Today I thought I’d spend an hour in the Garden in the sunshine and get the back bed dug over and finish planting the garlic and shallots. An hour turned into 3 and now I’m shattered and aching! The garden bed I decided to dig up has been used as a dumping ground for everything going. It’s full of bricks, wall tiles, breeze blocks, glass, rubbish and I even found a saucepan! So after digging the ground over (hitting bricks with every other shovel-full) I spent the rest of the time sieving the.. well I’d like to say earth but to be honest there’s more rocks than earth! Anyhow I sieved it all, dug a long trench and built a nice pile of bricks and rubbish at the end!
It’s a shame really that people are prepared to treat gardens in this way and that people are prepared to let people do so. By the time we’ve finished in this garden the ground will be great for growing in! Shame it’s not our garden really. Still at least I’ve had all this practice and knowledge for my own when we eventually buy our own home.
See an enlarged photo of the above – Large Version
We have quite a large back garden with borders along two edges. One has a decent growth of plants and trees, but the other is like what you’ve described above; full of rubble, glass, bits of metal and lots of weeds.
We spent a few days trying to clear it up one summer, but didn’t finish it and now nature has once again reclaimed it.
We (okay, it was my other half!) did put down some herbs and they grew very well. Barbecues smell great with some fresh-out-of-the-ground herbs!
The plan for the spring/summer is to dig a hole for a pond (someone donated a plastic liner to us) and erect a shed to clear some space in the garage for non-gardening junk!
Herbs are great as they grow virtually anywhere! Our herb garden had a bin bag of clay buried in it, so everytime you pull some weeds up, more clay appears! There was also a lot of glass in it but I cleared the top layer away and threw some top soil on it.
As for fresh herbs, everything goes great with them! My favourite is basil, tomato and mozarella. Okay, so basil is grown indoors in a pot but it’s still fresh!
Good luck with the summer plans
My fave has to be Coriander. As a garnish, it adds a really fresh, unique flavour, but I like it as a dish of its own; a very quick stir fry, finished with some soy sauce and sesame oil.
I’ve got Coriander growing at the moment, but it’s still a little young to use. I want to get it more established and then try putting it outside.