The kitchen garden's pretty much planted. Over on the left there I've got four rows of spinach, eighteen sprouting broccoli plants (rescued from B&Q's bargain bin for the princely sum of 50p) and three rows of Swiss chard. Next along is a few rows of carrots at the back, and some beetroot at the front. The big middle berth has now fewer than five varieties of lettuce at the back behind three rows of onions, then further along we've got radishes, pak choi and spring onions.
I've used an assortment of garden netting and permeable mesh to provide the necessary protection while the seeds germinate. Between that, a healthy sprinkling of chilli powder and a load of bamboo canes poking out of the ground I can hopefully persuade the local cats to go shit on somebody else's parade. If not, I'm going to get me an air rifle and spend the whole of next weekend camped up in the bedroom with a hip flask and half a dozen scotch eggs, in the hope that I can plant a couple of warning shots on the backside of anything foolish enough to fuck with my greens.
Last year what did for me wasn't feline - it was the sycamore overhead and that nasty looking stuff you can see growing over the other side of the wall. It took a matter of weeks for last year's patch to be overrun, so I'm very conscious that I need to get out there once a week and weed, come wind, rain or shine. I'm also told the sycamore is due to come down pretty soon, and I might hop over the wall and deal with that other stuff myself. If it gets away from me this year I don't think my dear old dad will ever let me forget it.
Big thanks to Canadian Mike, who came over on Saturday and gave me some very timely tips, along with a fair bit of graft - I was happy to be able to offer him the pick of a pretty tasty barbie we rolled out on Saturday night. A shout must also go out to Gordon and Matt, the copywriters, for encouraging me to keep my multimedia gardening experience on air. And congratulations to Carlos - a fellow vegeculturalist - for whom nature's bounty has just extended to a second sprog.
Labels: garden
It's been a little while but Dad and I made it back out into the garden today. The area we're planning to use for the kitchen garden down at the end has now been dug over to a depth of about two feet. The pile of bricks and rubble over on the right-hand side is just part of what's come out of there since I first broke ground over in the far left-hand corner about a year ago.
The compost bin is starting to fill up with a mixture of kitchen and garden waste, and now plays host to some lovely red worms. The bark chippings have settled down nicely, and the way is clear for the introduction of a shed.
You can see from the photo that the kitchen garden still needs to be levelled, and we need to introduce a shitload of compost to replace the four or five cubic metres of rubble we've excavated. Once that's in it will be time to start thinking about this year's crops. I'm thinking lettuces, spring onions and radishes, for starters, so that the least we get out of it is some lovely fresh salads.
Anyone got any other suggestions?
Oh, and by the way, I cleaned up these pictures using
Adobe Photoshop Express, a free web-based service featuring some quite advanced photo-editing and sharing functionality. All very nicely put together. I'll be using it again for sure.
Labels: garden
Note that I've added a little theme tune for this series, courtesy of none other than
Mr Rolf Harris. Also, more experiments in subtitling. Not sure how soon I'll be back in the garden as of Ruby Tuesday, but dad's up on monday so I daresay we'll manage something.
Labels: garden
Shot and cut this today. It's hardly Gardener's World, but it's nice to have a record of the starting point for project Hackney Garden.
I had particular fun with the subtitling. Started by downloading some freeware called DivXLand Media Subtitler, then I had to go off in search of a couple of codecs to give me the finished product. I can see myself having some fun with the subtitling from here on in, but for now this is probably (hopefully) the clumsiest and most humourless installment in this growing series.
Labels: garden
This was all shot on Boxing Day, as the title suggests. It's a bit flabby, the sound isn't great, and I'm not sure how much interest there will be in submerged walls and Pyrus Katsura, but I like the idea of documenting the work we're doing on the garden in this way. It's giving me some nice material to play around with in Movie Maker, and making me more comfortable operating a camera.
That's not me in the cover image by the way. That's my Dad. He always has at least one 'project' on the go, typically involving boats or gardens. One day I daresay he'll try and combine the two into some sort of boat-garden. Rest assured reader, when he does, I'll be there, and the camera will be rolling.
UPDATE:
Googled 'boat garden' and found this.
I LOVE the internet.Labels: garden
