I like gardens and the colour but not gardening. But you can’t have one without the other. So I got to over the last week or so in helping Lorraine get the gardens and trees a little bit more useable. Making them useable at our age means making garden beds raised.
A couple of weeks ago she bought through TEMU a corrugated iron garden bed which we had to assemble in the carport prior to its placement in the garden area. We did intend to go out to the place where they sell soil and purchase some that we could the use the wheel barrow to get the soil from the trailer to the garden bed.
We decided that that seemed like hard work so we decided to go to the local Mitre 10 and buy the soil by the bag. It saved the back but cost the pocket. Things seem to growing well. Lorraine has planted corn and beetroot in that garden. Not sure how the corn will like the winter cold but it is doing OK so far.
During this last week, we decided to build another raised garden bed ourselves. This one was made of plywood and lined by a material frame which we had stored away some time ago. We had to suck up the wheel barrowing (suck it up princess as they say) this time because the soil was free.
Our neighbour had a load of soil dumped on his foot path and told us to go ahead and use all that we needed. We managed to get the bed filled up and covered in mulch ready for planting. I think Lorraine had planted snow peas and some other kind of peas. Not sure how they will all grow because we are now officially in the season of winter. But she will give it a go.
Once that gardening was finished, I had to move on to the fruit trees in the back of our allotment. Surprisingly I received for my upcoming 80th birthday a small battery chain saw on a long pole suitable for trimming the high branches of the trees. It worked really well. We had already done the circus trees with the battery chain saw but these trees were too high to be treated in that way. So the extension saw was needed.
The trimmed trees included a custard apple tree (it has provided us with some very good tasting custard apples), an avocado tree (it has provided us with almost no avocados so hopefully the trimming with encourage it to do so) and two mango trees (they supplied no fruit this year but hopefully will smarten up for next year).