2 Days Digging

Hard work ! Well done.
Added to GoYpedia.

Thanks Terra. Had a break from it today, be back out there tomorrow.

Good idea to take a break and go back with renewed enthusiasm !

That's the idea, that and give my poor arms a rest lol. Let's hope it works lol.

wow, well done! look after your back - it doesn't normally complain until the day after, when it's too late to do anything baout it!

Thanks Fran. My back hasn't been too bad, it's more my hands that keep getting me and my forearms. Still only half way down the garden :-( boy will I be glad when it's done.

hope your back contnues to behave - I reorganised both my sheds yesterday, and today I'm doing Quasimodo impression!

not much can be done about arm strain when digging hard ground, sadly (lol other then getting soemoone olse to do it or using a machine), and it's hard to sak them in a Radox bath unless yo ulie face down.

how much have you done in percentage of what's still to do?

Ouch, hope your back is feeling better soon. That sort of work can be so hard on a back. It's a wonder we don't all end up crawling round permanently.

Lol it's really hard to soak anything in a bath here.... We've only got a shower lol.

We've dug about half way now and filled 1.5 wheelie bins with roots that we've dug out. Fingers crossed it will be dry this weekend and we can go back out. Generally we average a fence panels width a day. Although the last time we were slower, simply because of the sheer amount of roots we were finding - nearly triple anywhere else in the garden! We've got about 4 days work left (with any luck)

Would love to just hire a rotavator, but with all the mares tail I dare not.

only a shower here too, sigh; it's more hygenic and economical, but all the same, it does have drawbacks ...

I'm having an easy day today, catching up on paperwork (got as far as catching up with GoY, lol) - think I'll work on "every other day" garden work.

are you chucking the root rubbish? if it stays dry, they might dry out to be the basis of a bonfire, even a small one

wow, someone must have loved those plants! or else neglected their clearing to let them run this rampant.

four days? call it a week, with rest-days between :-} I'll do a "no-rain" dance for you.

not ever used a machine, or seen one in use. I'm guessing that a rotivator would break up the soil, mill it and put it back down; this obviously would'nt be any use with tiny weed seeds.

I usually prefer a shower, but when you've been hard at work there's nothing like soaking away the aches in a bath is there.

I've had an easy day as well. Spent the morning on GOY now working on getting the house clean and dinner done.

Yeah we're just chucking the root rubbish. It's pretty much all mares tail (aka horses tail). After spending hours getting it out I wouldn't risk letting it back in lol. It's extremely invasive stuff, regrows from the tiniest bit of root and in our garden it doesn't need help lol. We had a serious infestation of the stuff after years of neglect. Unfortunately it pretty much laughs in the face of weed killers. Best method seems to be dig it out and keep yanking anything that rears it's head. Eventually it will die.

Lol thanks Fran. Current forecast for Saturday is torrential rain :-s hope not.

Your about right on the rotavator. Not used one myself but understand it to make the work much easier. No good here though as it would just break up the mares tail roots into little pieces and make the problem 200 times worse. Definitely not worth it.

lol the only real solution to weeds is concrete, but that'd rather defeat the object of having a garden in the first place. sueen thouhgt; unless you dug pits and concreted the sides and bottom, made "sunken troughs". but that would really be hard owrk

Well there's a thought. We had a concrete path - complete with mares tail in the cracks. Lol.

awk! lol get a small swimming pool installed, that has to be watertigbt and should be weed-proof!

the garden at my old place, such as it was, had narrow borders of soil round the edge, with a layer of bricks 6-9" down. too shallow for plants, but the weeds loved it

Lol I suppose you could always fill the pool with top soil - could be one heck of a bog garden.

Wow that's shallow. Bet your gals you've got your new place.

not half, Sam! lol first famine, now the feast. really should be doing more, but worried taht i'll do the wrong thing at the wrong time, so safer to do nothing.

but the grass does need cutting - been hearing the hum of mowers all around, but don't have one, not sure i'd be safe with one, and not going to try cutting by hand! eventually I hope to get most of the lawn taken out and put raised beds in.

lol wonder if anyone would want a lawn? they'd have to come and take it up themselves!

It can be a bit worrying when your not sure what your doing. Most things have survived me though lol. I've recently found an old TV series on you tube. It's called how to be a gardener by Alan titchmarsh. Fairly basic stuff but quite good. Series 2 looked more at designing gardens.

Is there anyone in your street who could help with the lawn. A local teen may help for £5 a go.

Lol you never know, free to a good home (or very cheap) someone is bound to accept

I never knew there was a second series! I'll have to check YT to see if it's there, thanks for that.

I'm in the process of writing to the HA to ask, amongst other things, if they can give me contact details of the gardener they used to tidy; at least they should know a bit already about the garden.

i really need someone to talk to, to discuss what can be done and what's fantasy! i don't mind giving the lawn away, so long as i have something to replace it with before the space where it used to be starts to look 'orrible.

No problem, let me know if you can't find it, I'll see if I can find the link I used.

If your after landscapers / gardeners you could try the Shropshire Trader Register (trader register.org.uk I think) pretty sure Shropshire Trading Standards have the scheme set up. It's just a register of local home improvement traders. Work isn't guaranteed but Shropshire Trading Standards will have full contact details for the traders and the traders sign up to a code of practice (basically promise to be fair and honest). Much safer than using someone from the yellow pages, or someone who knocks on the front door.

Id expect a lot of the decent traders would be happy to tell you if your ideas are feasible.

If your after design ideas I spent hours on www.houzz.com. Free to access, there's thousands of photos and blogs of various ideas. Largely USA based but great for inspiration.

thanks, Sam! I have th elink for the Traders, someone very kindly supplied it before (may well have been you :-})

lol I have an issue with Bouzz - you have to sign up even to look at their pictures, cos there's a banner right across the middle of the page. I wrote to them and told them jthat if they gave me the option of signing up or not, I very likely would - but I objected to them trying to force me to sign up just. ha, told Pinterest the same. Give me a choice and I'll take it; try to force me and my instinct is to lift two fingers

Haha I can't really blame you for that. I have found the site really useful. I've had loads of help finding design ideas for the front room and garden from it so definitely don't begrudge signing up. Agree with Pinterest though - not worth the effort.

What I really object to is that signing up lets them put cookies on my pc so they can then track me, ie spy on me!

Loads of websites use cookies these days. I've stopped noticing now

I don't mind if it's a site I'm going to go back to, but if it's a one-off flyby, just to check out a pic ...

every now and then I clear out all cookies, which means I have to re-register wiht all my usual sites; wish there was some way of keeping them separeate from the rest.

lol probably I'm over-reacting, but I was never allowed privacy as a kid, was always being spied on, and I deeply resent it now!

I've used Houzz a lot, so really don't mind signing up to that one.

Can't blame you for overreacting, I'm sure I'd be the same if not worse if I'd had the same growing up.