Sorting the greenhouse

We cleared all the brambles out of the old greenhouse the other week, but now it's just an empty space. We felt we definitely needed a work bench in there, so that's been today's project.

My husband is a bit of a womble and found a length of old kitchen work top in a skip which looked ideal for the job. We measured up last time we were at the field and then he cut the top to size, along with other bits of timber for the legs. We nailed the whole thing together, walked it into the greenhouse and hey presto we have a work bench.

We also made a start dealing with the lack of water on the field. There were some old water butts in the bushes, so we sorted out a bit of down-pipe and set up a butt next to the greenhouse to start catching rain water.

Our other main job today was a bit fruity.
Next to the in laws garden are some old fruit bushes - possibly tayberry. We don't know if they are still viable, but we tidied them up and put some strings out for them to grow along.

Finally we started clearing ground next to the greenhouse where we are eventually hoping to grow some fruit trees.

Another good day's work!

Preparing the ground

The patch of ground we're going to turn into our garden is next to the plot that Stephen's parents are using, and it has been cultivated in the past, but not for the last few years, so there's plenty of work to do. We can't just chuck some seeds on there and assume that they'll grow.

On top of that, the whole field is a bit neglected and overgrown so our current mission is to bring some order to the chaos. Last time we came to the field we cut back the brambles and emptied the greenhouse and today we continued the process of clearing and tidying.

I've now dug up some of the bramble roots from inside the greenhouse and Stephen has been cutting back the trees and strimming the grass so the whole site is much easier to move around. In the undergrowth we came across 3 waterbutts,  which will be really handy as the site doesn't have any running water. We also had a nice big bonfire to get rid of all the rubbish.

It's still very early days, but progress is happening!

Begin at the beginning

My husband comes from a farming family. Going back a couple of generations they had a pretty big farm, but, thanks to death duties, they ended up having to sell most of the land and all that's left now is a triangular field. A small part of it is used as a vegetable plot by my father in law and in the past my husband used to also have a plot there, but it's been abandoned for some time. We've been talking for years about starting an allotment for ourselves there and this year we finally decided to get started.

Like I said, my husband's background is farming. Although they didn't have their own farm, when he was growing up his dad was a farm worker and he went to agricultural college after school. Since leaving college he's been working as a gardener, so outdoors stuff and growing things is what he does. My background is a bit different. I'm a city girl and pretty much anything green tends to die around me! I think the last thing I grew was probably a broad bean in a jam jar at school, or maybe some cress on blotting paper.

In order to get this allotment going, we pretty much have to start from nothing. My husband has a greenhouse on the field from his previous efforts, but it's been left empty for ages and the brambles have taken over!

As you can see, there's a lot to do before we can even start to think about planting anything. On the plus side though at least we have a fine crop of blackberries so we may not have planted anything but we have a harvest! I was able to pick just over 1kg and baked a pie.

As well as cleaning out the greenhouse, we also need to prepare the ground. Thankfully my husband has the tools for the job so out came the rotavator

We spent a couple of hours at the field this first time and made a good start. Can't wait to get back there and keep going.