March is here and the excitement of Spring is just around the corner, despite it threatening to snow later this week! It seems to be all hands on deck here in the garden and the workshop with orders coming in thick and fast and all those jobs we put off in the Winter have suddenly built up…
First job on the garden list however, was to get a fence up around the vegetable garden so that we could pick up and plant our order of 250 bare root hedging. Why put up a fence when you’re planting a hedge you say?! The answer is Alfie, the one year old fox red labrador who’s favourite game is to rip up plants and run around the garden like a loon!
So me and my Dad got to work fencing the open side of the new vegetable garden, banging in 24 fence posts and then nailing on nearly 50 metres of chicken wire. It’s safe to say my back and arms ached after that! We’ll be putting up an 8ft wooden farm gate as the main entrance into this area and then a smaller 6ft double picket gate as the ‘quick entrance’ in down the side, nearer to the house.
After the fence was up it was safe to go and collect our order of 250 bare root hedging from our local garden centre and get planting. We actually ordered 40-60cm size plants but due to a stock error they sold out of them and very kindly gave us 80-100cm size plants as a replacement, so that was a nice little bonus! Although it did mean that the root system was bigger, which means instead of simply slicing open the soil and popping the bare root in we now had to dig 250 holes. Our soil is extremely stoney in places and we had to navigate around a couple of tree roots… but it was completely worth it.
It felt so good to stand back after all our hard work and see the results, the plot is starting to take shape and it’s so exciting to see! We’ve got a long list of other jobs to complete before the growing year kicks off and very little time to do it in before the garden shows kick off. We went and ordered the polytunnel at the weekend which ideally would need to be erected as soon as possible. I’d also quite like to order the oak sleepers to make the 3 raised beds where the strawberries and cut flowers will grow (I actually have 120 galdioli bulbs and 7 dahlias waiting for this!) There’s also the chicken run to build aswell as the potting shed, although these aren’t too important it would still be nice to complete them as soon as possible. Not forgetting the list of seeds waiting to be sown… Spring is going to arrive with a bang!
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