Land clearance - end in sight!

I learned a very sneaky way this week to make encourage Mr TG to come to the conclusion that I need a new workshop and that the greenhouse really has become redundant for the job - I made him believe that I am seriously considering taking over part of his own workshop / shed. It's not like he would miss the space, it's about 60ft long and I took time to explain my plans for adding windows for more light and a private door all of my own - I even explained that I would be happy to use his pool table as a workshop table until he had managed to re-site it (aren't I nice) and of course I would protect it fully from the rigours of my power tools.
I've honestly never seen such a rapid descent into panic and alarm from Mr TG and I have to say I did have a bit of fun with it. The upshot of it is though that the very next morning he had been out to the greenhouse looking at what it would take to either extend it or knock it down and completely re-build it - it would seem I now have options.
Must admit I did feel a tad guilty though when I realised he'd already been round there planning by the time I had risen in the morning and seeing as I rise at 6am daily he must have been round there at some ungodly hour - wonder if the panic of sharing his domain kept him up at night.

I've been looking at so many productive gardens on the tinterweb while I've been absent from here and yet again I'm left with that feeling that we all get from time to time. You know the one - my garden never looks as good as everybody elses, THAT feeling!
I decided to take stock over the last couple of days and see where the real problem areas are - let's just say it would be quicker to state the areas that aren't a problem or overgrown.

This is currently what I am wading through to get from the greenhouse to the polytunnel. It may not look too bad but there's ruddy thorns made from spears in that lot and it's impossible to avoid them

And who knew that Gunneras freaking hurt ......alot!
But no fear all these (except the Gunnera and tree of course) will soon be hacked back into surrender when I use my new manly girly tool - I will introduce you later on.

Another Gunnera but look at the size of those Docks in the background - they're as tall as me! In fact pretty much everything there is a weed and I'd usually have them weedkilled by now but weather hasn't permitted of late. It's now desperate!

These next two images show exactly why I shouldn't be attempting to grow salad crops and is the reason I will grow nothing more than Lettuce until I have a cold frame near the house - these plants suffer because I forget about them being so far away from the house.

This is the current state of one of the raised veg beds at the polytunnel. The Horsetail has won as far as I'm concerned! The beds are being removed and the sleeper edges will go to the garden to make the new Koi pond. The Leeks have flowered because I didn't harvest them and it really is a waste of time growing them. Next year I am growing only in the polytunnel and only crops we love to eat. These two large raised beds will be demolished and the following year I may use the smaller beds at the greenhouse but only if I think I will tend them.

On the upside we've been busy getting this land cleared and have finally been able to begin mowing it. The whole lot was covered in 7ft Gorse and couldn't be used or accessed. After months of clearing stones (mainly Mr TG I have to say) levelling, clearing, levelling again, clearing again and then chucking seed down and hoping for the best we finally have green stuff growing and land flat enough to be mowed - though I am under strict supervision with the ride on mowers now because I filled the oil container with petrol (honest mistake), black smoke ensued and a rather stern telling off from Mr TG followed. Have to say I don't get fazed by such things (just need to drain it right?) and was kind of grinning the whole time he ranted but the smile was soon wiped off my face when Mr TG confessed that I'd just screwed (sorry, nicest word I could think of for what he said) the engine of a £1500 machine. You see up until that point I had believed the mower was £500 (which is still alot but not lynch worthy) but it would seem Mr TG thought I'd go berserk if I knew he'd paid just under £3000 for two mowers - mine being the more expensive because it's hydrostatic or some such thing so chose to tell a big fat lie about the price tag - such a girl! So I explained that it was his fault I broke the mower then because I would have followed step by step handbook instructions if I'd known the machine was so ruddy expensive, to which he replied that if the oil symbol hadn't registered in my brain at the time of filling then the fact that I checked for levels with the dipstick should have done, after all what car has a dipstick in the petrol tank!
"Oopsie" says me.
Anyway I digress, here's the beginnings of green showing on the land. Yes we know the majority of it is weed because every Pigeon in the counties of Caithness and Sutherland suddenly rocked up when Mr TG scattered the seed but we don't care! It's green and it will do!

Horsetail is a nightmare!

This is why I should never bother even attempting to grow salad crops

Not a pretty sight is it! The Pak Choi is bolted - not that I've even figured out what to actually do with Pak Choi anyways - and the rest is simply over growing or going woody or else the slugs are dining on it.
Then we go outside to the newish raised beds and look what we find

That not so pretty sight is bolted Leeks mixed in with that ruddy horsetail weed!
I refuse to fight a losing battle with Horsetail so I'm removing these beds, it's absolutely beyond my tenacity to keep fighting that damn stuff.

On the upside all this sun is making the flowers grow at the same rate as the weeds

The Rhodi's are flowering better than ever this year - may have something to do with my lack of pruning

I can smell the Hawthorn flowers as soon as I round the corner of the greenhouse and it's heaven - I love this smell

Mr TG has finally gotten round to erecting the fencing to keep the raptors in (I refer here to our Great Dane). There's about 150metres of it that needed erecting along the bottom edge of the land because Huntly kept escaping into the neighbours fields but we had to make it 6ft tall to ensure he couldn't whizz over it.
Unfortunately this has meant that we have fenced off the burn and the lovely wild area that sits beyond the new fence. We'll put a gate in so that we still have access and I also have plans to somehow make a lovely walk down there - much to Mr TG's despair.

Bless him!

Bad, bad gardener!

I've been a bad gardener lately! For some reason I'm going through a Meh stage and have avoided going anywhere near the polytunnel or the greenhouse except to water the contents (done with blinkered eyes so that I don't have to look at the suffering plants or growing weeds) and picked the odd bit of veg.
It all started when I couldn't get out there because of the slipped disc and then when I could get out there - but not do anything - I fretted and worried about the abundance of weeds that needed clearing and fruit / veg that needed picking. I did ask Mr TG to help me weed at one point but that just resulted in the loss of all my Parsnips so after that I avoided looking around.
Yesterday I just had to go to both the PT and the greenhouse in pursuit of some bolt croppers (that ended up being in Mr TG's work van anyways) - I put it off as long as I could but when I sauntered round there I was suddenly seeing it all with clear eyes and let me just say.....O....M....G!

This is the veg beds next to the greenhouse. The French beans have amounted to nothing - probably strangled and starved by the weeds - and I had intended to use this area for winter veg as it's sheltered here. Don't think that will be happening, not unless I get in some serious weeding beforehand.

Even Bob the mannequin has become neglected and lost a leg.
Bad isn't it!
Both beds are being covered in weed suppressant asap.

The PT area was no better. The outside raised beds were full of Horse tail and bolted veggies. The carrots finally appear to have got their act together, the problem is that although the raised beds are supposed to be easier to tend they're not when you're recovering from a slipped disc so the carrots aint getting thinned, at the moment I simply cannot bend across to thin them.
The inside of the PT was just as bad as the outside - so much neglect!

This apple tree had fallen over from the weight of the fruit. I need to have some kind of support system erected.

This is what greeted me as I walked in the PT and it's much worse than it looks. Cosmos flourish in the hot conditions of the PT but I won't be growing them again. I initially grew them for cut flowers but I've only ever cut them twice as I'm not particularly fond of them. I would cut them all back now but the bees love them so they'll stay, despite their thuggish behaviour, until they die off!

My poor Tomatoes! I had such high hopes this year for Tomatoes and have been quite pleased with 'Black Russian', a new variety for me. If I had tended these carefully and had tied them in, fed them regular etc etc (that bucket of comfrey tea still sits in the PT smelling like a cesspit) they would not look so forlorn and poorly as they do now.
Next year i am going to have a better support system in place.

It doesn't end there either.
The sweetcorn is seriously competing with weeds, luckily I'm coming to the end of the cutting of them anyway. Next year I'll be using black polythene in the Corn bed.
The Cucumbers are growing rampant like never before and the Courgettes have become Marrows which has encouraged the plants to stop producing more fruits.
The sweetpea hasn't been cut in weeks so has set seed which means no more flowers and to top it off there are huge Raspberry canes growing in the Sweetpea - at least I'm assuming they're Raspberries as I grew some in the PT a few years back, but they could just as easily be Tayberry or Loganberry which grows wild all over here.

I don't very often buy plants on a whim but Mr TG and I popped into Homebase the other day and I bought a veronica plant for £6 - it just looked so pretty.
When I saw the plant yesterday I was really annoyed with myself. I hadn't potted it up and it had completely dried out and looked half dead. I rectified it straightaway and it now looks 100% healthy again but this picture shows how neglected it was and this picture was taken an hour or so after it had been sitting in water - poor thing!

So, like I said I've been a very neglectful gardener of late. The house garden hasn't fared much better, I weeded a couple of the beds yesterday but I have to admit it was painful. The big bed still needs weeding but it is going to have to wait until there is a serious decline of wasps on the plants because no way am I purposefully going near them.

Today I will probably be attempting to salvage the PT and the PT outdoor veg beds, of course that depends on the temperature today as yesterday it was impossible to spend more than 5 minutes in there it was so hot.

Next year will be different - I'm going to weed suppress everything, I'm not going to waste another years hard work because of illness.

There has been a couple of lovely flowers come out of the PT though. I planted these Gladioli bulbs without realising that's what they were and it was lovely to see their flouncy, blousy blooms.

Gladioli 'Spic and span'

Unknown Gladioli

A....erm....pallet wood monstrosity.....

Today I built the perfect example of everything Mr TG hates and loathes about a DIYer getting their mitts on pallets - the pallet fence!
I hear your cries that pallets make excellent fencing and I myself agree, however NOT the way I built one.
I'm not the most patient of people I'll admit and as I often say I don't work from a plan either so alot of my projects are doomed from the start. However I had put a little thought into this one, well as far as deciding what I was going to make the fence with anyway, the fact that I didn't have anywhere near enough windbreak netting put plan a in the bin.
Plan b came to me as I was scouring around looking for suitable fencing materials. My eagle eyes settled on Mr TGs quicklock scaffolding, well he has plenty of it so I figured he wouldn't miss what I needed. Problem was how was I going to secure the scaffold panel to the ground because a) I couldn't be bothered with hammering stakes into the ground b) I didn't have any stakes less than 9ft anyways and c) this thing is supposed to be temporary (well it's now definitely gonna be that cos one wind will probably take this thing down).
I finally decided to hammer the legs of each panel into the ground - cool huh! With that done I sat back and looked at my new fencing and realised two things a) The fencing was now so low that the Great Dane could easily step over it and b) the height didn't matter because the dogs could get through the gaps in the panel anyway.
See, this is what happens when you don't plan Linda!
Next brainwave should have been to take it all down and forget it but no, not me, I stick pallets in front of it instead and as if that wasn't bad enough I tied the pallets to the scaffold with bright blue twine.
This is so not what I had in mind but here is the finished disaster result

How not to make a pallet wood fence

Atrocious isn't it. I so didn't have this in mind when we decided to start landscaping the garden.
And all because these boys keep demolishing my garden and plants. Going to have to have a permanent area sorted for them soon though because we need to be landscaping the half of the garden they're now banished to. Would you believe these guys have 4 acres they can destroy other than my garden........

Atlas & Huntly, the reason my garden is a mess and now sports a naff fence.

As if the front view wasn't bad enough here's the back view and what I have the pleasure of seeing whenever I work out there

Oh the shame!

I'm hoping that Mr TG will either hate it or take pity on me and help me sort something else out because I just cannot work with that lol.

On another note, I inspected the veg beds and garden beds round at the polytunnel today and one of the first things popping through is this

Garden thug - Horsetail

Grrrrrrrrr! Blinkin Horse tail. This stuff is the bane of my life round the polytunnel area because the ground is boggy near the pond and this stuff thrives there. I have never come across such a rampant, tenacious impossible to kill weed in all my life. I could ignore it if it stuck tot he pond edges but it comes up through the veg beds, the flower beds and even in the polytunnel.
I hate this stuff!