h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For years now, many, many years, I've been putting off doing the gardening.

Three different gardens in fact. That long? Yup!

Anyhoo, twelve years ago we moved house and I promptly tore down the greenhouse to make space for a trampoline, tore out the vast potting shed to make way for my bikes and ripped out the flower beds to make room for...well nothing really.

Anything I had tried to grow simply died, no matter how many episodes of Garden Rescue I watched, I just couldn't garden to save my life, so, not being green-fingered, and being very lazy/busy, and spending most of my free time out on the bike, I decided a few dead things in pots and a big lawn for the kids and dogs was cool anyway.

Last year we made some planters out of three old wooden bed frames, sleeping beds to garden beds for the price of some compost. I can actually grow chillis, indoors, to make my own hot sauce, so tomatoes and strawberries were tried. Should be pretty simple?Great stuff!

Since the world stopped, I have been spending an awful lot of time in the garden. Getting over this virus has finally convinced me the garden needed sorting, and, without the chance of a bike ride, I needed something to get my teeth into.

This year, with time on my hands for the first time ever (without a major injury) I am totally redoing the garden. Third of the lawn as veg plots, beds for more fruit, a big herb garden, decks and water features too.

Two months in, and things are starting to miraculously appear. We have potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, corn, swedes, cabbage, lettuce, peas and beans, all the herbs, fruit trees and bushes are blossoming, bought a small lean to greenhouse and that's full of seedlings and cuttings, even grown various flowers, the garden is actually looking like a small farm! (I have been forbidden chickens and goats - for now…)

Top bit cleared and levelled for the deck this week, I even made a root watering system for the cherry trees I can't move, but they'll look nice and provide shade too.

In short, I'm hooked. Even asked for a greenhouse instead of my usual motorbike related birthday presents this year! Never put off doing something outside, you don't know what you're missing! Almost as good as getting on the bike.......Honest.

Great going. I'm impressed. And think of how great it will all taste! Much better than the supermarket produce. I'm envious it was below freezing here last night and so far I haven't been able to raise even
wildflowers for some eye candy in our garden space. I hope the farmers' market will be able to open this year.

I hope so too, thanks

Great news it did in fact open last week! Yeah! This weekend is mother's day and that is it's usual opening day.

If it's been below freezing in your area, how have the local farmers been able to grow produce?

Thank goodness for our boring climate, hope you get some spring....before summer's here!

Well some of the farmers have greenhouses and one is raising lettuce hydroponically but there will be flowers and plant seedlings for sale as well as jars of preserved vegtables and honey and last years maple syrup.

I feel bad for the bees. They work hard, and then people steal their honey.

I wrote, a while back now, that there were two things I was really really rubbish at - gardening and building things out of wood. No longer!

The garden progresses nicely, things are blooming all over the show, and over the last day or two I have actually built my wife a little chill out decking area....out of wood! Me! who'd've thunk? And its square and level and solid!

I have also been upcycling stuff that's been lurking in the deep dark recesses of my garage/workshop.

One small,slightly quirky (oh Weird - thanks DG) bed is now a desert Route 66 zombie apocalypse bed, thanks to a few metal signs, some spiky plants,a lot of gravel, an old pair of bike boots, a chrome skull and a rubber snake! See nothing too strange..

Up next will be 'living wall' partitions made from recycled wooden pallets and some old plant pots to contain the hanging flowers and a selection of herbs.

still no bike rides, but I'm way too busy!

My dad couldn't replace a deck board without a spirit level and a t-square. Engineers...

Is that why you have to speak softly on a train, because of the e,gine ears?

A soggy, windy day collecting bits of tatty scrap pallets that were destined for the tip or bonfire.

A few hours cursing in the rain and we now have a rather nice 'living wall' planter ready to be filled when this bloody rain stops!

Note: If you're doing this kind of upcycling, please ask first before taking pallets, as some companies reuse them. Amazed at how many are binned because of a cracked spar.

Looking forward to seeing the greenery over the next few weeks grow.

Also have enough wood left over to build another compost bin and manure store....yey!

Tip from a non-gardener who watched the real ones: treat that compost pile right, you may get 'volunteer' plants. My dad got tomatoes and a plum tree out of his.

Nowt wrong with free plants!

Today's lesson: stop and think before you build something that is bloody solid, to hold three ton of soil, compost and horse poo!

Or:-

Build lovely solid wooden construction for compost, manure and topsoil. Make it solid. Very solid.

Dig and shovel and ferry said three ton of muck to fill lovely new bloody solid structure.

Then sit back to admire your work ....and then remember there's a greenhouse to be built, and realize that's exactly the wrong place for the bloody solid construction and three ton of assorted muck!

Dig out newly filled structure and dismantle, (which idiot made it this bloody solid?) move to correct area and refill with same three ton of muck.

Ah well, all done now, and I'm getting rather fit with this gardening lark!

I'm glad that are recovering so well now, FWR.

I don't expect to grow vegetables this year, but I have extensive plantings of flowering plants over a wide area. They take care of themselves, come up from the roots every Spring, and dare the rabbits and deer to eat them

Thanks Paul. There does seem to be a deer problem over there...try venison and red wine! Yummmm.

I thought I'd dug up a Viking sword hilt today....turns out to be half an old fashioned hinge!

Never mind, today's been a day for digging and surprises.

We want a gravel and stepping stone pathway down to the bottom of the garden.

No probs, dig out some turf, lift a lot of old 1930s flags and level the ground ready for a few Ton of gravel.

Turf easypeasy...flagstones came up without breaking all but one (they'll be used later)

Surprise number one. Beneath the flags is an old pathway, probably original to the house, concreted in. Out comes the Monday hammer(but yes I is Tuesday, Google it!)

A few hours of sweat and swear words and it's out!

Surprise two. There, underneath the flags and the old concrete pathway was..

A gravel path, almost identical in size and shape to what were after!

Someone in the late 20s had bloody great gardening ideas too!

Nothing's ever new, is it? Anyone need a ton of vintage gravel?

That is so !