A microholding with a big plan

We have lived in our home for a year and a bit now. Over that time, things have changed and developed to make the cottage and garden more ours. The garden was pretty pristine when we moved in and now resembles more of a scrapyard. But, as Joe reminds me, this means that projects are happening and life is far from dull.

I thought it would be good to put in a plan for the garden now, and we can see how it develops over the next year.

I am very fond of second hand, pre used things. Whether these be things salvaged from others , skips, or bought second hand on Gumtree, I rarely buy anything new. This fits well with our lifestyle really as we don't have a flashy existence. To me, there is nothing more satistfying as making something, or making something old or broken usable. One person's rubbish really is my treasure. Our home proves that really.

Where was I...the scrapyard, sorry, garden...

Here is the plan... watch it grow....

polytunnel day 4

After a busy day moving soil and a bit of help from Lou, there is now another bed in place and a good amount of soil shifted and we managed to get the other door frame in place. Not as neat as Jeffs work but sturdy enough, I blame the weather conditions, thermal expansion and the way the moon was alligned with jupiter. (not my rushing to get it done attitude!)

Before installing the frame, I installed our 1500 litre water butt that will be placed in the tunnel, giving easy access to water for the plants at the correct temperature and to act as a energy sink, reducing extreme temperatures both hot and cold.

Bottom door frame, water butt in place and some rubble that we dug up

new raised be on right, filled with soil from the mound

hopefully the final tree root removal!

Polytunnel day 2 + 3

At the end of the weekend of building we managed to get a door frame in place and starting to get the edging on, this will be used to secure the sheeting and netting once in place.

all arches on and most of battoning

Jeffs lovley joinery

rainy morning loaf

first raised bed, used to step ground from road to garden hight

 After a rainy start to day 3 the weather cleared up and spent the afternoon starting to build the raised beds and landscaping the ground so that it is more level.

Brody on a fence

polytunnel day 1

With the trees out of the way, we decided to push on with the pollytunnel build.

We plan to build a tunnel similar to Alans but a little bigger (10m x 4m), using scaffolding set in the the ground, then plastic water pipe for the arches.

First we marked the perimeter out with some twin and sticks, we decided to leave the tree holes and soil mound until we knew where beds and paths were going (and therefore where we have to move the soil.)

We set the corned posts in postcrete, then decided to set the rest for good measure, we then cut a bit of water pipe to have a bit of fiddle, the grease Alan recommend is very handy. After some wrangling we decided it was a good idea to have the scaffolding approximately 3ft above the ground. the road side ones we gave a good wack, but the inside ones we dug carfully so not the interfere with our houses soakaway.

We then cut the remaining bits of pipe and scaffolding, tomorrow hopefully we will install and the remainder tomorrow, some bracing and the door frames!! Bellow are a few photos of our progress.

Its extra exiting because we are only loosing about a 1m band of garden space, as the trees took up the 3m edge of the garden and made for a poor hedge with all the gaps.

Holes Dug, just add water then postcrete

Cutting the Scaffolding to size with a angle grinder

First arch in place, trail run

Rest of Pipe cut to 7m lengths.

Getting to the root of the problem...

Gallileo once said "if you give me a lever long enough I shall move the earth". Unfortunately, the levers in this case were no longer than 7 feet. 
After an epic battle of man vs. nature, Joe and Jeff (our feller in residence) secured a narrow victory over 4 willow tree stumps. They hacked at the trees all day and then they were gone.

How did they do this I hear you ask:
1) Dig trenches around the base of each tree
2) Hack at the roots with a combination of an axe, a bow saw and a hatchet (and some brute force)
3) Lever the tree, and repeat step 2 as and when necessary until the tree frees up, chop it up with the chainsaw
4) Once the tree was dragged across the garden, hack up the roots with an axe (and gusto)

Clearing Willow Trees Part 2

Time is running out to have the pollytunnel operational by this spring, so spent today sorting the remaining wood into a pile for building things/ bean poles and bigger bits that we will use for firewood.

Before the sorting started I decided it would be much quicker to build a Jig to hold the logs, enabling us to use the chainsaw to cut lots of logs at once! IT worked really well, I am not sure how long it will last as there has already been a couple of accidents, but it is only a bit of pallet that we will cut up and burn eventually anyway.

Next stage will be to remove the tree stumps, level the ground, measure and start to build upwards!!

 Pallet Cutting Jig, worked really well! good time saver.

 Poor Chainsaw Posture, Will bend the knees next time

Storage of Bean poles/ building poles, all the stuff that is too small to use for fire wood, but too big for faggots.

Small things matter #2

So complete fail on letting you know about how changes went to suggestions in the small things matter post (sorry about that!) But have been having more of a think about how to be the most efficient we can be and how to run the cottage well. Have been continuing to make small tweaks as and when.

I've come up with a sketch of how our cottage is heated and kept watered. As you can see we have also made estimates of what thibgs cost annually.
Since we have lived here, we have made some one off payments which will see us through (loft insulation, woodburner installation). These help keep costs to a minimum.

We are also planning to build a composting loo this summer, which will hopefully reduce the amount of fresh water wasted by flushing the loo. Also a friend told me of a trick, any time you run water in the shower before you stand under it (10 seconds each time? ) put a bucket under the shower and collect the water, then this can be used from time to time to flush the loo.
We also use the ' if it's yellow let it mellow' rule...

Chitting Time + Willow Arch

Although the Garden is still far from ready to put plants into the ground, we have just built a chitting shelf in our new shed (soon to be Loo Shed).

We ambitiously asked for some seed potatos from Lous parent for a Christmas present, which we collected recently. It is a good idea to store them in a cool but light places to get them in to growing mode, encouraging little stubby shoots, so when they get into the ground they get off to a flying start.

 

After some discussions with some people at work, we opted for the drastic action of cutting our willow arch back down to the ground, copicing it. It was getting out of hand and too woody to weave in, so hopefully we should get lots of new growth that we can weave in as it grows. However, much of the arch was made of dead wood, so might be worth poping a couple of new sticks in aswell, we have a couple floating around!
 

Spring is also most here though, with buds on the bulbs down the bottom of the garden!

Funday

I have renamed Sunday to Funday... in the busy weeks of work, and currently working Saturdays on the big T, sometimes a gentle reminder to have some fun on a Sunday is needed....

So... today, well today was more of agarden workday but it was a fun work day... "fworkday" if you like.

Joe got me outside (step one...) and then we were really productive. We:
1) Mended one of the logstores so that it now drains the rain away more effectively
2) Put up new hanging baskets
3) Cleaned the egg off the wall which a child threw at our house not this Halloween but last...
4) Cleaned the roof of another logstore
5) Took all of the soil out of the herb trough (to our amazement, all of the horse manure had totally rotten down to soil!

 

The horse manure pile is pretty handy over the road..

So we replaced the trough with more horse manure (nice and warm for the plants) and then replaced the other soil and re planted the herbs.
6) Embarked on operation hedge (removed all the brambles from the hedge at the front of the house... easier said than done! See first trough pic and the last for an idea of how much of our hedge was bramble!
7) Weeded the front raised bed , to discover loads of curious bulbs lurking.

Right now that is all done we are going to do a 12 mile round trip cycle to our friend's house and then visit the lovely E & A on the way home for dinner.

Clearing Willow Trees

Over the last few weekends, we have been removing the willow trees that run down the edge of our garden. They aren't great as a boundry as they were Pollarded, leaving big gaps for people to look in, but bushy up high shading the sun in the evenings. They also occupy a 3m band down the edge of are already long thin garden.

The plan is to remove a section of them, then replace them with a Polly tunnel that will be our boundry, when the tunnel ends we will either build some more pallet compost bins (doubling as a fence) or invest in a bigger fence of some sort.

One thing we didnt account for is that trees are really big, it is amazing how a small tree vertically becomes a massive bushy mess once horizontal. After making a big pile of tree, we quickly reliased we needed a system.

At a winter sulstance party I was introduce to Fagots, bundles of dry twiggy material that are great on the bonfire! Our chipper trips our mains, and willow being so bendy just jams it up anyway, so this seemed like the ideal solution.

We got to work, felling bits of the trees saving the big lengths for either bean poles or fire wood depending on the size and bundling the rest up into fagots.

We have now removed all the the branches, and will get the chainsaw out next to remove the stumps, then we will be able to start mesuring up for our tunnel! We hope to make one from water pipe and scaffolding poles , so we can make any size we like!

 Morning

Afternoon

 Final pile of big sticks before sorting

First few fagots waiting in new pallet compost bins, its important to store then vertically so they dry rather than rot.

The Vegetables

Pleased to say the veggies are well on their way to the plate! The cold start to summer has slowed matters down however the signs of life are well and truly there now. I even just ate our first sugarsnap pea ( missed the plate stage altogether...). Loving the hot weather and garden time.

Sad to say our oldest and favourite adopted chicken of all time, Rita, died this week. Loved that hen.

The chicks are doing well, they seem huge now in comparison to when we got them!