Suggestions please

Following on from posting in the buying seeds thread, I am open to suggestions this year, hopefully to have a half decent garden year and maybe get my mojo back.

The image here shows my garden with the areas that are empty for planting as follows:

A - Approx 12ft x 6½ft

This had sweetcorn and potatoes in it this year. Potatoes did reasonably well, but I didn't earth them up so they almost certainly could have done better. Sweetcorn grew well to begin with but failed toward the end with the corn itself rock hard (I suspect lack of watering if I am honest)

B - Approx 8ft x 4ft

This has a plum tree on one side (marked P) and a laurel on the other, with a couple of conifers beyond the laurel and then a lilac in the very corner (at the end of the bed marked A) The laurel does need hacking back again as it does exclude light and forces things growing in this border to lean forward seeking to get out of the shade

C - Approx 16ft x 4ft (if gutted out)

This currently has a nice little acer that is quite happy, a shrub that I got at @shiney's open day a few years back (cannot for the life of me recall what it is, but it is a bit of a thug), a golden delicious apple tree that is tiny and just does not seem to want to get any bigger and a mop head hydrangea that is OK but only just OK. There is a gooseberry in the very corner that we've never had anything much off and to be honest wouldn't miss and there was a blackcurrant also in the corner that upped and died this year for no apparent reason - oh, and there is a rose also.

D - Approx 9ft x 2½ft (if gutted along with C)

There was rhubarb planted here last year which had found its feet, then was promptly dug up by Bailey this winter (you can imagine the language from me!) so not sure if it will come back.

R is a raspberry bed, but not sure how good they are as we got very little from them last year. We like our rasps, but I am not against ripping these out if needs be.

The image is oriented exactly as is in terms of where north is.



Considerations so far:

I think any planting will have to be done through landscape fabric to suppress the weeds, as things got right out of hand when I was in hospital and I have never managed to get it fully under control. I do have brambles that I have been fighting and continue to fight - tempted to hit them with some SBK this year.

Plum tree has been less than useless in as much as we have never had an edible plum from it. Going to try pheromone traps again this year to see if we can't resolve that.

Dogs - we have dogs, and whilst we will use netting etc to keep them off things, that is not infallible and we need to be careful with any plants that are toxic

Very, very unsure whether to do edibles or not, except maybe a few tomatoes in the greenhouse. I had a bad run with blight this year, so not even sure about tomatoes at all if I am honest.

 

C isn't really visible from the house, in fact very little is really. There are two low walls with a sort of gate opening onto the grass (the walls run from D across to the plum tree with the step onto the grass in the middle) - as part of this, I am considering putting up a fence just on the inside of those low walls to allow us to block off the back half of the garden in winter. Drainage is poor and with two dogs barrelling around on the grass playing, it is a bit of a mud bath which in turn makes life 'interesting' with champagne carpets....

Any fence would be a very simple frame and chicken wire affair I think, and rather than a gate just have a removable section of fence to put in place when we want it in winter. Not sure about that one on a number of levels though, not least that I have zero carpentry skills.

 

Would a mock orange be happy somewhere around C?

 

I would love strawberries, but every time I have tried with them I end up with vine weevil. Definitely going to go with the landscape fabric idea and sorely tempted to go with stuff like dahlias etc that will give a blaze of colour as the edibles just don't seem to work too well for us.

 

OK - fairly large changes are afoot!

As winter has progressed, the dogs have had an absolute beano tearing around the garden (which is fine) digging holes in the grass (not fine and a learning point) and dragging mud into the house, or simply being utterly filthy a lot of the time. Dogs will be dogs, but we've never been done with the carpet cleaner and washing dogs and are going through both shampoos at a frightening rate.

Yesterday, we made an attempt to 'cordon off' the back section of the garden to allow the grass to recover and to keep the dogs on the patio area for a wee while, however that failed as the little sods worked out how to get under the netting!

Thinking ahead not only to planting small seedlings out, but also to next winter we have decided that we need a better barrier so have ordered a load of treated 2" x 2", 1" x ½" and chicken wire to allow us to put up a sort of fence just behind the little walled in border at the top of the patio:





We will then have a sort of 'gate' that simply lifts out of the way and stores up the side of the shed during the summer when things are drier and the grass etc is OK.

As Bailey dug up my rhubarb, I have very little to lose so am going to take the tiller to the whole lot - as long as my rose and acer survive, everything else can go. The hydrangea isn't the best anyway, the blackcurrant has keeled over and the apple tree is all but a failure. Similar principles apply on the other side (the first of the two photos just above) where the raspberries are going to get culled also; they've been there quite a long time now and the past couple of years have been a bit of a disaster with them, so maybe they are out of steam.

The back area will be potatoes, parsnips and sweetcorn - with sweetcorn toward the back. The other borders will be easy flowers for this year (hollyhocks, marigolds/calendlula, sunflowers, lavatera, dahlia and nasturtium most likely.

Barrels will get spring onions, beetroot and maybe tomatoes, with some tomatoes in the greenhouse.

That is the gist of the plan - not a lot going on, but I think that is important for this year to be honest. Enough to be respectable whilst also letting me get my mojo back.

 

Things seemed to go reasonably well - I will probably stick some battens across the tops between the posts to add some strength, and also need to cut the posts down. Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it should do the job.








PS - that Aldi electric tiller/rotovator that I bought last year is a smashing wee bit of kit for the money it cost. The patch behind the fence in that last image was where the raspberries were until this morning.

 

Maybe some morning glory, but not much more as they are not all that sturdy to be fair

 

Turns out I am crap at this 'not gardening' lark... the seed inventory as it currently stands:

 

In my defence, a lot of those, especially the edibles I had in hand already.

 

Oh, and others I was given as part of a Christmas gift too. I may have made it a little worse by buying a mixed pack from Amazon the other day that turned out to be 12 packs of veggie seeds!