Auld Barrows and Bog Gardens?
Quite close to the entrance to Pig Sty Avenue v2.0 there was a mysterious mound of earth, with a water barrel on top of it at a crazy angle. I moved the barrel. And started with the intention of levelling the mound. Hmm. This has clearly been a rubbish heap, which someone has decided to throw some soil over. Plastic bags, beer cans, and a distressing amount of broken glass. I gave it a few hours over the weekend, filled four barrow's full with rubbish, and I'm still not there. Just to make things a little more interesting, there was a very big and nasty bramble growing in amongst all the rubbish, and I had to get gangster on it with the spit, (see photo).
Words cannot describe how annoying a mixture of plastic carrier bags and broken glass can be when mixed in with soil. Eventually, the only recourse is to rake everything out and then pick through it to get the glass and the bags, not to mention the beer cans and bits of wood and half bricks. It's raining now, but I'm going back tonight anyway to get this finished. I won't rest until this bit is rubbish free.
This erstwhile rubbish heap is at part of the line of where the hedgerow's going to run. I've also got to grub out some very dead shrubs. So dead are they, I'm afraid someone's used a strong weedkiller on them, and the ground where they've stood might be toxic. (I had a mushkila kebir at PSA v1 because my predecessor had, it appeared, decided to kill the weed growing by the path with something illegal, so that a foot either side of the path was poisoned and nothing would grow). We shall see. I'll put some phacelia in before the hedge plants, and see if it grows.
I've also started on moving the dozen or so plastic and glass doors, and door sized sheets of glass which are stacked up nearby. Slowly, slowly, slowly...
There were three wheelbarrows. One I'm using now, it just wanted the tyre pumped up. Another one might be in working order too. But a third one was completely goosed, rusted away to absurdity. I threw it in the "metals" area by the rubbish skip. The next day it was gone, although the council hasn't been to collect rubbish. I assume someone's been to a garden show where they've had an old wheelbarrow as a planter, and decided to do the same. Which is fair enough, except that it just looks like an auld barrow with plants in it. Might be ok in a domestic garden, (might). But in an allotment?
Ditto the whole bog garden concept, which I was briefly contemplating. I want to eat neeps, not bloody bog-myrtle. So I'm garnering rubble, and I'm going to dig some proper drainage trenches, and fill the bottom with rubble for a french drain, fill it all in, and grow stuff to eat. Thank you.
Words cannot describe how annoying a mixture of plastic carrier bags and broken glass can be when mixed in with soil. Eventually, the only recourse is to rake everything out and then pick through it to get the glass and the bags, not to mention the beer cans and bits of wood and half bricks. It's raining now, but I'm going back tonight anyway to get this finished. I won't rest until this bit is rubbish free.
This erstwhile rubbish heap is at part of the line of where the hedgerow's going to run. I've also got to grub out some very dead shrubs. So dead are they, I'm afraid someone's used a strong weedkiller on them, and the ground where they've stood might be toxic. (I had a mushkila kebir at PSA v1 because my predecessor had, it appeared, decided to kill the weed growing by the path with something illegal, so that a foot either side of the path was poisoned and nothing would grow). We shall see. I'll put some phacelia in before the hedge plants, and see if it grows.
I've also started on moving the dozen or so plastic and glass doors, and door sized sheets of glass which are stacked up nearby. Slowly, slowly, slowly...
There were three wheelbarrows. One I'm using now, it just wanted the tyre pumped up. Another one might be in working order too. But a third one was completely goosed, rusted away to absurdity. I threw it in the "metals" area by the rubbish skip. The next day it was gone, although the council hasn't been to collect rubbish. I assume someone's been to a garden show where they've had an old wheelbarrow as a planter, and decided to do the same. Which is fair enough, except that it just looks like an auld barrow with plants in it. Might be ok in a domestic garden, (might). But in an allotment?
Ditto the whole bog garden concept, which I was briefly contemplating. I want to eat neeps, not bloody bog-myrtle. So I'm garnering rubble, and I'm going to dig some proper drainage trenches, and fill the bottom with rubble for a french drain, fill it all in, and grow stuff to eat. Thank you.
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