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Post by Mari on Jul 21, 2020 18:47:11 GMT
Since I can't keep hijacking our beloved goat's thread. Anyway, the current score is that the seeded front garden is mostly a bust. Some seeds sprouted, but I'll need to invest in some plants next year I'm afraid.
The back garden is a disaster area. Our porch area is more or less finished and a path was cut out, but I still have to fill in some areas with new bricks. Then we need to get rid of all the remaining bricks and tiles. We also have to dig up some earth and exchange it for good soil so it can be a garden and we have to buy and put in grass. At some point, we'll have to plant plants, finish the pergola guide the rose etc. Why did I think this was a good idea? The result will be worth it, but by now it's already a multimonth project.
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Post by whollygoats on Jul 22, 2020 0:30:33 GMT
I suspect you need not 'dig up soil to exchange it', but amend it with lots of organic materials...compost, wormcastings, farmyard manure. That's where I would start, if in your place. Here, we have the Soil Conservation Service, a government organization, and the county extension agent, an educational outreach organization affiliated with the state's agricultural land grant college, Oregon State University. Both of these sources can assist the landowner in assessing their soil and suggesting a course of soil amendment. I do not know if you have similar organizations available to the general public, but my guess is that you do. You might run a soil test, just to see what present circumstances exist. A baseline, as it were. Distinctly something which can be done off season. Here's a good start, from Colorado's extension service: extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/yard-garden/choosing-a-soil-amendment/
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Post by Mari on Jul 22, 2020 9:38:11 GMT
Basically we just need to exchange soil. The soil that was in the garden needs to go to the new garden patch, which used to be a paved area and vice versa.
I don't know if there's anything like the council you described. I'm not sure it's needed unless you have polluted soil.
I'll have a look at uploading pics, though at the moment the garden is too embarrassing to show... it's like one of those trashy gardens you sometimes see on tv...
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Post by whollygoats on Jul 23, 2020 2:51:47 GMT
Ah...You're moving soil and paved areas around. A 'shuffle'.
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Post by Mari on Jul 23, 2020 6:40:14 GMT
Yeah. The original garden contains a lot of pavement. We're replacing most of it by fake grass or garden. Basically we're only keeping a small path towards the back porch. I'm rebuilding part of that path though, since it used to incorporate circles in how the pavement was laid, but half circles look odd. To keep things simple enough, the remaining path will be straight. Mind you, my complete garden space is only 8 meters by 14 meters and has both the shed and the porch included in the back, so our garden isn't too large. Still, larger than most people have. Our house is older and in the 70s they still had generous lots. If you look at newbuilds the houses are typically a bit smaller with a much smaller garden space. I don't know why anyone would choose a new build over an existing place.
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Post by whollygoats on Jul 28, 2020 17:52:01 GMT
Okay. For scale, your space is about half the size of my back garden. My lot is almost 50' wide and 100' deep (from front walk to back fence), with the footprint of the house separating the relatively narrow front garden from the more spacious back garden....I'm guessing maybe 40' deep. (16 x 10 m)
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Post by Mari on Aug 26, 2020 6:23:50 GMT
I succumbed... we had a bit of a windfall since I managed to get the fake grass pretty cheaply second hand, so I bought quite a few plants for our front garden on sale. I've got heather, erica, some sedum and a few crawlers like thyme.
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Post by Mari on Aug 27, 2020 21:06:54 GMT
I planted my bought plants last Sunday. This evening I discovered lots of sprouts where I planted my seeds in May... seriously?
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Post by Mari on Sept 17, 2020 20:37:13 GMT
My garden is looking pretty nice, but I'd need to weed it to make it look good. That's not going to happen though. I also wonder what is going to survive through the winter.
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Post by Mari on Sept 20, 2020 6:32:28 GMT
The grass in the back garden is in! It's finally starting to look like a garden again instead of a building site, though there's still a lot of cleaning up to do.
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Post by Mari on Mar 30, 2021 10:24:27 GMT
I removed the grass which was growing in my borders and seeded lots of flowers. They will be replaced by more permanent plants later.
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 3, 2021 21:05:57 GMT
Annual wildflowers, perhaps? Those are always fun. We had a unit of the local road crew that sowed 'in transition' open spaces along the highways with a mix of wildflower that resulted in something blooming through much of the warm seasons.
Be prepared, they will be a mite more 'ragged' looking than the grass even....until they bloom, then you'll remember why it was you were putting up with the 'ragged' look.
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Post by Mari on Apr 10, 2021 11:35:56 GMT
I'll wait and see what grows. Last year's seeding enterprise was a complete bust so... I took the time to clear up the front garden today. Several plants didn't make it through the unexpected 2nd cold front 2 weeks ago, except for lots of weeds.
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Post by Mari on Apr 13, 2021 5:56:17 GMT
My fruit corner is now a fact! Surprisingly there was some lettuce growing already, a leftover from my raised veggie patch from 3 years ago. We took down the rotten boards and threw the dirt in what's now the fruit corner. Apparently lettuce is hardy... Anyhow I've got tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and a dwarf pear tree in. I still have to find a small cucumber plant and a radish.
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Post by JoeP on Apr 13, 2021 8:41:37 GMT
I still have to find a small cucumber plant and a radish. Have you checked under the tomato?
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Post by Mari on Jun 20, 2021 11:21:32 GMT
No, at that time they were so small nothing could've hidden underneath. Now they're towering behemoths so there is some hiding space. Last Thursday we went to pick up my inheritance from my grandmother: a fridge, bicycle and lots of plants. Unfortunately it wad a tropical heat day, but so far all plants seem to have made it. Transplanting mature plants in my nearly empty garden suddenly gives my garden some maturity as well. I got several bushes of lavender, a big azalea bush and loads of other plants I don't know the name of. And I finally got myself a purple leaved heuchera. I really like them, but they were impossible to get this year. Now I've got 3 adult ones along with several normal ones.
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Post by Mari on Jun 30, 2021 6:13:02 GMT
Yes! My husband pit in the paving in the corner for our bins! Now there is only one big thing left on our to do list.
With all the plants from my grandmother's garden, the garden looks almost done as well, finally. Almost time to just maintain and enjoy
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Post by Mari on Sept 6, 2021 7:22:34 GMT
My fruitcorner is a bit disappointing on production of everything except for the tomatoes. I've delighted, to the point of puking, my neighbours with several batches and more keep growing. It's at a point I've decided to just leave them to rot in the fruit corner as food for the birds and plants. I hope next year everything else does better than this year.
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Post by Mari on Sept 17, 2021 16:24:39 GMT
I've started weeding! 1m2 already delivered enough weeds in my container to fill it halfway... 7m2 left to go. Weeding is exercising the body and mind.
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Post by whollygoats on Sept 22, 2021 21:54:42 GMT
Yes'm...Weeding strengthens the ol' taxonomic skills and tones the pulling muscles.
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Post by Mari on Sept 23, 2021 7:27:54 GMT
I've got wild strawberries overgrowing everywhere. Man, it looks cute, but what a horrible weed. It's easier to pull out than ivy, but just as tenacious in growing back from the dead. Almost done with the weeding. May have pulled out a bit too much here and there, but whatever.
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Post by whollygoats on Oct 9, 2021 0:00:43 GMT
Heh....I've got domestic strawberries running amok. The thing is, where they are running amok, they are an improvement upon what was there before.
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Post by Mari on Oct 24, 2021 6:47:54 GMT
I found numerous new wild strawberry shoots yesterday, so pulled up some more. We decided to cut our losses with the tree now that there was more and more dead wood on it. We never liked it anyway, but felt it was a bit of a sin to kill a healthy, living tree.
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Post by Mari on Mar 25, 2022 14:52:12 GMT
A couple of months later the tree is cut down, more wild strawberries were rooted out, the planned strawberries and raspberries completely overgrew the fruitcorner -which was not planned- and we cleaned the pavement. I also planted a couple of dahlias and an onion. The onion was not planned but it had sprouted in the cellar, so figured I might as well grow it for the girls.
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Post by Mari on Aug 30, 2022 17:25:39 GMT
The drought killed a lot. I'm hoping not permanently but we'll see what comes back next year. My tomatoes on the other hand are thriving.
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Post by Mari on Oct 23, 2022 8:31:34 GMT
The tomatoes are still doing their thing. My neighbour has moved and gave me permission to take anything from her garden I wanted. So I went wild! She had this gorgeous purple hibiscus which is now mine and a couple of flowering bushes that are nice to fill in several gaps I had because of the drought killing stuff.
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Post by whollygoats on Oct 23, 2022 21:50:45 GMT
Most excellent. I hope they all transplanted without too much stress or trauma.
My singular tomato is now producing so many ripe pear tomatoes that I cannot keep up with it. It has overgrown much of the area surrounding where I planted it. I had plugged the tomato set, complete with its little support stick, fairly close to the crossroad, in the spot where the rhubarb tub had set last year. So, it was 'virgin ground' and prolly quite fertile. Early on, it knocked over the wire cage I'd provided to 'keep it up'. The lush growth covered the iris on the ground level, then the pots with catnip and iris, up one level. I had to hack away vines that were threatening to overwhelm the crossroads itself. It now has vines nearing the fenceline on the east, while it also reaches south toward the chook chalet, taking its seed laden fruit everywhere.
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Post by Mari on Oct 25, 2022 11:07:27 GMT
Haha, yeah, the tomatoes overgrew my fruitpatch. I even found it on the other side of the garden... So I gave lots of little plants away and threw away the rest. I kept two stalks which grew so much it fell over quickly. I too have too many tomatoes and due to the frost they've split, so I'm pretty sure I'll have lots of new tomatoshoots next year...
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Post by kingedmund on Nov 7, 2022 17:33:54 GMT
Oooh. Love tomatoes. It’s so hard to throw away plants but one has to do it from time to time.
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Post by whollygoats on Nov 8, 2022 3:01:10 GMT
They won't make it far on foot. Overnight frost is any time soon.
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