Lots of things happening this year. Once change is that I retire at the end of February, which I am hoping will encourage me to spend more time in the garden, but also more time on this woefully neglected blog.
In May, I have some gardening help booked in to arrive, with two major jobs to do. One is relaying my front lawn, which is totally disgusting. The weeds I might have been able to deal with, but the actual quality of what grass there is makes life even easier for the weeds. But hey, I’ve been in this house for 20 years, and haven’t done anything to the front lawn except mow it and occasionally reseed it; so it is due some love.
The other major job they are doing is topping up the gravel around my vegetable area, and digging out my vegetable troughs. In 2019, I hired a couple of guys to do some jobs, including rejuvenating my troughs. It turned out to be a disaster, as instead of the good soil they promised, they filled my troughs with clay – presumably spoil from another job. It made planting impossible, and although I thought I’d recovered a little by digging out the top 6-8 inches and replacing it with soil, the troughs were still getting waterlogged; and one has shown signs of collapsing.
So these new guys are digging the troughs out completely, and leaving them empty. This means I can fill them up with soil/compost I have bought myself and know the quality of; but also I can probably repair the collapsing trough before refilling it.
But I am also thinking of rearranging them. This is the current arrangement of the troughs.
That small square of green is another container on a stand that I was trying to grow climbing plants along the fence. That didn’t work, because the container wasn’t big enough and I didn’t keep it watered. So I am now thinking of this arrangement.
Everything is still accessible, I can plant climbing plants at the back, and lower plants in the front. I do need to leave some space along the fence should it need repainting, but that isn’t difficult.
There is also the dog-poop question. Katie the beagle does like to go on the gravel, and at the moment there are 5 different “aisles” she can poop in, each one fairly narrow. The new arrangement will make cleanup a lot easier, and make it less likely I will step into a surprise while gardening.
A reminder of what it currently looks like.
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