Tuesday 31 March 2009

Restoring the London garden

I mentioned last week that we had made a start on turning our London garden over to food production. Here are some of the photos I took at the time.


The above is the bottom right hand corner of the back garden. As you can see it is heavily overgrown and behind the holly and ivy towards the left is a derelict shed. This side of the garden belongs to the upstairs flat but they don't do anything with it and are happy for us to take it over. All that corner needs to be cleared out. The bushes and shed occupy a very large space which we need. We are planning to put the hen house there.



A side view of the derelict shed. It's going soon.

The front garden is a patio area. My plan is to cover it with half barrels and pots.

The dividing wall down the side of the property is ideal for long pots and we have had 6 on them for quite a few years, mainly growing ivy but olso some herbs. Below, we have cleared out some of the pots (the ones growing the ivy, and refreshed them with some compost. They are planted out with garlic but I am about to grow spinach in them as well. Spinach is fast growing so it means I can crop it in a few weeks before the garlic really takes hold. It a useful way to get two crops for the space of one.

Somehow the raspberry obsession is still with me! Having planted over 60 in the allotment back home in Gateshead, I planted another 10 in the garden in London. The contents of the compost bin the the background were dug into the soil. To be honest, the soil on this bed isn't too bad. We've regularly dug in home made compost over the past few years.

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