Winter Builds and Blues

It has been a long and cold winter, and little has been going on in the garden. If I'm honest it's not looking great and it's rather depressing looking at it. But that's winter in the garden for you. 

It's time to get moving and do some work and I have plenty of plans and ideas for this year. I even have an event to prepare for, more on that another time. So today I have started building a bird house or more appropriately a bird and bug hotel. It will be about 7 feet high once in place and have 4 bird house and a big box in it.

You can see that it's coming along well, I just need some dry and mild weather to get it finished. It's made out of an old plasterboard pallet donated to me by my Neighbour Joe! He knows I am a pallet feind!!

Small Vertical Garden Update

Last year I posted about some of the recycling projects I had been doing (A poor gardeners addiction) and one of the things that I had made was a vertical wall garden. I finally got round to planting it up last week and though it looks a little rough around the edges at the moment I am sure it will soon fill out and look alot better.

I chose a few different plants that I hope will cover up the structure! There are two ferns, two grasses and a Periwinkle that have taken up residence so far and I have also got some Viola to finish it off. The idea being that these are all pretty effortless plants growing in varying conditions and of course evergreen so one its established its a wall of greenery all year round!

This isn't a big pallet, any bigger I would have really struggled to move it with all the compost in it. Its going to stay there until it falls to bits!

A Poor Gardeners Addiction

I have been a busy bee in the garden recently with several little projects. Two of which have been garden planters for next year. With money being tight both have been made with free wood and things I had around the shed! I posted a few months ago a strawberry planter made from old waste pipe which worked well and I promised an up date on how well it was doing. Well nearly all is good with the planter however next spring I will make one big change to its design and that is to install an irrigation tube inside it. I found when watering it I was wasting large amounts of water and feed as it ran of and out of the planter. This addition will get its own post I'm sure.

I have to admit something now, I have a problem, a problem that is slowly taking over my everyday thoughts and effecting important decisions in my life! I am addicted to PALLETS! I have even started stealing them! I walk down a road and see one there I will come in the night and steal it! I spend hours of my life thinking about them, what i can make with them and where i can get some from! Its just not healthy anymore.....but I am just not ready to give them up.

Over the last year or so I have collected a few and made a few little planters here and there like this...

Its pretty ugly but my carrots did fine it it! I also built a garden theatre/shelf for plants, a gate and a bird house.

Now I've taken the next step in pallet addiction, THE WALL PLANTER!

This is an extremely common thing to do amongst the Pallet addicted peoples of the world, numerous examples can be found on the web if you go and look! This is my own very ugly one. Built with the pallet my greenhouse glass came on and some left over pallet bits. The back of the pallet is lined with some old hemp sack I had in the shed. I reckon many of you are looking at it and thinking "what a pile of ugly s#*t" and you would be right. But a lick of paint some compost and some plants it will come into its own! I hope.