Tag: Compost

  • Making a Basic Raised Planter

    Making a Basic Raised Planter

    Part of my garden doesn’t seem to support plants very well. The grass doesn’t grow well and other plants seem to grow really slowly. It’s also a bit too boggy. I think the neighbour’s plants on their side of the fence are crowding out the ground.

    My lawn is trashed, reseeding it will happen later.

    To fix this I figured a nice raised planter would do. The Internet is full of random designs but buying them is never straight forward, so I went off to B&Q to see what they had.

    After disregarding the various plastic things that look like they’d fall apart, and not wanting to build my own I found what B&Q call “raised bed kits”, the rest of the world might call them “Pallet collars”. Four bits of wood with metal hinges at each corner.

    The bags of compost must be full of matter harvested from a black hole, it weighs so much!

    Building them has just the right amount of effort for a Sunday. First I needed to remove some bulbs that’d been forgotten about. They should come out soon if moving doesn’t mess them up.

    After clipping the bits together, and manhandling some of the heaviest substance known to people into the resulting hole, it all looks nice and fresh, just waiting for some plants.

    Since it’s still technically Winter and nothing is really growing, we might still get frost and there’s no point trying to plant anything – not that there’s anything available to plant yet anyway.

    Bulbs are a thing though, they’re due to pop out pretty soon, so I bought some more of those and rehomed the rescued set from the clods of quite poor soil they were living in.

  • And the Shed Blew Over

    And the Shed Blew Over

    Got a bit of a surprise when I visited the plot yesterday, seems my shed tried to do a Wizard of Oz and take off. Didn’t get very far though…

    After checking for any flattened witches I set about trying to rectify the mess. I’d only gone there to dump some kitchen waste in the compost bin. It’s been raining for the past month so the ground is too soggy to do anything in. Also it’s winter.

    Can confirm, shed is not stood up correctly. Also it’s only gone and blown the bloody doors off. Those things are terrible and always need a good kicking to stay in their tracks at the best of times. Next door’s chickens were warily watching…

    It’s only a light metal shed so fortunately quite easy to stand up again. I even managed to get the drain pipe back in the water butt. Even better, all of this was done without slashing my wrists and face on the insanely sharp metal edging.

    In an attempt at stopping it from happening again I’ve put some plastic boxes on the roof full of water. They were originally stood on the floor full of water, so they might as well be useful. Helps increase my water storage capacity too.

    Yes, at some point in the future I will securely attach the whole thing to the ground somehow.

    Trying to make best of an annoying situation, I then figured the wind was hitting the big flat side of the shed, so moved the compost bins in front of it to give some shelter. It was also a good excuse to turn the contents of the compost bins over and realise thick branches don’t break down very quickly.

    Moving the compost also means I have a more open and regular plot that I can go down and clear with the mower, strimmer, rotavator and a big binbag ready for planting.

    Yeah that’s the next plan. Tidy up. While digging I kept finding bits of rubbish lost in the grass and weeds.