raised beds extra

wow

cant wait to see pics

hugs

rose

As promised ....piccies of all beds filled not with 18 inches of leafmould based MM as I first envisaged but only a mere 10 inches or so ...

Reason very hard work for me .. the front bed with flowers in them do have a full 18 inches .. that's how I discoverd my folly of thinking of doing 18 inches.



The pictures showing the grids.. Alison said that the white grids were about as subtle as a battleship firing a broadside .... " Change them please! "........ So SWMBO ( She who must be obeyed ) got her way . I used some left over 1/8 x 1/8 inch grooved glasshouse sealing strip that is made of noprene and some cut into strip Ogee rain water guttering .. just drilled the strips and threaded the seal through ,putting a thumb knot at each end .

I must concur I like the not so right in your face grids ..& I will have to get another 50 mtr hank as I ran out.



I did have an idea to use white net curtain wire but it proved hard to cut and it nearly always had a curly bit or three in it even when staked down.

The rear garden shot looks a bit bland I thought I'd photobucketd a couple of better shots ... better luck next time ..I'm off to bed to get my beauty sleep ( If you saw my face you'd agree )



I'll see If I can add a couple of pictures of what things looked like a few years ago , just to give you an idea of what our villiage idiot " Mr Nearly " did to this place.

Fantastic! You did good.

The pictures I missed out earlier.









Finally a horse shoe for good luck ... found in the four year old composted horse muck I got from a friend.

All I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW! I am impressed and jealous of course!

You have made beautiful gardens in your front and back lawns!

It shows how much work and planning went into your gardens.

Love the pics!

Plantoid

Those are GORGEOUS and I can tell how much hard work has gone into them. I love that idea for stringing your grids with the stakes. I think I may steal that!

Just a few new pictures to show what has transpired from humble beginnings a year ago .

I really went to town on making sure I got decent manures rather than so called composted bagged commercially available stuff as I realized that bagged stuff can have almost zero nutritional value for the beds.

Instead of peat or coir I used stuff from 30 yr old heap of leaf mould .. the actual mould perhaps dates back a couple of hundred years and is a strange thing to play with ..

Get it on your hands , damp it and there is no grittiness to it , wash it off and soon your hands are dried up and coarse like fine sand paper. It holds the moisture very well yet drains like a sieve .

The resultant MM we made will not hold a full bucket of water quickly poured on it for much more than three seconds and then it is all gone .



Baby courgettes ready to go over the wall and hang down the three foot walls on stock fence wire once I get a protective strip over the brick work in place.





The celery thread experiment .. two stumps of celery one grown on indoors and one on the mid left grown on outside . Both doing well for the UK





The front flower beds have produced some of the most stunningly vibrant colours I've ever seen on UK grown flowers ( thanks Mel )



The hanging basets were in flower a full six weeks before the neighbourhood woke up and started to buy in their baskets .. mine are all home grown from seed in MM in the glasshouse , all six are on auto watering with six slow release plant feed sticks in each basket .











Bed set No 1 by the bungalow , this is all veg and a couple of herbs it does not get full sunshine each day as the roof of the bungalow runs across the suns path for four hours per day , but it does not appear to have suffered from the loss of the so far .





Bed set No 2 .. This bed set gets full sun whenever it is shining and is sheltered from all winds or so I thought till the onions and garlic got flattened in high winds recently.





All the beds , baskets and the glass house are on auto watering set at various times . It is spray misting in the glashouse and fan sprays like a shower on the veg beds , front beds are like tall champagne flutes ruising to two feet high and covering 3 feet in radius.. look carefully and you can see the spray nipples inthee flower and veg beds .

The baskets are on a restricted pressure and only gently fan out in a three inch circel down into each basket.

The auto watering cost an arm and a leg and took several bad buys before I hift on the system I wanted where most of it can be switched off at individual spray heads if needed .

It has freed my time up no end and allows me as a disabled peson to concentrate more on propagation and pest control etc. ..I also now have free time to go and see friends .

The glasshouse .. all seeds are laid on slightly pressed down MM and covered to the required depth with fine grade ( like coarse sugar granules ) horticultural vermiculite.

This helps keep the seeds at the optimum level of heat and moisture for germination and growth in the glasshouse and so far seems to be the best method I have used for setting seeds off to a good start in a tray .

I read this thread from the beginning, Plantoid, and it is so intersting to see the transition to full MM.

I bet that when you first posted, you would never haved dreamed that you would end up as European Host of an SFG guestbook.. lol

Wow - what an endeavor. Very nice read.

Everything looks spectacular David

Now you come to mention it KJ .... No .

So far , it has been an enjoyable journey , once I got the gist of the site . The best thing is the MM idea and making it up from only manures and beddings instead of commercially available composts.

The next year will see a slight deviation as the composted domestic waste veg matter gets added along with small regular amounts of fish scraps from a fish monger. But this will just be for topping up the vacated squares ..I'll still be making MM to bring the beds up to the required levels for they have settled down almost four inches since they were originally filled .

You never know , I might even find time now to do a couple of rookie topics that I found I needed to research and generally mug up on.

Here is what it all looked looked four years ago when I had to lay new foul water and new rain drainage after a flood due to an idiot trying to play at being a tradesman and modernise the bungalow four years previous to me buying the place .





Rear garden taken from the bottom of the garden



Curly path foundation being laid , shed was demolished and a decent green house takes its place three years later .



Front gardens just after a new heating oil tank base was cast in 12 inches of concrete prior to a complete new heating system being installed in the bungalow.

Wow, you have come a long way.

Kay

What an AMAZING transformation! You have done wonders!

GG

That is a pretty incredible transformation!

WOW Plantoid you should win a TOP BANANA AWARD for your "BIG STUFF" project!!!

Looks GREAT!!!

absolutely beautiful, and with the high beds, appears so easy to maintain. You must be a major stop along the way for strollers...

I love watching the progression. Ancient stable muck and leaf mould, Wow that is wonderful stuff indeed! The flowers are dear to my heart, especially the wind flowers. You remind me to plant some this fall, maybe it is now warm enough for them to winter here.

Gorgeous and fantastick Plantoid!

Oh no -- poison ivy !! I've got it too, and not from my garden. I saw a weed next to the garage door that had been missed by the weed whip when my grandson cut the grass. I pulled it and then saw those dreaded three shiny leaves. I should have gone in and washed immediately, but stupid me, I had to weed my garden first, Now I'm paying for it. I've gone through a half a tube of Ivy-Dry, and I'm still itching.

Memart try calagel for the itch. It may help.

I'll get some tomorrow. It is somewhat better, but today I was at a christening, and was dressed up, and all I wanted to do was go home and get into some lighter, looser clothing. However, since I am Riley's great-grandmother I had to stay while there were guests. Tomorrow I will go to the drugstore in town early, and then when it gets hot I will go for a swim in my daughter's pool. I think the chlorine and the cool water will help also. I'm getting quite a few small tomatoes and tomatoes on two of my patio plants seem to be lightening up like they are going to begin to ripen. I'm getting impatient for the first ones of the season. I had gotten a late start, but I put one cabbage in just to see what would happen. Unfortunately it bolted today, so fodder for the compost heap. I just found a place where I can get a 55 gal plastic drum from cooking oil for $20. Is that a fair price? I will have to drive quite a distance for it. Maybe I can find someplace closer. I have to start asking around.

Plantoid,
Your gardens are looking wonderful! Love the photos.

Can anyone see any pics? I'm guessing it's because they're too old. Plantoid, I'd love to see your setup if you have time to post some updated photos. (If it's just me and the pics are still here . . . )

countrynaturals wrote:Can anyone see any pics? I'm guessing it's because they're too old. Plantoid, I'd love to see your setup if you have time to post some updated photos. (If it's just me and the pics are still here . . . )

Your post from 6/15/2012 references pictures, but I don't see any....  Probably too old or archived.