the daydream fund challenge thread

Winged_one

Dave - I am another who LOVES reading your posts, as you kinda pinpoint the exact fears I have (I am 12 years in the city now, and long to get back to the country - although Dad is a professional working in a plant based in the countryside who grew a fair bit of veg rather than a country-man himself, and DH's folks are also no longer "on the land" (his Mum is the daughter of a farmer, but nowadays it's just the veg patch in the garden that is the link).

In 10-15 years time, I will be looking at the points about taking time to think it all through.......in the hopes of minimising my own mistakes (cos I'll definitely be making some!! LOL!!)

rhiwfield

Davesnave, thx for nice commenst but this bit of planning evolution is at a dead end atm.

Below is a brief schematic of my terraced upper beds to the side of the house. They are at eaves height atop a 12' high retaining wall with a wooden fence at the rear with ivy climbing and many shrubs/ small trees on other side. There is a path running along the beds which are about 40' long, each bed being 12-18" wide. The soil in the beds is so-so on top of limestone.

The beds are south facing but to the left are part shaded by the gable end of the house. To the right they get loads of sun. They slope downwards right to left and a water butt is on the right fed from the garage roof.

There are no permanent plantings so far apart from a few aubretias and its been used for beans, onions, toms, peppers and a few ornamentals.

The bed coloured brown against the fence is bone dry usually due to overhanging shrubs (mostly cut back but they still overhang). I dont want to cut away the ivy (other than trim it) due to its wildlife interest.

The lower bed coloured green retains moisture better and can be used for plants like runners if well watered

QUESTION. What food plants could you grow in upper bed either as permanent or temporary plantings? At present all I can think of is grape vines. Herbs I'm growing in other parts of the garden closer to tehe kitchen and easier to access!

Davesnave

Oh gosh, rhiwfield, that's a tall order! Apart from the grapes, all I can think of off the top of my head is figs, which need a restricted root run, but I think they may also need some feeding.

Progress is at a snail's pace here too. On Sunday, as we had the digger working, we decided to remove our front path, which was damaged by frost and breaking-up. All went well, but while I was away doing another job, the digger man decided to 'help' me by burying all the couch grass we'd lifted earlier and then levelled half the front garden site on top of it! I didn't have the heart to tell him that's not how I deal with couch grass, so Monday was exhuming it all and barrowing it away to dry out, beside our big incinerator bin.

At the front door, today, we attempted to find the edge of the path so that I could fix some boards and put chippings where the concrete had been. However, on one side there was no edge; the building materials used as a sub-base just kept going....under the grass. Well, rubble's one thing, but then I began to find old thermoplastic floor tiles, and pretty soon half of the old kitchen floor was lying on the grass! At that point, I hit vinyl as well, and gave up, because it looked like a big sheet, heading off under the lawn...:mad:

At that point I yelled to DW that I was fed up with all the rubbish buried here, when she appeared with a smartly dressed man who'd somehow found her & missed me. 'There's a couple of other things buried here too,' she replied, looking more than a bit amused. 'This man is from Environmental Health and he's come to inspect the two horse burials!' :eek:

To cut a long story short, the local EHO, who retired a while ago, was a tad behind on his paperwork, so a notification of two horse burials in our top field back in 2006/2007 had gone to the bottom of the pile and had just resurfaced!

We inspected the field and the burial sites with the new EHO, but there was no visible evidence at the points marked on his map. As I shook the guy's hand and said farewell, I made a mental note never to build anything in either place....

Oh, did I mention we have chickens? They will have to wait. Suffice to say they've given us the run around too.

rhiwfield

Davesnave, congrats on the chickens, hope to see piccies soon.

It must be really frustrating to clean up the mess left by prior owners, especially when it affects the land. Horse burials, dont know whether I'd laugh or cry! Still, at least they will help fertility

Our chickens are usually laying an egg each a day but after wet weather we seem to get a soft shell or two. We've put extra calcium out for them but it seems to have no effect. The run is covered so dont know what the problem is.

The new solar is kicking in about 10 kwh a day atm so on a top day we should get 20kwh from the two arrays, on a day like today it'll be nearer 10 kwh.

As for the upper terrace bed I'll prob put some grapes in later this year, and use the lower bed for mixed veg. We dont really need more soft fruit but the grapes would harvest end of season and should make the odd bottle of wine :beer:
Just spent early morning picking the last of the blackcurrants (after picking goosegogs, jostaberries and blackcurrants yesterday) and today DW is doing the preserves (yet again!). After this no more soft fruit gluts as the strawbs are over and only the raspberries left, which we snack on whenever we walk by.

Although we got some jam jars and lids from Lakeland, we also got a dozen jars of value marmalade (27p each) from Mr T, which we emptied into a bowl and will use the jars today for jams.

Any (clean) suggestions on what I can do with a very large bowl full of value marmalade let me know

Lotus-eater

rhiwfield wrote: »

QUESTION. What food plants could you grow in upper bed either as permanent or temporary plantings? At present all I can think of is grape vines. Herbs I'm growing in other parts of the garden closer to tehe kitchen and easier to access!

Is it possible to grow something in the lower bed and train it upwards?
It's the dryness that is the problem, planting in the lower bed will help, two spring to mind, either a Jenny kiwi, or a loganberry. My loganberry grows to truly enormous stature each year and that's against a east facing fence which is very dry usually, an ivy grows up the other side.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

some pics of a new batch of chicks that have hatched/hatching out..

there are some
varwick's, bluebells, red silkies, and blue cochins:D

ukmaggie45

CoolTC, how cute those chicks look!

But seeing them so small and defenceless makes me realise that I am not cut out to take care of chickens. Guess I knew that already, but it just brought it home to me more. Academic anyway, since we're not allowed to keep chooks in the garden due to a covenant in the deeds.

Sorry, rambling, we're trying to get garden watered before 6am on Friday when hosepipe ban comes in here so I'm totally knackered, even though it was OH did all the work!

COOLTRIKERCHICK

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

CoolTC, how cute those chicks look!

But seeing them so small and defenceless makes me realise that I am not cut out to take care of chickens. Guess I knew that already, but it just brought it home to me more. Academic anyway, since we're not allowed to keep chooks in the garden due to a covenant in the deeds.

Sorry, rambling, we're trying to get garden watered before 6am on Friday when hosepipe ban comes in here so I'm totally knackered, even though it was OH did all the work!

pity about the deed thing about keeping chickens, as in reality they are not hard to keep..

have you got any large bucks, water butts etc, taht you could fill up before friday, just to give you a head start with collecting rain water...

we havent got a hosepipe ban with us, if we did we would be knackered, ok my veg would ahve to defend for themselves, but we use the hosepipe to get water out into the chicken and duck run....

Lotus-eater

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

cademic anyway, since we're not allowed to keep chooks in the garden due to a covenant in the deeds.

Have a read of these, they explain that you can ignore your covenant.
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapevine/search.php?searchid=1377145

Chucks are east to keep, ignore CTC's chicks, you can buy them as fully formed about to lay, adults.

rozeepozee

Just popping in to say Hello! I've been off the scene because I had twins! They're 11 weeks old and things are calming down a little so I may have a bit more time to get on here.

Now we are a family of five and there'll be no more breeding (well, not from me anyway!) we're thinking it'll soon be time to start having a good look around for the dream smallholding. Wales is still the favoured location in the UK, although we have some friends who are just emigrating to Canada who would like to move here http://www.lasqueti.ca/island-info. Sounds amazing and the property is loads cheaper than Wales....

I'm gonna try and catch up on the posts now whilst one twin is (breast)feeding and the other asleep.

R x