Wednesday 12 March 2014

Painting and Gardening

Welcome to my new follower, Shirley McLaurin via Bloglovin.

Apart from a few cold blustery periods, these last few days have seen me in the back garden, painting the raised vegetable beds. I do these every year. They don't need it from a 'saving the wood' point of view, but look so much nicer when done:

Bed 1 before being painted - still got one side to do but need more paint!
Bed Two after being done - it has house most of my strawberry containers over the winter:
Bed Three (a few more strawberries) is also done and here is Bed Four:
The table seat combo behind lives there during winter but moves into shade during the warmer months. Then our larger metal table and chairs go there.

This raised bed, has had a bag of potting compost dug into it to bring it to the level needed and also give it a bit of food. It has been covered all winter and I had to remove a bit of moss growing on its surface. After titivating it, the soil was very disturbed the next morning (cat or bird, am not sure). I had just enough paint to redo the wood on its net covered top.

All the beds have net covers and as you can see from the two photographs at the top, the soil in these is low enough for most vegetables to grow without needing to remove them. Bed Four however, has its net cover raised up on wooded blocks as the vegetables grow, then eventually, when the vegetables are getting too big, it is removed.

Bet you are wondering what the tin can is for near the leg? DB inserts a hook between the planks and hangs wet but cleaned paintbrushes there - the can catches the drips so they don't stain the gravel!

Despite an annual cutback, the mistletoe keeps on growing:
I gather as a parasite, it looks after its host! I do hope so, as the apple tree is not very big!!

5 comments:

  1. We have been trying to grow mistletoe for years. We have rubbed berries into several trees over the years with no success. That's a pretty small tree you have to have mistletoe!
    Gill

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  2. Like you we tried for more than 20 years. Then this arrived all by itself, on a tree where we hadn't tried rubbing its seeds onto!

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  3. The mistletoe is lovely, my son has been trying to grow it (one of his business ideas!) but to no avail. Do you think yours got there via a bird? xxx

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    1. In the end, we both think so as it was nowhere near where we were rubbing berries in! We always used to buy mistletoe and hang it up in the garden to encourage the birds to eat the berries. Maybe that might work?

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  4. I cant believe you have got mistletoe to grow. I cant even see your apple tree for it!!

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