Reply With QuoteI leave it all to the gardener.
I wouldn't call it gardening. More landscaping. No neat borders or such at our place, it's pretty wild. It's officially a birdwatch mini bird reserve. Meaning all the unorganized heaps of branches, bushes, old trees etc. are there to please the wild animals. Ahem. Still, when we started 14 years ago, it was 6000 sq m (1.5 acres) of broom. Just broom, 3 metres high and too dense to penetrate. Now it's a park of sorts, and given that the ground here is mostly granite and in some places extremely hard packed soil, any tree we planted needed hours digging with a pick axe. I reckon we now have about 50. The broom still wants to reconquer the place (we had it taken care of originally by a couple of guys with properly equipped tractors who cut it all down and chopped it up in situ, after which we had a totally empty field with a border of trees on two sides and some thorn bush along the road; but there was a century worth of broom seeds in the soil...).
In practice, SWMBO takes care of 99% of the veggy gardening bit, and most of the other detailed work. She knows all about seeding and growing plants, especially ones you can eat or use to make herbal tea with.
Mowing the field with a mini tractor type mower won't work as there are far too many rocks and mole heaps. So we have two donkeys who take care of the grass, but unfortunately they don't eat the young broom so we still have to pull those out by hand or by pick axe. Donkeys don't need petrol, but still need care and of course they turn the mowed grass into shit. Which makes great compost, but one has to gather it up and carry it by the ton to the compost heap. My main jobs in this 'garden' are shoveling donkey manure and mowing the grass outside the donkey compound, using either a scythe or a portable power mower. And I like observing how it all turns into a new ecosystem that we are part of.
https://plus.google.com/photos/10695...30689247596242
So it's important, not so much as a hobby but as something that is part of rural life - having land means you need to put work in to keep it at least more or less under control, and allowing it to be an effective habitat.
I leave it all to the gardener.
I love my garden. Small but mad with blossom everywhere right now and the splash from the rill into the Koi pond takes years off me. Big Bad Barry (our largest fish, and there's good eating on him) is a sweetheart and comes to hand for food.
I've got a bonkers fig tree right at the back and am looking forward to building a garden office with that directly outside a picture window.
Nowhere near as awesome as some of the shots above, but I love it.
I have a cannon too by the way (but home-made, uses hairspray as propellant and can fire a King Edward over the horizon. I live in the centre of a city now unfortunately so hasn't been fired in a couple of years. I miss having Forestry and mountain as a back view)
Forgot to mention, I have a rule that any new plants introduced must be useful. Rosemary, sage and two grapevines have been the latest additions.
Gardening's one of my least favourite pastimes, but I like to see a nice garden that's got plenty of colour and a nicely-maintained lawn..........it's the time/effort needed that doesn't appeal!
Fortunately Mrs. W likes gardening so I get off lightly
Paul
The Mrs decided to get an allotment. Even though I stated I wanted nothing to do with it, there was no way she was going to be able to tackle this on her own...
After 3 weekends it now looks like this
Still got half of it left to do.
It's been hard work, but quite satisfying. I'd go so far as to say I've quite enjoyed it. Luckily the garden is fairly low maintenance, which is handy as I've been too knackered to spend any time in it!
I find it very relaxing to do the gardening after a week of stress at work, I wouldnt want to be without one.
Seriously good work over just three weekends . Congratulations! I'd have been too daunted to even start.Originally Posted by ed335d
The Mrs decided to get an allotment. Even though I stated I wanted nothing to do with it, there was no way she was going to be able to tackle this on her own...
After 3 weekends it now looks like this
Still got half of it left to do.
It's been hard work, but quite satisfying. I'd go so far as to say I've quite enjoyed it. Luckily the garden is fairly low maintenance, which is handy as I've been too knackered to spend any time in it!
Thanks! I've been coming back to work for a rest...
The hardest thing is removing the top layer of grass & associated roots. Luckily there's a free supply of wood chips to hopefully keep things manageable.
Well done!The Mrs decided to get an allotment. Even though I stated I wanted nothing to do with it, there was no way she was going to be able to tackle this on her own...
After 3 weekends it now looks like this
Still got half of it left to do.
It's been hard work, but quite satisfying. I'd go so far as to say I've quite enjoyed it. Luckily the garden is fairly low maintenance, which is handy as I've been too knackered to spend any time in it!
Some seriously good work there.
Cheers,
Neil.
I've checked my priority list, and 'gardening' doesn't feature on it at all. I checked all the way down as far as 'dropping dead', too.
Dave E
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day
Gardening is great. The secret is to get into gardening about thirty years before all your mates of your own age do. That way, by the time they start to take an interest, your garden will be better than they can imagine possible.
Life's a competition, isn't it?
Agree 100%
My wife has been recovering from a knee injury since February, so I've cut the grass a few times.
That's it - Garden is her territory - I'll sit and eat my lunch in it now and then - We may even have a BBQ if we EVER get 2 or 3 nice days on the trot when we're here...
I usually rinse and dry my dive gear in the garden too...
M.
We moved house 4 years ago from a small semi with a postage stamp size garden to a bungalow on 1/3 of an acre of mature garden, mostly for the kids benefit, the upkeep is pretty intense but worth it when its done and looking good, there was a old vegi patch that had gone to ruin and this year it was decided to tackle it... It was bloody hard work and most of it on my own, I had forgotten how heavy railway sleepers were! Im nearly done, just got to put membrane down and gravel it then plant some low maintenance plants here and there on it, perhaps a water feature or centre piece rock or some such thing. Not this weekend though, Im having a weekend off.
That's amazing for three weekends ! Free woodchip is a big bonus. Nothing like a bit of mulch to keep things in order!The Mrs decided to get an allotment. Even though I stated I wanted nothing to do with it, there was no way she was going to be able to tackle this on her own...
After 3 weekends it now looks like this
Still got half of it left to do.
It's been hard work, but quite satisfying. I'd go so far as to say I've quite enjoyed it. Luckily the garden is fairly low maintenance, which is handy as I've been too knackered to spend any time in it!
Last edited by seikopath; 28th June 2016 at 16:08.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
And heres a gratuitous candid shot of Oscar waiting for his mum to come home...
That's amazing. Only got into growing flowers and now veg in pots the last year or so. I bet it's fantastic to sit there and notice the birds and other little things like bees. As I said just a year and my partner thinks I have green fingers. Not sure what that about as she is also of the belief that it's the same bee doing all the work?
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I've had injections against it.
Rob
Can't see why you would do it yourself when gardeners are so inexpensive.
Maybe I'll grow into it.
In my priorities it's somewhere just above stabbing myself in the arm with a pen.
I love the idea of a nice garden, I'm just way too lazy to do anything about it, and our garden is too small/simple to justify the cost of a gardener.
i used green thumb for a year just to get my lawn in to a decent shape. but now do it myself
its not a big lawn 10mx10m i use verdone(now called weedol) no weeds and and it only takes 10mins to do.
other than mow the lawn thats the extent of my gardening and have no desire to do more
Any views of that cordless mower? Worth the money?
Absolutely. Bought a Bosch Rotak. Lightweight, works well. Most importantly, no more unwinding cords, extension leads, circuit protectors etc. Cutting the grass is almost a pleasure now...
Thanks will have at look at that.
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