Planting Frenzy

Well this week there is a bit of a planting frenzy going on. According to my Gardening and Planting by the Moon book, this coming week seems to be a perfect week for getting the majority of my Spring planting sorted. The planting days for the week beginning 12th march 2012 are as follows: Monday - flowers, Tuesday and Wednesday - leafy vegetables, Thursday and Friday - fruits and Saturday and Sunday - root vegetables. The aim is to get all the planting up to date this week so that next week I can concentrate on making my garden not only functional but attractive as well. I have big plans. I'm hoping to create borders with beautiful fragrant flowers in an array of vibrant colours, I would like an area where I can sit and read or just look at the garden and I want abundant raised beds filled with a huge assortment of luscious, nutritious vegetables for me to eat over the coming months. I'm also very keen to start keeping chickens. Unfortunately, this all takes time and money. Starting from scratch is very time consuming and although it's very rewarding making things for myself and being inventive in order to overcome things such as the lack of a greenhouse to start off seeds, I'm beginning to run out of steam slightly. Throw into the mix a very limited budget of about £2.50 and it's going to take a lot longer than I would like and as there is so much to do, finding a place to start is quite daunting. So ....... veg planting first so at least I won't starve and then the pretty bits, although I did make a bit of a start by painting my rickety old garden bench, sorting out the table next to my front door and putting up some hanging baskets :-)

Beware ..... Low Flying Bags of Compost

Well it finally happened....the top soil and compost arrived for my raised beds yesterday ..... all two tonnes of it. It was delivered by two very nice gentlemen in a large lorry with a crane type arm thingy, who managed to get the compost over my fence and onto the lawn. This was a huge bonus because otherwise I would have had to wheel the barrows full of compost miles to get it to the raised beds. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration, its only a couple of hundred yards, however, last week I discovered my wheelbarrow tyres were flat and my attempt to inflate them resulted in one of them becoming even flatter because the pump didn't fit and the air came out of the tyre instead of going in. This has resulted in the wheelbarrow steering off to the left all the time, almost going round in circles, making pushing a barrow-full of earth a herculean task. Anyhow, today, my flat-tyred wheelbarrow and I spent a couple of hours filling two of the raised beds with a mix of compost and top soil. With hindsight, I could probably have got away with just ordering one bag of compost and not bothered with the topsoil, which, despite the Dumpy Bag Man's assurances that it was decent quality topsoil, and despite inspecting one of the bags in the depot yesterday, was full of stones which I had to take out by hand because my garden sieve has mysteriously vanished (I suspect Nargles!). On the plus side, I now have a huge supply of compost/soil mix for doing other things in the garden and I'm sure with a bit of creative thinking I can find something to do with it. Finally, as today is a root day on the biodynamics calendar, I planted some shallots in one of my newly filled raised beds. Happy Days.