2023-07 Overgrown Vegetables
Our first summer with the big greenhouse, things started to get a bit out of control. The watering demands were eating up all the evenings after work and the plants were getting massive in the greenhouse. The problem became that the bigger plants, like the the Sweetcorn we had planted, were blocking the flow of air through the greenhouse and we didn’t have air vents in the sides yet. It was difficult to balance the time needs of full time work versus getting the garden developed, and other background needs got neglected.
Greenhouse
The plants in the side beds were also growing large. This first year we followed “square foot gardening” guides to try and maximise the use of the space. In hindsight, we think this spacing and the plants we used were too dense for the space. We ended up with in dense planting that looked exciting but was prone to mould and problems we couldn’t see or reach.
Although I implemented a watering system that slowly grew in size over the months, we couldn’t see how effective it was being in the dense planting, and watering my hand was difficult in the dense foliage. Getting water on the leaves, combined with alack of ventilation, also caused fungus problems. In the later months to follow the plants would also deplete the soil and start to look sickly, much sooner than expected. So the plant growing was successful in the greenhouse but for next year we’re going to go with smaller plants and less dense planting/wider spacing. That way we can do pest control and watering much easier.
Copying an idea I had seen on a Facebook group, I added wooden trim to the outside of the greenhouse. This helped cover some awkward panel joins. It also made the greenhouse look a little more rustic, and gave the door and window a normal lock for holding it open or closed. We still had a great big pile of clay and soil left over from when the greenhouse had been dug out. At 400mm deep and 36m2, there was probably about 15m2 of soil in a heap to find a home for. Although the garden is big, it’s not big enough to find a home for that volume of soil, and it’s a lot of earth to dig and move by hand.
Raised Beds
We put down woodchip around the raised beds. It was a bit frustrating buying the woodchip in bags because we know we are in a forestry area and there must be someone local who sells large quantities much cheaper. But our local contacts didn’t know of anyone. It wasn’t until later months that we identified someone that sells in cubic meter amounts and has a barn full. The much longer term plan will be to cover more area in woodchip with raised beds between.
The planting area around the garage was getting more developed but was still a bit young. The strawberries were going ok, but there is a large wildflower meadow immediately bordering it. This means that dandelions and other weeds are something we will always fight with. We’re using ground control fabric and a layer of woodchip to make life harder for the weeds.
The spacing is odd on the raised beds because we originally planned for two rows to go inside a second greenhouse. It might be in the future we rebuild them but it wasn’t a high priority at this point.
National Park
Between working full time, high gardening demands, and the feeling of neglecting my Swedish studies due to not enough hours in the day, it didn’t feel like we had much free time. But we did visit the local national park which was uplifting. I was able to practise some photography with the camera. We saw two snakes which my girlfriend almost stood on, not realising they were adders until we got home and compared the markings to guides online.
This month I also purchased some hardware to link the house and the garage together with a more permanent network connection. This was an ongoing project and I was trying to avoid implementing anything that looked like a “bodge job”. I painted the network cabinets white to match the walls in each room.
