Turning back garden into veg patch

[GinAndOnIt]

We've got quite a big space in the front garden which we're slowly clearing/transforming, and just a small garden out back.

We had planned a big veg patch out the front like next door but we're now thinking of turning the entire back lawn into the veg patch and keeping the front for the mature trees and borders. Is this a silly idea?

It's a raised grass area, with a small wall in front and a few steps going up to it in the middle from a small patio area. We have a table on the patio area, and don't use the grass area at all.

The back garden is also south facing, so does get the best sun. So I was thinking we could create a path (just a mown strip probably) from the steps to the back of the garden, and grow veg either side. Then it would be close to the kitchen too, which makes a lot of sense.

The only thing I'm worried about is what it will look like in winter - what do your veg plots look like? Will we just be looking at a big pile of soil for months?

I suppose that doesn't really matter, because we mostly have views of the front garden when we're sat inside, and we could pretty up the patio with pots or something maybe.

It just seems a bit extreme to dig up a whole lawn - would we be mad to do it?

Hebe 'Red Edge' seems most likely looking at Google, but I don't remember it flowering in MIL's garden. Although I may have missed it I suppose.

Just been to MIL's - apparently I have a Hellebore plant! I remember her giving it to me and saying 'this will flower in winter' but I forgot all about it until she reminded me. Will shove that in the border!

Yep, that looks a lot like a hebe to me! They can flower for quite a short time, which may explain why you missed it! Mine is a different variety, but often only really in flower for 2 weeks!

Hooray for you having a hellebore already! Your MIL sounds like she knows her stuff!

Oh, and great suggestion from book of late flowering summer bulbs!

hello!
yep, that looks like a hebe to me too. I have a dwarf one with totally insignificant flowers, but has pink/red over all the tips right through winter - it could be a bit like that I suspect.
And a hellebore too :) - I love them , and am in the process of sneaking a few more in. My principal one is a dark purple , and its flowers last for ages.

I've no idea what colour the flowers will be on the hellebore, but it will be a nice surprise! DP came home from work today with a cyclamen too :)

Ah, thats nice! hellebores are mostly white through pinky/purple, though there is a variety with green flowers too.

Everything hurts today. I thought a little bit of digging each day would be manageable, but every day I've done that slight bit more than I could cope with really, and now very sore today! Gardening is the best workout I've done in years

We have come to the decision that cardboard in the back garden isn't going to work, because lovely GinCat is treating it as a huge toilet and for diving on and making holes, whilst GinDog thinks it's lots of fun to try and dig under the cardboard

So I think we're just going to dig little bits up at a time and hopefully by Spring it will all be done.

- digging, especially in clay, is very hard work! Sometimes muscles hurt that I didn't even know I had! Ibuprofen can help if it's really bad.

Naughty Gincat for frustrating your plans! I wonder if the exact same thing would happen with weedsheeting? My guess is that it might!!

Oh it's exhausting. DP came home from work yesterday afternoon to me sat on the wet grass because I was too tired to even walk back up to the house! Then I sat and watched Gardeners World and watched Monty digging to plant his bulbs in his wonderful soil that he only had to look at for it to make a whole deep enough for daffs (Not that I'm bitter!)

The plus side is, the garden soil is a lot lighter than the clay at the bottom of the hill - I still thinks it's clay because it's covered in buttercup, but it just doesn't seem as compacted, so I'm hoping the digging of that lawn will be marginally easier. I'm only going to get rid of the turf on top, and DP will hire a rotavator to make life slightly easier! She says...

(DP just wants to spray the whole lawn with Round Up, but I'm less keen)

Progress photo of front if you're interested?

Oooh, goodness, you have been busy! That's a lot of scalping. Good job! I can see why your back might be hurting!!

Monty - or probably one of his assistants - had DEFINITELY dug over that soil before planting those bulbs! I refuse to believe clay of that heaviness just fell apart like that.

I imagine it would have been immensely satisfying to watch how easily that trench was dug had I not just come in from the back breaking garden

I am most definitely having a 'nothing' day today without the guilt. I'm itching to finish that border, but I walked down the hill this morning to take the photo above, and I could hear myself creaking

As a side note, I know it detracts attention from the planting Monty is trying to demonstrate, but I really wish they would actually show what it's like to dig in different soils.

I wonder if they think it will put people off, if they see the hard work behind it. But I feel it puts me off more by making it look easy, and it being anything but in real life! The amount of times I've popped out with a spare ten minutes to do something he's suggested, and after twenty minutes of huffing and puffing have decided it's too difficult, then given up. If there was a more realistic view of what was entailed, I would make more time for it, and be expecting it, and then more likely to complete the task. Hurumph.

Anyway, enough bitter ranting from me. Less than two weeks now until I have my very own Monty in the form of DP to help

Yes, I agree absolutely gin. The one thing non-gardeners say to me is "Bloody Gardeners' World, you can grow stuff if you have great soil like that, but my back garden is different". And I have to explain that someone has pre-dug it, that you can change soil a great deal by adding things to it, and that on the occasional shot where you do see him going into unprepared soil at Longmeadow, it's pretty claggy and difficult. It does make people think that there's a magic to his garden that they can't replicate.

They also don't do enough to show the ways that you can save work, e.g. by dumping loads of compost or manure on top of ground, and leaving the work for the worms instead of digging! Or the way that frost can break up big clods of clay. I guess such things are outside the scope of 'jobs for the weekend'!

It gets loads easier once the soil has been dug and improved so do not despair!

Gin - its an easy mistake to make, just doing a bit more, so glad you are taking it carefully. Definitely an anti- inflammatory for the sore muscles, and a hot bath with muscle soak , (or a couple of handfuls of epsom salts ) will help too.
We gardeners all hear you about the unrealistic gardening programmes, and you have just confirmed what I suspect- people dive in with no real idea of the amount of work involved, because it looks so easy on the TV, and then get disheartened.
But - you have done so much, digging up grass is just so hard!
You made me laugh about the compost with dog and cat- I hadn't taken that into consideration....and after all, you do have all winter ( unless you are in the frozen north?) I dig nearly all winter, though it tends to be easier before Christmas - its colder at the end of January into February normally and the ground much harder.

I keep staring out the window and wondering how the neighbours in their seventies manage to do so much gardening, and I keep being reminded that what they are doing is a lot easier than what we are doing, purely because their ground has been dug over year after year, whereas ours has never been touched!

I wish they would show more gardens on GW with new Gardeners/low budget/starting from scratch, that kind of thing.

book I'm in SE so hopefully we should have lots of time for digging - I roll my eyes about the cat but really, I'm very glad he ruins my garden plans and not next door's

The thing that really motivated me to start gardening like this, was having MIL thrust a load of cuttings at me and me watching them actually survive! For years I've been bloody useless at keeping plants alive, and GW makes you think you need twenty different expensive tools, along with gardening books often making plants sound a lot more high maintenance than they really are. I'm very glad I started though :)

Oh when you're bitten by the gardening bug, it's such fun, and such a learning curve. When something grows successfully and even better seeds itself, or you have worms where there were none before, it's so worthwhile. You have already achieved a huge amount - it is tough digging grass out.

Oh Sea you are so right, I'm really enjoying it. I did think to myself while I was trying to dig out a rose from the middle of a hedge, how proud I am that I'm doing it myself. I can't wait until it's finished and being able to say 'yes I dug that border, it was grass before' rather than 'oh yes our gardener did that, isn't it lovely'.

It is like any work out - you will develop those muscles and it will hurt less and less. The key thing is not to do so much that you really have to take days and days off to recover, but to keep it regular so you can do a bit and a bit and a bit over a week.

DH and I had lots of deep concrete paths in our garden before we started - the stuff was about 25-30 cm thick and bedded onto an equally deep section of hardcore. We got it out ourselves, without power tools, using just a mattock and a couple of trugs, and doing a section each day over the course of a summer. By the end of a couple of months, we could get about twice as much out as when we started in the same time And we both looked considerably different!! (An effect that I quickly proceeded to destroy with winter consumption of mince pies).

I am coming back from a lot of illness and surgery now, and my strength is so much less than what it was. I used to be able to pick up and carry a big bag of compost without really feeling it - now I struggle to do that! When something is an effort, it's easy just to stop trying or to ask someone else to do it for you, but you don't really build up your strength that way. So I am being strict with myself and forcing myself to heft, and it is slowly coming back. What I'm trying to say in this very long-winded way is that doing all this stuff might feel really rough, and psychologically overwhelming, but you will get there and it will be worth it in the end!!

A lot of older gardeners remain really strong for years - I think it's really good for you!

Yes, you do build it up. Funnily enough, at my rather older perspective, I never have problems with gardening, its usually doing something else that causes problems, and the gardening helps loose it off!

The best thing to remember when going out to start is to warm your back up first, don't just get doing heavy stuff first.
But you will find it the most rewarding ( and sometimes frustrating! :) ) hobby.

DP and I were talking about it last night, and he suggested I ought to start exercising again ! His point was that all the walking/running/buggy pushing/child lifting I've done over the years should make this a walk in the park, and although I have been rather less active than those days, I think it is just using different parts of my body, but also the same action over and over (bend, dig, lift, bend, dig, lift!)

Sorry to hear about illness troubles shove - hope you are through it now.

I'm finding it a lot more rewarding than decorating the house, that's for sure.

Have just seen an offer for 200 spring bulbs on GW email, just paying for postage. Seem to be earlier flowerers than the other spring bulbs I got free. Is it worth it? 200 seems bloody loads, considering I don't really have much space dug at the moment. Am I just swayed by the freebie?

What are the bulbs?

Those offers are decent value on the whole, though some are better than others. Postage normally works out at about £6. Tis worth checking how much equivalent bulbs might be at J Parker's! Some things like chinodoxa can be cheap by the 100.