[erikaz1]

I've been lurking in the background for a while now and have finally registered for an account and thought it best I say HI! I'm living in sunny North Wales and have recently moved to a house with a garden big enough to do something worthwhile with. So far I've hacked down brambles, ivy, goosegrass and himalayan balsam. I've planted somewhere in the region of 40 - 50 soft fruit bushes and am about to start preparing a patch for next year's veg project! Any tips and advice would be most welcome.

[caroline800]

Hello and welcome 

[erikaz1]

Thank you Caroline.

I've done a bit more browsing of the forums and discovered that the rather odd looking weed growing in the steps is actually horsetail. I have a feeling there are going to be a bunch more nasty surprises when I get stuck in!

[sunshineband]

Hello and welcome 

Your new garden sounds as though it has amazing potential. Don't forget to take photos as you go along, as it will change so quickly. They will be good to look back on in years to come

[Fairy Plotmother]

Ooooh! Another lurker reeled in to join the rest of us.🎣😀 a big welcome.

[Yorkie]

Welcome to the site 

[erikaz1]

You're right about the photos. When I moved in back in November, the previous owners hadn't touched it for 10 years. It took 4 days of bashing and burning to even find the boundary at the very top and many many more weeks of graft to find the sides. I was a total idiot and didn't take any photos before I started but I'm hoping a friend of mine did and still has them (fingers crossed). So far I've found a good number of raspberry canes, a lot of old glass bottles, various bits of scrap and what I believe might be the remains of a car under one of the raspberry patches. It's been an adventure so far and I'm sure there's an awful lot more work to do before it's even vaguely respectable. However, I am very pleased with my haul of fruit bushes, some scavenged, some donated but mostly B&Q specials when they were selling ALL fruit off, even the bigger ones off for just £2 each! Before Christmas I had 5 of the biggest trees removed, they really were enormous, depriving the whole place of any light at all and one was threatening to squash the house in the next big storm. Since then I've had a go at some of the smaller (probably 15 - 20m) ash and sycamore. From this I seem to have developed an impressive log store to keep me warm in the winter and gained a HUGE amount of light. The trouble with this is the weeds are now having a party and it's a daily battle to keep it all under control.

Anyway, I'm rambling! Thank you all for the kind words

[erikaz1]

Righty, it's been a while (sorry, I've been busy). I thought I'd post a little update on the garden. It's been just over 3 years since I moved in and while there's been a lot of progress, it still feels like an uphill battle. This year I made good use of the 2 greenhouses, started 2 spud patches and did my best to keep on top of things. Unfortunately work seems to have thwarted my best intentions and I've not achieved anywhere near as much as I'd have liked.

The bigger of the two greenhouses produced an impressive crop of tomatoes and I even got to try growing cucamelons for the first time and discovered they're very happy scrambling up a small piece of trellice in the corner - they're very much on the list to grow again next year.

The onions were a disaster, far too many slugs. Likewise, the radishes and beetroot came to nothing. Any suggestions for a non toxic method of slug control? I'd hate to do any damage to the two dogs.

In other news, pretty much all the big trees are now on the ground; it's certainly brightened things up a bit and the neighbour is thrilled to have his view of the valley back after so many years of being sat in the shade. The log pile is enormous and is going to be a massive job to process it all into firewood.

I'm very much looking forward to next year but I suspect there'll be plenty to do over the winter too.