushroom Bed (Part 1) On Saturday morning, while we were waiting for the aggregates delivery to arrive, we cut the decking for the mushroom bed. The mushroom bed is a bit unusual in that it lies outside the picket fencing of the garden. The end of the garden has a communal path just beyond
Gardening Sleeper raised bed prototype 1 Having decided that the sleeper raised beds would be built end on, we laid our first one to see how big it was going to be in real life. And the answer is, pretty big :-) We're really pleased with how it looks. Testing it out, the size is confortable
Gardening What is a garden without a path? Every garden needs a path, but ours does expecially. The earth in our garden is basically clay. Useful stuff to make cups and plates from, but less useful if you want to walk across it repeatedly. We know from bitter expereince that if you have to walk up and down
Gardening Tea, Cakes & Brain-Storming After unloading the first set of sleepers we decided to head-over the the local cafe at Pride & Joy [http://pride-and-joy.co.uk] for thoroughly well deserved tea and cakes ... and for a brain-storming session on our garden design. Note: the garden plan and Permaculture Design book in the foreground. Proof
Gardening Getting the sleepers for the first raised bed I said in the previous post [http://sustainable.ghost.io/2014/09/12/raised-beds/] that we were going to get enough sleepers to prototype the raised beds. Well today, being a Saturday, was the day that we could pop over to our local reclimation yard to see what they had
Gardening Raised Beds - First Thoughts We want to use raised beds in our new garden. I wouldn't go into the advantages here - if your curious you can Google it. We are looking to use old railway sleepers to do it. They're a good size, very strong, virtually indestructable and recycled. A bit of research
Gardening A New Beginning - Garden 2.0 Like a lot of people we have a rather neglected rear garden. About a decade ago it looked like this - Then we got horses and dogs and our free time evaporated. So now it looks like this - The good news is it means it's ripe for a make
