Tweet
Evening. Been doing some browsing about growing stuff as we have recently bought a house with what could be considered a near perfect back garden. Now, I have never had any interest in gardening before, ive always preferred concrete/tarmac as it rarely needs mowing.
Anyway, the house we have has a decent size (10M x 25M) rear garden that gently slopes downhill and is 2 degrees off Due South. The houses behind are also a lot lower so other than some shadowing at the very end of the garden it pretty much pours down with sunshine all day long. We had 14 Solar Panels installed on the roof and the surveyor stated that the house is about as good as it gets for Solar PV so it must be good for growing stuff too?
I am not interested in pretty stuff as it isnt edible. I would like to grow some useful stuff though and have done a lot of prep work in the last couple of weeks for next years growing season. The garden was very mature but neglected last year as the house was unoccupied. So, with the exception of the pink rose bush I have stripped pretty much everything out of the ground and am either burning it or composting it.
Yes, I am saving all the ash to put back into the ground and one of my plastic composters is already melting from the heat it is generating. Is this good or bad?
At the far end of the garden is a massive concrete base, the previous owners had a large pond for Koy Carp but that has been thoroughly filled with rubble and concrete so I am left with a large patch of concrete. Ideal place to resurrect my greenhouse though and I am lucky enough that we get a lot of collapsible pallet boxes at work that just get thrown away. These are basically Euro Pallets (65CM x 40CMish) and come with removable and stackable wooden sides. I already have one of these in the back of the garden with more compost maturing in it. I can get 4 more on the slab so that gives me some of the dead space back. Also, having fitted a new bathroom the old bath was just laying in the back garden. Where all the old pumping and filtration equipment was is a big hole filled with sand and dirt. I dug some of this out and 'planted' the bath tub in the hole. Its been filled with some of my seized soil and I happen to have a load of double glazed window panels, one of which fits over the bath nicely so got an instant greenhouse out of it. There is space for a second bath down there too if I can find one.
Having removed a couple of rockeries, dug a lot of weeds and other stuff up (the non-weeds have gone over the fence and the next door neighbour has duly planted them his side) I had a massive pile of dirt, stones and green material. 2 days of sifting and seiving has resulted in two 1 tonne bulk bags being full of 'clean' loam ready and waiting in storage.
Anyway, I am doing all this prep work yet I know next to nothing about actually growing and tending to anything which is why I am here. No doubt I will ask all the same questions everybody has already answered countless times but thats what forums are all about, isnt it?
Paul
Anyway, the house we have has a decent size (10M x 25M) rear garden that gently slopes downhill and is 2 degrees off Due South. The houses behind are also a lot lower so other than some shadowing at the very end of the garden it pretty much pours down with sunshine all day long. We had 14 Solar Panels installed on the roof and the surveyor stated that the house is about as good as it gets for Solar PV so it must be good for growing stuff too?
I am not interested in pretty stuff as it isnt edible. I would like to grow some useful stuff though and have done a lot of prep work in the last couple of weeks for next years growing season. The garden was very mature but neglected last year as the house was unoccupied. So, with the exception of the pink rose bush I have stripped pretty much everything out of the ground and am either burning it or composting it.
Yes, I am saving all the ash to put back into the ground and one of my plastic composters is already melting from the heat it is generating. Is this good or bad?
At the far end of the garden is a massive concrete base, the previous owners had a large pond for Koy Carp but that has been thoroughly filled with rubble and concrete so I am left with a large patch of concrete. Ideal place to resurrect my greenhouse though and I am lucky enough that we get a lot of collapsible pallet boxes at work that just get thrown away. These are basically Euro Pallets (65CM x 40CMish) and come with removable and stackable wooden sides. I already have one of these in the back of the garden with more compost maturing in it. I can get 4 more on the slab so that gives me some of the dead space back. Also, having fitted a new bathroom the old bath was just laying in the back garden. Where all the old pumping and filtration equipment was is a big hole filled with sand and dirt. I dug some of this out and 'planted' the bath tub in the hole. Its been filled with some of my seized soil and I happen to have a load of double glazed window panels, one of which fits over the bath nicely so got an instant greenhouse out of it. There is space for a second bath down there too if I can find one.
Having removed a couple of rockeries, dug a lot of weeds and other stuff up (the non-weeds have gone over the fence and the next door neighbour has duly planted them his side) I had a massive pile of dirt, stones and green material. 2 days of sifting and seiving has resulted in two 1 tonne bulk bags being full of 'clean' loam ready and waiting in storage.
Anyway, I am doing all this prep work yet I know next to nothing about actually growing and tending to anything which is why I am here. No doubt I will ask all the same questions everybody has already answered countless times but thats what forums are all about, isnt it?
Paul
Comment