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!

Land clearance - again!

Mr TG is not in good books!
I went over to the polytunnel yesterday (MY polytunnel) and noticed a Fatsia missing so I asked Mr TG to come over and asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell me.
"Like what?" he says
"Anything. Anything at all?"
"Well I did borrow a plant for my new area" Yes, Mr TG has suddenly decided he's Alan Titchmarsh and could do this "Gardening lark" easily.
"Well what do you think you took?" I asked him.
"One of those Gunnera things" he said.
"Actually no, you took a Fatsia which will not survive here in such an exposed area as where you're planting stuff. Believe me. I've lost 3 so far"
"Yes but that's you, it'll grow for me" Yes, he really did think that.
"Actually it won't because you're going to get it back and I'll swap it for an actual Gunnera".

I was already a bit peeved at this point soI did a quick check of the PT to make sure nothing else had gone - it seemed ok. I went over to this new planting area of Mr TG's and noticed it looked rather full compared to the other day. I'd already donated him Willow trees and Ash trees and had promised him 4 Rhododenrons but then I noticed 2 empty fruit tree pots. As I stared at the empty pots not quite registering what I was looking at, Mr TG shouts out
"Oh yeah I had them trees too!"
"Do you even know what they are?" I asked
"Yeah trees" Oh he's so technical.
"Don't blame me when they die in your very exposed area, it's an Apple tree and a Fig tree and the winds from the sea will just kill them" I told him.
"They won't die, they'll grow for me"

Seething doesn't quite cover it.
Then looking around I noticed a lovely tree that looked suspiciously like an Apple tree that a friend had grown from seed and I had looked after and was now growing into a decent tree. I couldn't quite believe that he had pinched that too from my garden area at the greenhouse but Mr TG simply stated
"Well it was leaning where you had it and I thought it would look better here"
Now I could see the nervous look on his face as I spotted another rather lush looking specimen that I hadn't (and wouldn't have) given him.
"What the bleep bleep bleep"
"Ah yes" he says "It does look so much better there doesn't it"
"But that's my blinkin Olearia that I grew from a cutting and you've dug it up from my ruddy garden"
I'm not joking when I say the air was blue with what was coming out of my mouth.
He's basically gone along my gardens deciding what he likes the look of, dug it up and planted it in the most exposed area of the land - I was so not happy.

We've been clearing the land for a few weeks now. It started in December with the clearing of Gorse bush on a couple of acres and then the local farmer came along and did something cool with a malicious looking instrument that levelled it for us.
We then went along collecting all the dead material, large boulders and roots with this amazing piece of fun (should have purchased one years ago)

The farmer will come along again with his equipment and level it, then we'll de stone it again, then seed it and then another farmer will come along and roll it. We've been here almost 11 years and this is the first time we've ever come close to having land we are able to walk on and eventually mow.

We have Sheligeo burn running along the edge of our property and own the land on the other side of it. I was down there the other day (collecting the dog who keeps jumping the fence) and decided we really need to renovate the area. It's over run with gorse and other bramble type plants but it's a lovely area to sit and relax as it's covered with deciduous trees which isn't too common here.

This is Shelligeo burn running through the land. The wooden structure you can just about see on the right was a den made for the girls when they were younger - they used to sleep over in it with their friends but gave up because it was too scary and then they would be too scared to make their way back to the house.
The bridge is probably still serviceable but I'm not brave enough to use it.

Somewhere along the burn is a Gunnera but some maintenance is needed and I can't quite see it just yet but this marsh marigold is growing literally everywhere

 

Lots of lovely Primrose growing everywhere too. It's funny but I don't particularly like this plant and would never willingly grow it however seeing it in it's natural setting is pleasant to stumble across and I imagine there are numerous other amazing wild plants growing in this area - if only we could get to them.

Land clearance the easy way!

I'm not sure how much of the rest of the UK is joining me with some lovely mild weather but I'm loving it, yesterday was especially mild and I found myself pottering around out there with nothing more than a sweatshirt - it felt positively free to not have the bulk of 3 coats on top.

Mr TG finally conceded to getting a professional company in to clear the land. It had been difficult at first because the only local company we knew of refused to do it because of our neighbours but Mr TG went to the local source of important info (aka the pub) and found a company that would do it at a great price.
2 days is all it took to clear almost 4 acres of Gorse bush and Marsh grass, it looks a bit messy and bumpy at the moment but they will be back in a couple of weeks to mechanically harrow (or some such thing) the land and then flatten it. I guess we may be able to make use of the 2 new ride on mowers Mr TG bought on impulse after all.

Could there be a horse or two in my future!!

It's so nice to see the land open like this, my only concern being that they removed a heap of stone that acted as wind protection for the poly tunnel so I'm going to have plant alot of Willow trees along the path edge to help filter wind.
It just so happens I have willow aplenty and so yesterday I got myself plenty of cuttings and put them straight into a bucket of water to root. I have about 100 so far but I'm going to take more plus take some weeping willow cuttings.

Have treess, must plant!

Although we sit on approx 4 acres of land the majority of it is taken over by horrible spiny Gorse bush which is pretty much impossible to kill off. When we first moved here we spent the first year pulling all the Gorse up with the digger, piling it and setting fire to it - we figured that would be enough to kill it. What we didn't realise was every piece of root that got left behind would simply re shoot and run riot again within 2 years, not only that but we discovered our soil is peat based and the fires we started would re ignite up to 2 years later with just the slightest gust of wind.
Since then Mr TG has strimmed some of the land each year to keep the Gorse at bay but most of the land has just been left to do what it does. We have a lovely burn that runs through the edge of our land and is surrounded by native deciduous trees (a sight that is very rare here in caithness as most trees are Firs), unfortunately we cannot access the burn without extremely padded clothing because when Gorse prickles stab you they huuuurt, plus they leave a mark that can easily go septic.

See those spines - impossible to walk through this stuff, it forms thick dense hedges  and grows as tall as me (5ft 4) BUT the flowers are beautiful, they smell gorgeous and make the loveliest popping sound when the pods explode (although any joy is marred by the knowledge that the popping will be followed by millions of seeds setting themselves)

This year Mr TG decided he was going to make a start on clearing the land. He wanted it turned over and levelled so that we could mow it and eventually kill off the Gorse. To cut a long story short, due to the Gorse and Marsh grass no local farmer is willing to risk their machinery on it and the one company who does have the machinery won't do it because we helped a neighbour who had a dispute with them. This means Mr TG had to set about it himself - which involved strimming the area, raking it, rotovating an area several times, removing boulders and then levelling it. Bless him, I didn't think he'd be able to do it but all spring he worked on one area when he had the time between contracts and that little area now looks great. He had to stop for the summer partly because we have other more demanding jobs to do and partly because the weeds were growing back quicker than he had time to clear them so the next area will now be started on in Autumn.
His progress so far though looks great

The area to the right hand side is pretty much what the rest of the land looks like except it's covered in Gorse also. He has to go further up the way too, right up to our boundary at the house at the top.
Anyway the idea is to have land that is safe for the dogs to pelt across as currently it is full of deep digger rutts and holes so when Mr TG asked if he could have my Mountain ash trees that I had grown from seed I had assumed he would plant them around the edge or maybe in 2 or 3 clumps. Nope Mr TG decided to dot them all over the lovely green area (about 12 of them) and then pinched my garden markers I made to protect the trees! We now have a lovely green lawn that is a nuisance to mow because we have to go around so many tiny trees  and the dogs can't pelt across it because there's too many trees on it.
I'm looking forward to more of the land being completed but I think we're going to have to invest in a ride on lawn mower, just the new area takes at least an hour to mow already (it's a larger area that it looks in the photo), but I'm also keeping it tree free!

Brrrrrrr!

The weather here yesterday was nothing short of chuffing freezing! A cold wind was blowing in along with sporadic bursts of rain. When is this weather going to finally become a little more predictable? Luckily I hadn't put some of my plants in the polytunnel outside to begin hardening off because that wind would have ripped right through them, I think I'm looking at at least another month before we can trust the daytime weather here not to kill our young veg plants.

I sowed Leeks (Mussleburgh) a while ago and they've been really slow to get going this year, I know they'll grow rapidly from now on though so I guess I better decide where I'm going to plant them. For some reason this year I have not even made a planting plan for the veg, I have loads of seedlings waiting to go out and haven't even allocated them their space yet - I'm a naff veggie grower aren't I.

Not ready to go out yet but at least they're growing now.

Due to the weather I haven't managed to get stuck into more of that clay soil but I did take a picture of what I next have to 'makeover' for this landscaping plan.
I'm beginning to wonder whether this landscaping idea was one of my finer moments ...... or not!
The problem I have with that clay soil is that I have to get it dug over before summer because I will have no hope of even getting a fork 2" in if I don't. Luckily the clay soil appears to be contained to the foundation areas of the house, the rest looks like it will be pretty good.

Look at all the stones and rocks I have to move before I even begin to turn it over. Eek!

During the clear up I did find this rather neglected Black bamboo. Now some would say it looks dead - me included - but I'll hang on to it and see if resprouts.

Not looking too hopeful I admit.

I hope the spring weather is warming up wherever you are.

Plans are afoot!

I've spent a fair bit of my free time over the last few days absorbing as much information as I can from Rachel Mathews free workshops and her blog and I finally have a finished plan of what the garden will look like once we've finished the major landscaping. It's a basic plan but it's a plan all the same - I'll share it some time soon.
My main focus with this garden makeover is that it costs as little as possible and where possible I want to use existing materials. I do not want to buy materials in!
I'm quite lucky because I've hoarded plenty of stuff, we recently aquired 50 or so wooden railway sleepers in varying sizes, we have a huge heap of old stone from the demolished part of the house and we have heaps of old slate, ideal for shovelling into Mr TGs mixer after smashing them to pieces to get the rounder, softer edges.
I have to admit that once I went out there with spade and shovel in hand I became quite overwhelmed with the challenge I had set myself - my plan includes alot of those heavy sleepers and stone!
Once again Mr TG came to the rescue and got me started, in fact what he did in just a couple of hours would have taken me all week but it means I can see where it's going and I suddenly don't feel so overwhelmed by it all.

Here's the first area he started at. The right hand side of the photo needed sleepers bedded down and all those stones & gravel removed to create flower beds.

Crikey I wouldn't even have bothered with a string line, I'd have gone by eye. I am such a lazy gardener!

 

It really didn't take him long at all to get those first few sleepers in for me and now I can begin to clear the stones etc on the right. There is quite a large area you can't see to the right of the image and it's going to house a large pond which will sit one sleeper higher than the edging sleepers and there will also be a patio area (as it's a sun trap) which will be slighter higher than the pond so that the garden, pond and patio will essentially be 3 levels. Make sense?
Initially I hadn't intended to have a pond here as we have a mini lake round near the polytunnel but we want to get some more Koi and although they thrived for many years in the mini lake an Otter family moved in to the coast just down the road and every other year when the youngsters move away to find their own territory they eat all our fish en route. It took us several years, several stock replenishments and one encounter with an Otter outside this year to realise what was happening.
I also laughed at Mr TG's idea of a patio in that sunny area too because I've always moaned that I needed to plant some of my more tender plants in that area but never could because the house render isn't finished. But the area IS a suntrap as it faces south (Yup I have a lovely South facing garden) and I do find myself sitting there in the summer so in my cunning new plan I have included a patio there but still have loads of planting space for my sun loving plants.

The walkway between the sleepers will eventually have a pergola and climbing Roses.


A view from our bedroom upstairs. The lines to the sleepers that create beds going into the garden are not quite perfect but surprisingly it doesn't bother me. It will be invisible anyway by the time I've crammed plants in. I deliberately chose to have the beds at different lengths too because I didn't want a central walkway going into the next area of the garden.
The area to the bottom of the photo goes back much further than you can see and is where the pond and patio will go

I have ALOT of stone clearing to do before the ground is anywhere near suitable for plants plus Mr TG has to protect those drains first.

But first I have to continue with setting in sleepers for beds (or re-setting as the case is in some places) and if you imagine you're standing in the new area where I said I was building a pergola THIS is what you're faced with

Not pretty is it! And my plan had to incorporate both of the aviaries even though they're due for rebuilding.
All the sleepers have to come out and be re-set and most of the plants on the right hand side will be coming out so that the ground there can be improved (it's simply full of Aquilegia) and those washing posts have to be set elsewhere.
Plus all  the exposed fencing (this view shows the North/East direction) has to be sheltered in some way because those winds rip through my plants.

A few years ago I would have said that I could get this pretty much finished in 6 months but I'm not quite so nimble as I once was and am packing a few extra pounds too so realistically I haven't set myself a time scale - it takes as long as it takes. I can't devote all of my time to it because I have other areas of the land that need attention too such as the greenhouse and veg beds.
It's certainly a project though!

Honesty. Do you really wanna hear it?

I like to think that I want honesty from every person I have in my life but today I kind of wavered and figured maybe I'd like to hear a little white lie.
You see I've been pottering away in my garden for a while now, I've laid many sleepers for edging, carted heaps of soil from acres away, built stone walls, built a shed - you get the picture right? Well I've had this niggle in the back of my head for ages now because my idea of the perfect garden is an enclosed space, full to the brim with flowers, curved beds and garden rooms rather than one huge expanse. What I have in reality are straight lines, odd planting and one huge expanse where you can stand in one spot and see the entire garden.
So today just as I was about to pick axe away at some solid ground to install another sleeper (I make things up as I go along don't forget) I stopped and asked Mr TG
"Do you think the garden is boring?"  What a stupid thing to ask and I knew where it was going to lead.
"Do you want the truth?" enquires Mr TG.
"Errrrm.... yes" says I.
"Then Yes it is boring. Very"
Well I did ask didn't I!  We then entered into a veeeeeery long discussion about everything that is wrong with the garden and basically Mr TG knew it wasn't what I would consider an ideal garden. He then had the idea to go indoors and draw our plans out (because they differed immensely) and I have to say I was very reluctant to do that because LINDA DOESN'T DO PLANS, but I went along with it anyways.
The end result was that I was seriously concerned about Mr TG's sanity! Seriously his plan - while spotted with good ideas - resembled the aerial view of a theme park. Bless him he even made plant suggestions, none of them would have a hope in hells chance of surviving here but he did make suggestions.
Anyway the final outcome is that I was so worried that Mr TG would begin to implement his theme park plan that I have my own plan down on paper and I ain't deviating from it .......  well ok maybe a few deviations as I go along.

So Mr TG has been encouraged to return to his area of expertise - the ploughing. Sounds awful doesn't it but I don't mean it to. If it wasn't for his determination and strength (despite of or in spite of his COPD) the land would never get done and we wouldn't be looking forward to an expanse of grass as we drive down the lane

This work is very time consuming. First Mr TG has to strim or mow the grass (he ran out of gas for the blow torch - thankfully) then rake it, then mow it again, then rake it, then rotovate it, then remove big lumps/stones/roots, rotovate it again and again, rake it level and then finally flatten it.

This is the adapted roller he uses

Believe me that thing weighs an absolute fricking tonne and Mr TG drags that over every inch of the land he's cultivated.

Once it's all finished ( he has to go to the tree line) we'll grass seed it and hopefully - fingers crossed - we'll have an area that we can keep looking neat with a lawn mower.

Land clearing

Well, we've had another day of warmish spring weather and no wind to speak of, finally it feels as though spring might have sprung - or is just a false sense of security!
This photo shows just what the difference is between March 2013 and March 2012

Looks like we had it in the 20's last year and have only reached 3 degrees this year, however I'm looking on the optimistic side and hope that seeing as we had a pathetic summer last year despite higher spring temperatures, maybe ... just maybe we'll get a better summer this year due to the rubbish spring temperatures. Does it even work like that!

Anyway, we may have woken up to a hard frost/snow this morning but that sun soon shone through and Mr TG was back out there rotavating the land.
The 4 acres we have here is terrible ground. It's smothered with thick marsh grass that forms huge ground lumps, is full of digger ruts and covered with Gorse bushes so every area Mr TG works on has to first be strimmed to the ground, all the grass and weeds raked, then the area rotovated, levelled and finally flattened with a makeshift roller.
Hard, hard work and I'm just hoping that Mr TG doesn't have it in his head that he can do the whole 4 acres this way

See the makeshift roller on the right? It should attach to the back of a ride on lawnmower but it doesn't work so Mr TG has adapted it so that he can pull it by hand.

Naff crumbling wall huh.

You may wonder why we haven't just got a big machine in to do the work in a fraction of the time but to cut a long story short - we can't.
We had a couple of locals out to give prices for the work but all insisted that the marsh grass and gorse would knacker their machines, there is but one place that has the equipment needed apparently but that place refuses to do it because a few years ago we helped our neighbour with a dispute they had with this company. The worse bit to that is that we no longer speak to the neighbours!
Anyway Mr TG is just about stubborn enough to do it all himself and all it costs us is the diesel for the tiller, though tonight Mr TG has mentioned taking his Uber blow torch to the grass first for the rest of it.
Worried?  Who me?? About an Uber blow torch in the hands of someone who has no sense of danger?? You freaking betcha I am!

Another sickly plant.....

I posted about my sickly Skimmias the other day and now I'm posting about my sickly Camelia - another ericaceous loving plant.
Unlike the skimmias that were potted wrong and in unsuitable soil this Camelia is in a large enough pot, in ericaceous compost and has been fed according to instructions as often as required, I'm pretty sure this can't be Chlorosis.
And yet it still looks like this

Despite obviously ailing from something the Camelia is covered with healthy buds as usual

 

Anyone have any idea of what it suffers from? I'd really love to know.
All I can think of from a little internet searching is that maybe it's getting too much sunlight. I keep it in the polytunnel as it would not survive up here outside and it isn't shaded in any way. I wouldn't have thought that would be an issue but apparantly Camelias do not like early morning sun - who knew!
But would excess sunlight cause this? Could those brown splodges be burns?
I've quickly moved it to a slightly more shaded area of the polytunnel to avoid too much sunlight but  I'm not even sure if this is what ails it. HELP!! I love my Camelia and would hate to lose it cos it produces flowers like this

On a brighter note, guess who managed to get out in the garden today? Go on guess.....
Yup, yup, yup the snow (what there was of it) has gone, the winds have dropped to barely noticeable and this means the temperatures are not quite so cold as they have been.
So myself and Mr TG (rare day off from work, well his usual work anyway) spent the day outside - I was clearing ugly borders ready for moving around of perennials and a serious mulching and Mr TG was rotovating and everything else associated with being stubborn enough (and foolish enough?) to believe he can turn all the land over with just his trusty rototiller.

He's actually done alot more than is shown here but I wasn't nearby to catch a picture of him rotovating (I'll snag him tomorrow though) so a raking picture will have to suffice for now.
He's determined to do this himself (maybe to prove his COPD does not affect him one iota -insert rolling eyes here) and luckily we're not bothered about a perfect field. we just want to get it levelled enough to mow it (it's full of digger tracks and Dane holes and a danger to walk on at the mo).