the daydream fund challenge thread

soupdragon10

Got the car started now the battery is fully charged! Shopped and remembered the plant labels so I can do yet more sowing. I'd actually used all the labels I had, and haven't bought any for years and at £1.00 for about 25 didn't think it bad value as they are much larger and sturdier and would cope with using outside.

Raised bed is now about 1/4 built :j:j DD is doing a sterling job laying the blocks, having never done any blockwork /bricklaying before. There is enough finished for me to start planting at one end, and follow her as she builds more. Slow but sure, and will make next year SO much easier for me.

Know what you mean about a mammoth task. Every time I look around there seem to be 6 more jobs to do :mad: need to have a good bonfire to burn all the bramble that I have cleared, I love watching it go up in flames - revenge for all the scratches and thorns in my fingers.

stitching_witch

Hello people! I still read all your posts but have felt there's nothing I could add. However, I think it's time for an update from me.

I'm still working full-time in an office job I hate. My business officially started trading on 1st April so it has been a whirl of appointments with Inland Revenue, bank, accountant etc. I took a box of corset samples to a "club" (;)) on Wednesday night and was a complete success and loads of business cards were taken. Hopefully a few orders will come out of that. We're going to do the rounds of other "club meetings" in the next couple of months.

The allotment is prepared for this year's crops. The garlic, shallots, red onions and white onions are in. So are the carrots and parsnips. Tomotoes, peas, beetroots, pumpkins and courgettes are on the windowsills at home and growing well.

We've put in extra soft fruit bushes in the garden and they are doing well, as are the two apple trees. I'd dearly love a couple more fruit trees, but DH is less keen. He's starting to terrace our sloping garden this summer (after being here for 12 years!!) so I might be able to slide a tree or two into the plans

We're getting about 24 eggs a week from the four girls and could sell far more than what we get. Quite often there are no eggs left for our own use.

Well, that's a longer post than I'd envisaged. I didn't realise it's been so long since I last wrote anything here. There's still other *stuff* going on, but I'll get round to talking about that later.

stitchy x

rhiwfield

choille wrote: »

Getting a lot of eggs now - so that's good.

Us too, eggs for breakfast, bacon and egg pie for tea.....

Things are growing fast, all except my squashes and cucumbers which I've probably tried to germinate in too wet compost, schoolboy error

Ebaying some stuff too, lots of watchers so here's hoping some good prices.

All the hardy fuchsias were cut down by the cold to the base so pruned those yesterday and chipped the cuttings to top up the paths. But we've been frost free all April and most things are shooting up. Still, everything tender is covered at night and the GH has frost protection on though it hasnt had to kick in.

Lotus-eater

lostinrates wrote: »

And I have a fraction of your experience and knowledge!

It took AGES to day to cut the grass. I even put the horses in the back garden to help (still unmown...)

That ruddy ground alder back in the bits I've been over an over and dug over and sieved.

I've also been looking at our very beautiful horse chestnut and thinking it could do with some off the height. Its a diversionary tactic I think.....can't cope with the alder so think about chopping a tree down instead

Tomorrow is a day we have to spend going through rubble and I just feel exhausted before we've begun! (and no way will I want to weed after that!)

edit: and if I don't fancy chopping into a tree than I fancy planting one. Been missing a burnt sugar tree I left at a previous home...think I migt buy one to go outside the kitchen when its done.

I don't think you have a fraction of my experience and knowledge tbh. I'm veg and fruit, other than that I really struggle. I struggle to have an interest outside GYO as well.

I think you may have to plan for easier upkeep. A friend of mine has a big garden (but still smaller than yours) and he has what he calls a wild area. Just grass that he lets grow long, with wild flowers in it and some mature trees. He cuts this once at the end of the season.
There is only so much you can keep tidy all the time. Big square lawns are easiest for cutting, but bits and pieces, curvy bits/ trees in perfect lawns, look lovely, but take a hell of a lot longer to cut.
Perfect borders look great, but take a lot of weeding. Large shrubs can also look good, but take less work once established (I think, I'm a bit hazy on this )

One small area designed well, with landscape fabric and well weeded, will be easier to look after and look better than an area you have "just got on top of", which is mostly a waste of time.

The thing that stands out in my mind most after moving in here, which wasn't my first garden, but my first serious one, is that you take your time to decide what to do and what you want from it. You also don't work with what you have on the ground already as a starting point. I wished I had moved a big path right from the start, while it's till in it's original place and I still work round it.

Redoing and moving things has been my biggest mistake, as my life moves on and things change, we want different things and I realise things are in the wrong place.
If I'd have sat down at the start and known what I know now, it would have been much much less work. There are still areas I am clearing and making the best use out of, many of which I have wasted since I moved in.

Anyway, 10 years to get a biggish garden into shape isn't unusual by any means, so don't despair, you're just trying to do too much at once.

Lotus-eater

rhiwfield wrote: »

Things are growing fast, all except my squashes and cucumbers which I've probably tried to germinate in too wet compost, schoolboy error

If you've got a heated propagator they germinate brilliantly in it.

annie123

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Get him to put them all on scrap pallets, cover them with the tarpaulin when it rains, remove it when it's sunny and you will have a perfect drying area

Hubby thought he could manage that, so yesterday after a brief drive round our area found 2 nice large pallets which are now under our logs
Have left the cover off as there's no sign of any rain here for the next week.


I also dug and sifted a small area with ground elder. Felt very pleased till I leaned over the fence to see where the fox went only to find a massive amount of it in my neighbours garden:mad:

I have asked them in the past if I/they could do it and they always they will get around to it but don't.
So have decided to lean over the fence and spray weedkiller on it, can't see anything else in the area that could be killed, other than their lawn.

I have my own creeping buttercup to keep on top of with out their ground elder trying to sneek in!

Davesnave

Lotus is spot on with his post about long-term thinking.

We hope we've got it right here, planning for pathways first, but other stuff soon intruded, because there was the added complication of the fields abutting the garden and the urgent need to fence them. We can't afford to do that sort of thing twice!

For example, apart from preferring a view when we extend, we want to see at least some of the land from the house, not just a garden and a big polytunnel! For this reason, the windbreak hedge put in by the former owners had to go. At the other end of that plot we also had a titchy bit of field which couldn't be mown/baled, so when it was fenced , that corner was lopped off to become 'garden.' These changes have left us with an area we neither want nor need right now, so the chances are half of it will have to become rough grassland, where we can stick a few more chickens, ducks or a couple of pigs until....

It's a jigsaw. Maybe forcing the bits to fit temporarily isn't a solution for finding the bigger picture, but sometimes you have to, just to get 'em out of the way.

Nice to hear from you again Stitchy. Most of us have some secondary form of income, but yours is definitely the most interesting!;)

lostinrates

Thanks for the reassurance.

Longterm ....yep.

What I think I need to do this week is get the plans on to paper instead of scabby envelope backs and post them for more experienced opinion. I might need to buy a new camera for this purpose I think.

choille

Gorgeous here today - more clearing beds for me & then a time down the slope & then off out to eat & chat with friends.

Caligula the Scot's Grey cockerel atacked OH this morning & cut his legs, he had his padded breeks on too. Calig has gotten very nasty of late & may have to go to that big soup pot in the sky.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

got your pm rhiwfield, thank you, let me if you got any surplus after your bootsale, and then maybe i could bring some pallets over for you in the van, if they would be of any use to you;)

Its a glorious day here, I have done a few more trays of runner bean seeds, but could i plant some seeds straight outside now or do you think i should wait a bit longer?

going to plant out my spuds today too, and hopefully get a few rows of carrots, and turnips in too
my parsnips seeds in the loo rolls are popping up,

i have a 'dead' wall oneside of us, which is saded most of the time, was just wondering if it was worth planting some peas there as a gamble?

also a really silly question as they climb upwards, but could you plant peas in hanging baskets?

I just want to try and use every little space i have for growing,