Farcebook

Tag: Shed

  • Hoarding water for the summer

    Hoarding water for the summer

    I promise that this blog isn’t just a log of my attempt to cover my garden in plastic barrels of water, but it rains a lot in the winter, it doesn’t rain in the summer, I have a water meter and spraying chlorinated water on plants doesn’t seem like a good idea.

    I’ve replaced the small water butt next to my garden shed with a bigger one. The small one was full of some rather horrible smelling brown water. I think this is from the roof garden, but I’d have thought all of that would filter out the fine bits of soil up there by now?

    I managed to find enough bits of random drainpipe lying around to make things neatly flow into the water butt. It’s a bit awkward because there’s two pipes and only one hole in the lid.

    I then half filled the water butt using one of the others. I now have something like 700L of water storage now. Should help in the summer when it stops raining and I need to water things. Also when I water the roof garden and it starts to run out, it’ll go back into the water butt and not be wasted.

    In attempt at containing the mud and helping the lawn grow I’ve given it a good stabbing with a lawn aerator and then covered it in a layer of sand. The ground is full of clay and very sticky. I noticed that when it rains water runs over the surface of the ground instead of soaking in.

    I also put a bag of gravel on the slope behind the shed to control the rain that hits it. I’d like to find a few large stones and put them down too.

    The grass will be fine, it’ll come back. I’m planning on re-seeding it anyway with some grass that copes better in shaded locations.

    Finally I was getting tired of tracking mud into my shed, so found two paving slabs and just put them down as stepping stones. At the moment they’re lying on the surface of the ground. If I like where they are I’ll put them into the ground in a more permanent way.

    A typical British lawn with straggy grass, worm casts and the odd bit of moss.

    A job for warmer and drier weather is to sort out a more neat looking path.

  • 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.

  • Monsoon Season

    Monsoon Season

    Seems the weather has switched from hot and dry to “wet”. It’s a bit hard to do anything on an allotment when it’s raining.

    I did notice the water butt on my shed at home was full though.

    And the small one on my other shed was looking a bit full too.

    So I figured I’d buy another water butt from Wickes and set it up to fill from the overflow of the first one.

    I also moved the water pump into the new butt. I’ll use that to water the roof garden in the summer.

    The finished setup looks quite tidy, although the second butt is half full already. I need to sort out an overflow so it doesn’t flood the area around my shed. The drainage isn’t great and a shed sat in a pool of water isn’t the best.

    Also out of curiosity I went to the allotment to see how the water butt there was doing. It seems to be filling up and holding water OK.

    At some point I’m sure I’ll add a second butt there too.

  • Shed roof garden maintenance

    Shed roof garden maintenance

    The roof garden on my shed needs sorting out, a lot of giant daisies grew this year and while they looked nice at the time, their dead remains need trimming.

    It’s not too difficult with a ladder, but some areas required a bit of climbing about on my fence.

    Once trimmed I moved some random bulbs I had in planters and tipped the remains of the planters on the roof to add some more soil.

    There’s quite a lot of different plants up there, some I didn’t put there. Also found a few small trees trying to grow and snipped their shoots off.

  • A pane in the grass

    A pane in the grass

    The nice thing about sheds is that their windows are all the same size. The bad thing about sheds is the glass is expensive. So I’ve reclaimed the almost-four panes from the old shed to reuse at home.

    No idea how old this shed is, but the windows are held in more by luck than anything.

    But with a bit of careful prying to remove old putty and rusty nails the glass came out without breaking any more than it currently is.

    After a bit of a clean they’ll be good as new and ready to fit in one of my sheds at home to provide some luxury double glazing.