Day two.  Up early and after breakfast we enlisted the help of the family to lift the heavy lead tank to its new home.  The hard work had been completed again by my husband and Barry.  The circle of hard core was laid and pounded then this was covered by a layer of type 1 to make it smooth.  The tank was man handled into position with a sigh of relief and then filled with water.  Our electrician had made up an outdoor cable for us to connect into an outhouse so we could connect the pump and now we have the sweet background sound of splashy water.  On my trip to the nursery I brought some water plants to disguise the pump and give the whole pool a softer effect.

Day three started slowly with us all nursing aching muscles over with a long lazy breakfast.  Then we went out for a walk before starting on the garden projects for the day.  I decided to tackle a half dead rosemary bush that had suffered in the very cold winter.  I had left it to recover hoping that it would perk up but unfortunately some of it did not so secateurs in hand my daughter and I set to work.  We had chosen this side of the house because it was out of the very cold wind.  Once cut back we were pleased with our renovation.   As you can see a gravel mulch tidied it all up and will help to suppress any weeds and the cysistus will knit together and hopefully will flower all summer attracting insects.

sickly Rosemary bush

After planting

A good job done and now for moving the arbour.

We took the roof off and managed to put it onto the wheel barrow.  Then we moved the main bulk over to the vegetable garden.  As the time had moved on we decided to stop for the day.  So watch this space as we reassemble the arbour in its new home.  I think that we will have to make a few modifications as it seems much bigger than in the original place.

New vegetable patch

so hopefully I will have lots of parsley in the near future.  We have also finished the path so that it is easier to walk up and down for watering and weeding.  Now all I have to do nurture the plot until I can start picking the produce.

Practical and functional, no garden should be without a greenhouse.

Installing a greenhouse is one of those pivotal moments for any gardener. Having a covered area in the garden, be it a conservatory, porch or even a cloche or cold frame, greatly enhances the scope of what you can grow and when, but once you have a greenhouse you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Greenhouses create longer growing seasons, provide protection, warmth and additional humidity for their leafy occupants. They allow you to grow entire ranges of plants, both edible and ornamental, that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

Seeds can be sown much earlier and bulbs and containers started safely into growth in late winter or early spring. Perhaps most important of all, greenhouses also provide a sheltered, dry and wind-proofed working environment which will work wonders to encourage you out into the garden on otherwise grey, cold and uninviting days.

Site.

A wooden potting table - essential greenhouse kit.

Generally speaking you might have only limited possible sites available in your garden, or quite possibly no choice whatsoever as to where to situate a greenhouse. There is a temptation to locate them as you would a shed – i.e. tucked away out of site in an unused and probably uncultivatable corner of the garden.
Unless you’re planning to house a specialist fern collection in your greenhouse, this kind of location is really not going to work. Another common mistake is to situate with the longest side facing due south into the sun. This will create unfeasibly high summer temperatures and you may end up oven-baking all your plants as a result; at best you will be continually struggling to keep ventilation and humidity high enough and may end up having to shade the entire greenhouse in an effort to keep things stable.

Where possible the very best site will have the longest sides of the greenhouse facing east and west, the door/ventilation end facing south and the northern end against the protection of a wall, hedge of fence.

Choice of greenhouse.

A typical flat-pack aluminium greenhouse.

The best value greenhouses are those that come flat packed for self-assembly. If you have the patience and (ideally) a couple of willing helpers on hand then these aluminium and glass constructions are extremely good value and can provide an ideal solution.

Go for the very largest size that you can afford and can accommodate. You may not think that you’ll fill up all that space, but believe me, no matter how large your greenhouse you will soon find yourself wishing you could squeeze in a little more.

Also the larger the enclosed space the more stable the humidity, temperature and environment within, and the less susceptible it will be to heat loss overnight and over-heating during the day.

Finally, ventilation is an absolutely part of any greenhouse so make sure that yours has as much as is available, preferably allowing for a cross flow of air from end to end and/or side to side of the structure.

Access to services.

In order to make the most of your greenhouse you will need access to electricity and a water supply. Once you have a collection of plants under glass you will want to ensure they don’t get hammered by extremes of cold, and, depending on what you are growing, you may also need to guarantee a frost free environment year round.

A water butt set up to collect run-off from the greenhouse roof.

There are a variety of gas heaters available, but they can be tricky to run and expensive to buy. The best of them also need to be installed by a qualified engineer, and might end up costing more than the greenhouse itself. Having power available in your greenhouse will allow for cheap and easy low level heating if and when it’s needed and of course will also allow you to add a light for those dark winter days.

Access to water is even more important, since you’re going to be using this, quite possibly on a daily basis, for a large portion of the year. Consider installing a tap or at least running a dedicated hose to the greenhouse, and most definitely install a water butt to capture the rain that falls on the large glass surface of your greenhouse. Using captured rainwater not only makes good environmental and economic sense but is also far better for all plants, and absolutely essential for the likes of Orchids & carnivorous plants as well as many seedlings.

Think also about your own access to and from the greenhouse and consider adding some additional paving or gravel in order to keep the entrance clean and prevent mud being traipsed in from a soggy wet garden.

Cleanliness.

All of the warm, humid & sheltered conditions that allow for great plant growth will also create an outstanding breeding ground for fungi, bacteria and plant viruses, not to mention weeds and a whole gaggle of flying insect pests. Keep work surfaces, glass and flooring clean, tidy and hygienic and you will greatly reduce the opportunities for any of these nasties to gain a foothold.

Greenhouses are not garden sheds and should not be used as dumping grounds for all the things that you want to tidy away – the transparent sides should put the kibosh on that idea anyhow, since everything inside is effectively still on display.

Equipping a greenhouse.

There are a few useful bits of kit that you should have lined up ready for your new glassy space. Top of the list is a solid, steady work surface set at a height comfortable for you to work with and strong enough to hold pots, compost and whatever else you’re likely to need. Consider using a table and perching seat – they don’t take up much room and make can make working conditions far more comfortable.

Working tray.

A large, shallow sided tray is also pretty essential. This will allow you to do a whole range of gardening tasks – mix composts, pot up plants, turn out old pots etc. – and all in contained, clean and hygienic conditions.

You’re also going to need an easily accessible and preferably containerised or divided tidy or storage area for tools, labels, pens, ties, plant foods and so on. Think about layout too, and where best to accommodate composts, pots, trays, canes and all the other items so that they are ready for use.

I like to have two separate bins running in the greenhouse. In fact it’s the very first thing that I set up and won’t start any work without them, as it’s amazing how much debris you produce whilst working in a greenhouse. Much of it can be composted, but some things, like old broken plastic pots and seeds trays or diseased plant material, need to be kept separate for waste disposal.

Shade netting - have some on hand long before it's likely to be needed.

Tools will vary according to your needs and the nature of what you will be growing, but secateurs, scissors, a hand watering can and a couple of sprays are all pretty indispensible in my experience.

Finally, unless you have indeed been forced to locate your greenhouse in a dark, shady corner where a shed might otherwise live, then you will almost certainly need some shading ready for extremes of temperature.

You can easily attach shading net to the inside or your glass walls, and some greenhouses come with their own shading systems too, but in either case you’ll need to have it ready to use well in advance of summer.

New Hedge

I have managed to get on with digging the vegetable patch and I am itching to get planting.  I planted out the broad beans seeds ( a bit late really) also spinach, carrot, beetroot and in a large pot I put some rocket.   After a trip to the garden centre ( for the leak hose ) I cheated and brought some pea plants and some garlic so that I could have something green in the vegetable patch.  I also  moved some rhubarb to the  patch that I found growing in another part of the garden.

The weather was so warm and sunny here over the Easter weekend that I took the opportunity to sit in the sun and sow some seeds in module trays. I prefer these mainly because it saves time pricking out.   I planted  white Cosmos, Sweet peas ( another late sowing and seed saved from last year so not sure what variety it will be) some parsley and chives.  I will leave these in the potting shed to germinate.

While working in the garden I noticed a lovely patch of wild primroses hidden away behind an old gazebo.  They are one of my favorite spring flowers and when they have finished flowering I must remember to split and move them to where they will be noticed next year.

Wild primroses

Our grass has started to grow really quickly now so cutting is going to be weekly  which means I will be  spending lots more time in the garden weather permitting. Yippee.

Early tulips

A little further on these pretty little daffodils tete a tete I think have all opened and are flowering their socks off.

Little dafs

I can’t wait to see what else is growing.  With the warmer dry weather and now the rain to water everything all sorts of plants are springing into life.  I think I have already spotted the leaves of blue bells, grape hyacinth,  ordinary hyacinth and some very grass like leaves that I don’t recognise.  So watch this space for more spring flowers.

Our trusty digger

Another job I have been enjoying is sorting out and weeding the flower borders. Unfortunately, I have  found that  I have the dreaded ground elder and bind weed to contend with here although  I find it strangely satisfying digging out the roots and destroying them.  I am trying to knock  the borders  into shape before the warmer weather comes along and gets everything growing also I wanted to show off all the bulbs that are pushing through.  I have also been busy chopping down an out of shape privet hedge and finishing  the last of the rose pruning.  Many of the roses in the garden have been neglected and there was a lot of dead wood that needed to be cut or sawn out of them.  I noticed that most of the roses have had black spot so I made sure I cleared up as many of the fallen rose leaves and burnt them on the bonfire.  Picking up the diseased leaves helps to prevent the fungus taking hold but it won’t eradicate it completely.  I will need to keep an eye on the roses, feed and water them regularly and hand pick of any leaves that grow with black spot and burn them.

our trusty digger

So with compost and bins moved and small beech hedge taken out and saved the trench for the new laurel plants started.  The plants were positioned and  the soil back filled by hand and adding well rotted organic matter to the planting soil although the soil texture is really lovely.  We firmed in all the plants and hey presto our hedge was planted and we were on our knees!  As it was so late and the night was going to be very frosty we deceided to give the plants a good water in the morning.

Planting hedge

our new hedge

Our new hedge  arrived this morning, 30 laurel plants to be planted on the boundary to replace a dilapidated fence.  This will entail moving three compost heaps and some beech hedging that we will keep to plant in another area of the garden.  We plan to start this on Friday.  Firstly  taking down the old fence and hopefully using some or all of it to construct the new compost bins then moving the contents of the very full compost bins to its new home.  We also need to move the stored wood and long lengths of fire wood to a new location.  I think this will probably take most of the day.  On Saturday we have hired a mini digger to dig a trench for the new hedge.  Once dug we can position the plants and back fill by hand with the existing soil enriched with some well rotted organic matter to give the plants a good start finishing with a good water.  So watch this space and I will tell you how we get on.

Old fence

Loam - the dream soil for any gardener.

You can think of garden soils as being like the scoring areas of a dartboard, with bands and boxes of possible scores representing all the different varieties of soil. Some will deliver a higher “score” than others, allowing you to grow a wider and richer variety of garden plants, but the ultimate goal has to be the bull’s-eye, which, in the case of garden soils, is a rich, crumbly, open, humus-rich loam – think of worm-casts.

The big difference between your garden and a dartboard, though, is that with a little help from you, the trusty gardener, your soil score can be shifted around and boosted in all sorts of ways, and eventually land right on that bull’s-eye.

The general catch-all advice to apply compost whenever you plant anything and to mulch everything once a year is certainly a good start, but it’s by no means the end of the soil improvement story.

Improving soil structure.

The most common soil type is clay based and they tend to be sticky, dense and poorly drained, in extreme cases plants can essentially drown over winter with the roots rotting of into a big wet mush. Improving a clay soil means breaking up that dense structure by creating micro air pockets throughout, which will automatically improve drainage.

Adding compost to clay might help initially, but within a matter of months that organic material will have been thoroughly assimilated and broken down by bacteria and you’re back to square one.

Pea shingle - the number 1 remedy for opening up a heavy clay soil.

The longer-term solution is to add in large quantities of inert, non-organic, (i.e. non break-down-able) material to open the structure and keep the clay particles apart permanently.

Grit and/or pea shingle are what is needed, the exact quantities being dependant on just how much clay there is present in the soil.

A general incorporation of any of these materials every time you dig, plant or work the soil will slowly improve conditions both for plants as well as for worms and other essential soil fauna.

Composted bark.

Beware of adding sand to a clay soil, the particles simply aren’t large enough to open up the dense clay and you’ll likely end up making a kind of home-grown garden cement mix instead.

The next phase in all about keeping a good supply of coarse (and it must be coarse) organic mulch on the soil surface, ideally in bi-annual applications.

Chunky composted bark is pretty much ideal for the task, as is semi-composted leaf mould.

The aim here is not to feed the soil directly – clay soils are already naturally full of nutrition – but instead to feed those worms and myriad soil critters & micro-organisms who will then repay you by working, digging, digesting and opening up the soil 365 days a year.

Improving soil moisture levels.

Light soils – typically sand or chalk based – suffer from the opposite problem to clay soils. They drain beautifully, so nothing’s ever likely to drown, but they are very bad at retaining moisture and gardeners are likely to be forever watering and feeding to keep their plants looking spruce.

Here the non-organic, inert parts of the ideal soil are already present, and you’ll certainly never have to add shingle to a sandy soil, but often the organic elements are sorely lacking.

Humus is organic material that has been digested, and processed by soil bacteria until it has reached the point of stability – in other words it won’t break down any further, but neither will it disappear from the soil. With light soils the aim is always to increase the humus content, which in turn makes for a more porous, sponge-like soil that will retain water through dry spells, but still drain well in the wet.

Leafmould - the most natural of all soil conditioners.

Bulky, organic materials are the solution and your own garden compost is likely to be as good as anything, as well as being chemically harmonious with your garden (since all the leaves and garden debris originated from there in the first place!)

Well-rotted farmyard manure and leaf mould also work well, and other options include old mushroom compost (which is very alkaline) and composted paper, spent brewery hops or seaweed.

All of these should be added as a mulch, where, once again, the worms will do the rest for you.

Mulching has the added benefit of insulating the soil from evaporation and should be considered pretty essential to help conserve moisture levels in lighter soils.

Adding nutrition.

Nutrition is not the same as structural bulk in a soil, although the most useful materials can certainly supply both. Most mulches, though, are not going to do anything for your soil nutrition levels, in fact they may even end up depleting nutrition as bacteria use up nitrogen to break down bulky material like wood and bark chips.

The decomposition of organic matter – be it compost from your garden or manure from a farm – involves several phases, and it’s only during the final phase (when things are pretty much well and truly rotted) that nutrients are released back into the soil in a balanced and useful way.

Horse Manure - well composted and ready for garden action.

Quick fix plant feeds (be they liquid or solid, such as pelleted chicken manure) may feed individual plants but will generally leach away almost immediately and are of no lasting benefit to the general soil. The old maxim of “feed the soil not the plant” is definitely one to keep in mind.

Well-rotted manure (preferably horse, though any large-ish herbivore that you happen to have handy will also supply the goods) is certainly the number one choice for adding slow release nutrition – principally nitrogen – into the soil. Bonemeal is also slow to break down and releases phosphorus as it decays, and wood ash (which like mushroom compost is strongly alkaline) will provide potassium.

Together these are the three main elements for plant growth and will provide the recipe for effective and long-term soil nutrition.

Good old garden soil isn’t as pretty, glamorous or tasty(?!) as the flowers, trees and veg that it supports, but getting to knowing your soil, it’s limitations and benefits, must be one of the most useful things you can do in any plot. It will allow you to determine the range of plants best suited for success in your particular garden, and so minimise disappointments, and will also let you figure out the best methods to improve the soil you already have.

There are five different types of soil found in British gardens. Any given site can, of course, have a combination of several of these types, and there are also gradations between types, as well as extremes of each, where the gardening is at it’s most challenging. Being able to recognise your particular soil types is probably the best place to start in any garden.

Clay.

A pure clay lump - typical of subsoil that has been brought to the surface.

All soil types are, to a large extent, determined by particle size and clay soils have the smallest particles of all. Pure clay – which makes up much of the British subsoil – is just like modelling clay, the sort of thing you’d expect to find spinning round on a potters wheel. Put a glob between your fingers at it will feel smooth and putty-like.

Most clay garden soils aren’t quite as extreme as that – although individual, fist-sized balls of pure clay are not uncommon even in topsoil, and are typical of new gardens where the subsoil has been disturbed and brought up to the surface by building work.

The great benefit of a clay based soil is that it is extremely nutrient rich and capable of supporting a very wide range of plants. The downsides are all to do with that tiny particle size. When wet the soil is extremely heavy and frustratingly difficult to dig and work with. It can also be easily compacted, driving all of the air out and forming a dense, thick layer that roots can find all but impenetrable. Although clay soils are naturally very moisture retentive – which can be handy in a dry summer – when they do dry out they bake into an extremely hard, cracked surface pan which is, once again, completely unworkable.

Sand.

Sandy soil - open and free running.

A sandy soil is one with a very small percentage of clay particles, where the large bulk is instead made up of much more coarse quartz and silica originating from weathered rock. Take a chunk of this between your fingers and it will always feel gritty and loose. Unlike a clay soil, sand-based soils will never “clump” and will always be more-or-less free running when you dig through them.

Sandy soils can make for fantastic cultivation options; they warm up very easily in the spring and so promote a long growing season, they will never be water-logged and are easily worked at any time of the year. The major downsides are to do with fertility and water-retention, which are both pretty poor, or in extreme cases, non-existent. A wide array of drought tolerant, generally surface rooting plants have evolved to specialise in sandy soils, but unless you are happy to stick with these, a sandy soil will require ongoing maintenance to allow for a wide community of plants to flourish.

Loam.

Lovely loam - nutrient rich and easily worked.

Loam is a kind of generic term given to the ideal garden soil that consists of a roughly equal mixture of clay and sand, and which brings the benefits of both soil types with few if any of the disadvantages.

Loam soils are open, and easily worked but full of nutrients. They are moisture retentive in summer but free draining in winter.

There is no doubt that a loam based soil will support the widest range of garden plants with the least amount of alteration and soil maintenance. Very few “wild” soils are naturally loamy – river basins and flood plains with millennia of silt deposits are perhaps the main exception – although having a loam garden soil is, understandably, an ongoing holy grail for most gardeners. Continued cultivation and improvement will gradually move any soil towards a loamy condition.

Chalk.

Chalk soil - typically very shallow and stony.

Certain localised regions of Britain have naturally calcareous or chalk-based soils, all of which are derived from weather limestone, which is itself the result of deposition in ancient, long-since-disappeared oceans.

Chalk soils are identifiable by their light colour. They are generally very stony too, with pieces of pure calcium chalk in the mix. They can be wet and difficult to work in winter but bone dry and rock-like in summer, and their overall nutrient level is low.

Again, a specialised wild flora has evolved to thrive on chalk soils, but many cultivated plants will find conditions much tougher. Most garden plants require acidic to neutral soils in order to be able to access the full range of nutrients that they need. Chalk soils, though, are inherently alkaline in nature and, unless you plan on replacing the entire top soil, that’s not something that can be fundamentally changed.

Peat.

A very pure, black-peat soil.

The other localised soil type, and at the other extreme from the chalk soils, are the peat-based soils. All of these soils occur in regions that were once marshland, and the peat is the result of many millennia of rotting plants all deposited and compacted.

Peat-based soils are, of course, naturally acidic, and very dark in colour ranging from dark brown to pure black bog peats. This dark colour ensures that  the soils warm rapidly in spring and like loam soils, provide for a long growing season. They are also recognisable for being very light and crumbly in texture but having a poor range of nutrients naturally available.

Depending on where they are located peat soils may either be very wet and still marsh-like year round or, where the geology has displaced and raised the ground level, seasonally dry and easily cultivated. Again, a range of plants have evolved to specialise in peat-soils, and so long as the area isn’t water-logged, the gardening possibilities are rich and extensive.