Relocating the Fig Tree ... Six on Saturday

When we built our fig tree planter, we packed out the base with layers of bricks to make an inner wall below the soil level, to confine the tree roots.  This is supposed to improve fruiting.

However, when combined with the soil mix and a fig tree that's grown considerably larger in the past three years, it also makes the planter extremely heavy !   The weight hasn't been a problem until now, because we've never tried to move it more than a few feet, and then we just skidded it around on its base.

But this week we decided to relocate this planter to the new paved area at the front corner of the garden, created when we demolished the old greenhouse.   This new spot gets much more sun throughout the course of the whole day, although it's not quite as warm as the old location which is a semi-enclosed sun trap formed by the kitchen wall, workshop extension wall and the boundary fence at the east.

old location, sheltered and very warm, but only
a few hours of direct sunlight each day 

So, how to move this very large planter from outside the back door and around to the new paved area, a distance of some 30 metres ?

Gardening on the other side of the world ...

A few months back, I stumbled upon the Australian equivalent of the BBC's Gardeners' World television show, i.e. ABC's Gardening Australia.

This programme has been running for over thirty years down under, and I think it's quite good.  There's typically more than 40 shows each year, all of them an hour long.

I've streamed several episodes that were broadcast over the past few years, and as well as seeing some wonderful new native and exotic plants (and pests) you can also pick up some really interesting hints and tips, and see how the approach to cultivation and pruning etc, often of the exact same plants, differs significantly from what's common practice at home. 

Water conservation and re-use for irrigation is also a very big theme throughout the shows.   And there are some other very interesting differences.   The presenters bang on all the time about how great it is to have a north-facing garden, which of course is not ideal here in Europe.

In the northern hemisphere, the sun appears to travel in a clockwise arc from east to west throughout the day.  But of course, south of the equator it appears to travel counter-clockwise, and in the northern sky.  And although I knew this already, having travelled in southern Africa and South America, it's not something I've ever really given much thought to in gardening terms - south equals sun is an ingrained concept here !

The programme features regular presenters from most of the Aussie states, from the tropics in the far north, the subtropics of coastal Queensland, Perth in the west, the arid heartlands of the country and the temperate regions around most of the southern coastline.

But it's the stuff from the cooler regions of Victoria and Tasmania that I find most fascinating.  They grow a lot of the same flowers and edibles that are garden favourites here in the UK, too.

Building a new Greenhouse - Part 3 - Six on Saturday

This is the final instalment of our major project to demolish the old greenhouse, clear the space to make a paved courtyard area and build a new greenhouse alongside, re-using the glass panels.

Since the last post, I've terminated the incoming power cable from the mast, although I haven't yet ran an internal cable from the isolator and installed a socket point.  We've no pressing need for electricity in the greenhouse at this time of year, but in the autumn we'll likely install some LED lighting and the sockets can also be used for heated propagators etc next year. 

The aluminium louvre covers for the rear upper vents arrived, and these were fitted in five minutes.

isolator switch, and vent louvre from the inside ...

Building Raised Beds - Six on Saturday ...

Yet another lockdown garden landscaping project ...

Inspired by some new raised beds I saw during a review of the Six-on-Saturday submissions recently, I decided to re-configure our main vegetable growing space, referred to as the 'side bed' in our garden layout. 

We have several types of vegetable seeds germinating in cells in the greenhouse, and our trays of leeks and onions sown earlier in the year are too small for planting out yet, so we've still plenty of time to prepare these particular vegetable beds.  We've already planted out garlic in the front bed, and sown radishes and spring onions in the cold frame.

Here's the 'before' picture of the space, although this was actually taken after I'd already relocated our large stainless steel table, which itself took a couple of hours what with first moving our quince tree (it's in a large planter), putting down a weed membrane, repositioning a few paving stones to fit under the table legs, emptying the shelf of all the bags of compost & stones, then shifting the table and replacing everything.

the side bed - that's our cold frame on the right, with the glass removed ...

To make the new raised beds, I still had a lot of pieces of unused wood lying around after the new greenhouse build, most of them offcuts of various lengths but also four full-length timbers.  I'd intended to use this wood to re-make the garden gate, but that job can now wait until later in the year at which time, hopefully, the timber yards will be open again.

"Is this some kind of bust ?"

"Well, it's very impressive, yes, but we need to ask you a few questions".

In memory of the actress Gina Mastrogiacomo, who died in 2001 aged 39 ...  I first saw this film in a cinema in San Diego when visiting a friend who worked in the shipyards.

Anyway, at the end of a business trip to the Netherlands in early February of this year, my wife and I stayed in a hotel on the seafront at Scheveningen for our last night. 

Scheveningen - photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

On the morning of the Sunday, before we drove to catch the overnight ferry departing from Ijmuiden to Newcastle, we visited a large and popular fleamarket in the centre of The Hague and one of the things we bought was a large plaster bust, for 20 euros.

It's a good size, around 550 mm (22") tall.  I thought it might be a copy of some famous sculpture, but if so then I couldn't find any reference to the original during an internet search after we'd brought it home.   I also researched the subject matter to see if I could identify a particular Greek or Roman goddess, but that also failed due to a lack of iconography - the girl in the bust is simply holding a shawl around her shoulders, and is not carrying anything.

We thought the bust would look good on a plinth as the centrepiece within our new circle in the front garden.

The only problem being, of course, that it's cast in plaster and not resin or concrete, so if it was left outside unprotected it would likely dissolve into a puddle of gypsum slurry after the first heavy rains.

Back in February we'd bought some specialist stone-effect spray paint and clear lacquer to protect it - the paints actually cost more than we'd paid for the bust - but it was too cold and wet for painting at that time.

The paint was to turn it back into its original colour, because it had been hand-painted by a previous owner and they hadn't made a very good job of it.  The lacquer is required so that the bust will shed water without it soaking in to the surface of the plaster and causing damage.

So, during a recent spell of fine weather, it was time to tackle this mini-project.

Financial Planning - 2020 Review

We're now seven years into the 10-year plan, and so here are the usual two graphs :-

SAVINGS POT to Mar-20

SIPP POT to Mar-20

After a very good year in 2019, we had been creeping ever closer to the targets, which will be met when the combined portfolio reaches a 225% increase over its March 2013 baseline value.  

And then 2020 arrived ...

Building a new Greenhouse - Part 2 - Six on Saturday

Following on from our Part 1 post last week, this is where we left the project.

The first post described the process up to completion of the basic timber framework.