Filed under: gardening | Tags: Compost, Garden, gardening, organic gardening
I must admit it has been some time since I last blogged about my efforts to produce some high quality home made Compost in my very own back garden as I have been very busy with a number of other gardening jobs, but this has been ideal in many ways, as compost naturally needs time to rot down and develop. I can however now tell you that a few months of decomposition time has allowed the compost at the bottom of my storage bin to start rotting down nicely. Hopefully, it will be fully ready to use at the start of next year once we are out of the cold season in the UK and I will have a nice bin full of organic compost ready to pass nutrients into my soil and flower beds. If you don’t have time to produce your own compost – remember it can be quickly and easily ordered online, or through your local garden centre.
Filed under: gardening | Tags: Compost, Garden Centre, grass, lawnmower, sales
Just a quick post to keep all you DIY nuts in the loop! I just managed to pick myself up an awesome new lawnmower in one of those local garden centre sales! At last I can finally get round to getting the grass in the back garden cut – its beginning to look like the amazon jungle out there – please don’t forget to add those grass clippings you collect in the back of the lawnmower to your compost heap (see my earlier posts on how to make yourself a good compost heap which will bring long term benefit to your plants and shrubbery).
Filed under: DIY, gardening | Tags: Compost, Garage, Garden, gym, lawnmower
Good afternoon one and all, it has been a while since my last post of my DIY pearls of wisdom as I have been away for 2 weeks travelling around Europe in the sunshine! I am now however suitably rested and refreshed and have spent the weekend getting back on those little DIY jobs around the house that I should have completed before I went away!
First on the hit list was the back garden. Me and my house mates spent our Saturday afternoon cutting the grass with our new lawnmower, trimming the bushes, cleaning, sweeping, tidying, weeding the flower beds and generally pottering around the garden to restore some sort of parity. Remember to put all your green waste on the compost heap!
We then set about some DIY tasks in the garage. We have decided to turn it into a gym, so before we move in our weights bench, punch bag and start hopping around like Rocky Balboa, we need to set a few things up. I got in a mate of mine who is an electrician to do the electrical wiring from our electric box in the kitchen. I then carefully pinned the wire along the house wall above head height so we don’t trip over it! We now have lighting in the garage to work with. As the roof of the garage is asbestos, we also took the time to put up a dust sheet as it is not advisable to be breathing in any asbestos dust while working out and breathing heavily! Our final touch to our DIY gym was the addition of a huge poster of the great Ali himself, hanging proudly from the garage wall. Maybe with all this DIY work I won’t even need a gym – I’m tired enough from doing the work as it is!
Filed under: gardening | Tags: cleaning, Compost, Home Improvement, weeding
Well, the sun shone all weekend and I was finally able to do a load of jobs around the garden which have been in the back of my mind since I moved into the house. As I had hoped, it really has been a busy weekend of gardening and DIY. After waking up late on Saturday morning with an inevitable self inflicted headache from heavy boozing the night before, I pulled on the old DIY overalls and set about trimming the huge hedges that overshadow the back garden and block off what little sunlight is available in this country. With the help of a lengthly step ladder secured by a friend (remember health and safety matters kids) I gingerly scaled the heights of this impressive evergreen monster. As I can’t afford (and probably don’t feel safe using) a chainsaw I had a lenghtly task on my hands trimming the hedges with hand held tools such as garden sheers. After a lengthly bit of tree trimming, I dispose of the newly cut branches by starting a compost heap in the corner of the garden. Compost heaps are an excellent way of disposing of green waste, because as they rot down they provide an excellent fertiliser for growing plants and save on money by reducing on trips to the dump or skip.
The next task in the garden was weeding the lawn, as there was seemingly more nasty weeds in their than grass! I prefer not to use and poisons or weedkiller around the garden though, as this can cause harm to birds and other animals which I wan’t to avoid – plus substances such as this can also be quite expensive. For this reason I had no other choice than to get my hands dirty again and get stuck into the lawn with a trowel. A good tip to remember when doing this is to make sure you dig out the roots of the weeds, otherwise they keep growing back! i also throw the weeds onto the compost heap to rot down.
The final job was to do a bit of home improvement and other cleaning around the house, as the house party the night before had left the place looking like a bomb had hit it. I relunctantly start cleaning up all the empty bottles and cans into rubbish bags, then get out the vacuum cleaner and clean up all the broken crisps. Ok, so I admit this isn’t strictly a DIY task, but if I don’t “Do It Myself” this time then who the hell will!? At least in the evening i finally get to put my home made BBQ to use after 2 weekends of perpetual bad weather. As I tuck into my burger it suddenly seems like all that hard work in the house and around the garden is worth while after all. 
