Making Room For The Garden Store

If you are a regular reader you will know that I won the prize of a 4 x 3 ft wooden garden storage chest worth £169.99 from Waltons in their Messy Shed competition to help me organise my garden clutter, by submitting a photo of my Messy Shed.

Well she (all sheds are she, well for men anyway!) arrives on Monday so over this weekend after agenising if I should use it down the allotment or to sort out my messy shed problem at home I decided sorting out the messy shed at home would be best. 

I have been considering where to put the store and the best place is to the left of the space saver greenhouse where the cold framed currently stands.

The cold frame is the same depth as the store so it will fit on the paving slabs beside the path. 

The photo above shows the cold frame being used to bring on the huge amount of tomatoes that I usually grow at home. Now the thing is with the extra greenhouse on the allotment will I actually need to grow as many at home? 

I'm thinking possibly not, so then I agenising over do I find a better spot for the cold frame in better light possibly on the other side of the greenhouse, but If I do that there will be a huge reduction in the amount of tomatoes that will be able to be grown in the back garden.  Or perhaps the cold frame should go to the allotment? Decisions, decisions.....  

The ladder will have to be moved up so that the cold frame can slide under it. and I would loose 10 flower buckets of tomatoes, but I will have the Quadgrows in the new Greenhouse on plot 1 which is four plants and I can fit in 3 plants in the narrow beds or perhaps even put one tomato plant into each of the three square foot garden beds, which would replace the 10 plants normally grown in the back garden!  I think I have made my decision (for the moment) and if push comes to shove I can always take the cold frame to the allotment but I think it will serve me better at home.

The property next door has been let and the tenants have done absolutely no garden maintenance at all over the last two years and currently the hedge behind the fencing over is two foot of shaggy growth as I could not trim it last year and this year because of my cellulitis and the problems I have had with my legs climbing ladders.

Taking things carefully I have manged to emptied the cold frame and for the moment have relocated it on the lawn. then using the three step platform, cut back the top and the overhanging portion of the hedge behind where the cold frame was.

Sunday more composting materials in the form of all leaves that were removed from the footpath and from around the cold frame were taken is a couple of sacks and 10 buckets with lids to the allotment and fed to the Dalek's, and more clearing of the greenhouse on plot 1A and sorting of the shed took place in the morning.

Garden Store to be delivered Monday between 7am and 7pm, I'm hoping for a dry day so that in between the work I have to do, I can clear the hedge cuttings and dependent what time it arrives I may even get it erected and ready to help me start digging my way into my shed. 

Clearing & Potting Up

The rain stopped over night and although wet it was not raining, so I went to Spencer Road which felt really strange as I have not been there in some time. A but of a tidy up and I collected the onion and beetroot planting membrane and a blank sheet off the beds, plus the watering system as I'm going to have to either extend the existing system I have or bring a new system in from the other end of the plot, which actually could be a better idea as we have a water hog and a splitter at the top end of the plot.

Actually if I plan it right I may be able to connect both systems together and increase the pressure a bit, to make watering faster, especially when the hog has the water running for hours on end. There is supposed to be a 30 minute rule and you are not supposed to water with a hose unattended, there again rules don't apply to this guy.   

I cleared one of the pop bottle cloche frames and the 1.2m x 1.2m bed that the Rhubarb is going to go into and had a general tidy up. In addition I made a whole bunch of sand and milk bottle soft bricks, and re loaded the trays with damp sand to dry off in the greenhouse. 

I came away with three sacks of rubbish and it's nice to finally see the back of one of the pop bottle frames, great idea when I built it but pain in the arse to dispose off when you are done with it. 

  
In the afternoon I cleared the cold frame and potted on another 18 tomatoes with the 8 in the space saver greenhouse that enough for the 22 square flower buckets along the pathway plus a couple to be grown on the allotment out in the open. 

I can't recall where I bought the 12.7cm Richard Sankey terracotta plastic plant pots from, but I need some more, I did some surfing on the internet and it always amazes me how vast the price range can be for exactly the same item. Needless to say I found the best deal I could and have 30 more pots coming via ebay at a very reasonable cost with free delivery.

Feed Me Now

Just like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors my Dalek needs feeding 

Two very large sacks of grass were picked up from my Sister-In-Laws front garden this morning and taken to the allotment and were decanted in alternate layers with shredded paper that has been living in the food bins with lids waiting for the arrival of grass cuttings.

Finally a layer of comfrey has been added to the top layer of grass of the alternating sandwich construction of greens and browns and watered in.

I've been trimming the top of the hedge between us and my neighbours and clearing the debris that builds up at the base of the hedge on my side of the fence, and working my way up to the cold frame that is need of a little renovation.

    

There is a sacrificial timber picture frame that the cold frame sits on so that it will decay before the cold frame walls do. Guess what, it had decayed and fell apart so I cut four new timbers from my wood pile and painted the timbers before going to the allotment and assembled the picture frame using L brackets when I came back from the allotment. 

The plan was to lay the gravel trays in the bottom and transplant a number of tomato plants up from vending machine cups into larger pots and put them in the cold frame, however the rain forecast for about 10 tonight decided to arrive as I was just finishing my lunch and there was a mad dash to get stuff under cover, so rather that sort out everything that came out of the cold frame a lot of stuff has gone back inside until the rain stops.