Tag: Gardening

We bought some fruit trees

But we where not finished with the preparations for planting jet

Beside fruit trees we also bought 50 pcs of Lavender plants (Lavandula angustifolia) and 50 pcs of ivy (Hedera helix). The Lavender is not only decorative; in future I also want to harvest them. Lavender is not only beautiful in a dry bouquet, but we also want to have the essential oil. In the future I hope to make my own soap again and I would need the essential oil for that. The Ivy is ideal for covering the soil lively to prevent it from drying out and prevent erosion. Also we used to wash our clothing with ivy leaves and we want to go back to that again. Now we wash with wash nuts, but the ivy leaves will be free, after the plants settle and grow, and you can’t get it more regional than from your own garden.

Other than that we bought 10 pcs of raspberry bushes. Some raspberry bushes we already have and the kids loved snacking them directly of the bush. We just had so little harvest that I had to see that every child would get one. That problem should be solved now. Currant bushes we also have a few and where loved to snack from. We will plant all the berry bushes we have in our new plant beds, because we will put a fens around them to keep the dogs out. The dogs destroy everything and pee over everything. We have all male dogs.

We bought 15 pcs apple trees, 15 pcs pear trees and 15 pcs plum trees. We had not finished the preparations on time, but we planted fruit trees in the finished plant beds right away. So put aside the straw, make a hole put in the tree and put a part of the soil back. Than we watered, so the soil would run in every corner and space around the roots. Than fill up the soil around the tree completely and put in a post to secure the tree so the wind will not rock the tree. Only thing left is to divide the straw back. My husband had prepared a lot of posts with a point for all the trees.

We could only plant 12 fruit trees, so we planted all the other once close to each other in 2 plant beds to wait for them to be planted on there final spot. We had built some more plant beds and could only fill 2, because we did not have anymore soil. The trees are in these 2 beds. Hopefully we will get new soil delivered soon and we will go on with this topic a different time.

Levelling the ground after excessive tire damage

Removing a pile of logs made a mess

We cleaned up a pile of our logs. We sawed some of the logs. Some of the logs lay to long and where no good for the sawmill, so these turned into firewood. Other logs where sorted in piles of logs of the same type of wood. Al of this made a huge mess of the ground. To make the ground nice and even again my husband drove over it with our old tractor with a meadow train attached. He did this where the ground was a bit frozen. It works better like that. The end result is better as we had expected. Now the grass can grow back again. We are thinking of planting some fruit trees here.

Have you started your preparations for the new garden year already?

We have with seeds, seed potatoes, onion & garlic sets and a big pile of soil

So let’s get started with preparing the site where we want to put new raised beds in. We took out a rest of an old sand heap and divided the sand in some holes around it. Also a hill bed from last year we took out and brought the compost soil to our large straw bed to expand this. We found a lot of good potatoes in this compost soil. We had not planted these; these potatoes grew out of volunteer plants and were enough for 3 meals for us.

After that my husband went over the site with the tractor and meadow train to even the ground.

Now we can start building the raised beds. The raised beds are made out of Larchwood life edge boards.

We have one bed to put between two existing beds what made filling it a bit more hand work, but the other raised beds are filled with the wheel loader directly after being put into place. This makes it a lot easier, because all we need to do is divide the soil.

On top of the soil comes a thick layer of straw. We have straw bales as a wind barrier at the short side of the Tiny House; one of which the dogs destroyed the netting keeping it together. We took out this bale with the wheel loader and put it closer to the beds, to divide it over the beds more easy.

Also I put a thermometer in one of the beds to check the temperature. I have read that potatoes can go into the ground as soon as the soil reaches a temperature of 10°C. At the moment we are at 3°C, so I think it will take a wile before we can get started with planting and sowing.

At the moment we are at 6 plant beds. The first 3 beds are one for each child, who also love gardening, especially harvesting. Wherewith we are not done jet. We will be putting up a lot more plant beds. We also want to plant berry bushes and some more fruit trees, but that is for a next time.

My greenhouse is not really a house, but only a roof. One corner sagged a bit, so we lifted it with the wheel loader and put a small beam under need. A long the entire side we put additional soil to stabilise the side and prevent it from sliding of. We covered the soil with straw.

Beside the greenhouse roof was a big pile of straw, partially rotten and sagged in. We used this straw and also divide it in and around the greenhouse roof. The old mulch layer was very broken down and hardly covered the soil any more. The straw was ratter wet and fixed which made it hard and heavy to loosen. Luckily my husband could make piles of the straw in and around the greenhouse roof with the wheel loader, which made it a lot easier. We will see if it was a good idea or not to use this partially rotten straw, but if necessary we can put another layer of good straw over it later.

Very much to my liking we found a lot of earthworms.

Next thing to do is dividing the compost soil next to the straw bed. I had a small very busy helper. We found a lot of grassroots and other weeds to sort out. Also I forgot to put cardboard under need the soil again. We will leave the soil uncovered for now and rake trough every few days. Hopefully the exposed roots will dry out and we will not end up with a bed full of grass and weeds. After a few weeks we will cover the soil with a thick layer of hay. I hope this will be enough to suppress the weeds from below.

The preparations for our garden year are not finished jet, but we made a good start and hopefully have everything in place before the season really starts.