It’s not a great secret that I had let my garden get way past being unruly. This was partly due to my tendency to procrastinate, but also worsened by disheartened a couple of times when I might have done something about it.
4 years ago, I got some guys in to do some work for me, and they were a disaster – I ended up sending them packing. One of the things they did was fill all 4 of my veg troughs with clay, topped with about half an inch of compost – instead of the “good soil” they had quoted.
This brought my gardening to a dead end for the year – I was totally disappointed and furious, and didn’t want to face the disaster.
In 2020, I dug out about half of the clay in each trough. It was hard work, but I managed it eventually. The idea was that it would give me about 8-10″ of good soil on top to grow, meanwhile I would add stuff that would condition and break up the clay. As a result, I actually got some growing done, but ultimately, it didn’t solve the problem. The troughs still didn’t drain properly, and some of my veg rotted.
Over the next 2 years, I didn’t do that much out there, and it got overgrown again. In 2022 I got new gardeners in – this time a crew I would happily use again. I hired them to do my front lawn, but while they were here they also weeded my back garden, and dug out all the soil (and clay) from the troughs. They offered to refill them, but I decided to cope with that myself.
It was a good job that I did, because I found that one of the troughs was completely rotted, and another had lost the central baseboard, although it looked repairable. All down to the clay, I believe.
Again, I fell into procrastination. I thought I was just going to fill the newly emptied troughs and then plant them, but now I was faced with questions like:
- Was the rotted trough at all usable?
- Was the broken trough repairable?
- Even though two troughs looked ok, would it be better to scrap them and replace the lot with new, as they were conveniently empty? As if they succumbed 2-3 years from now, they would then be full of soil again.
Considering this made me put off doing anything with the garden for a whole year. I also started avoiding even looking at the garden, and the weeds and brambles proliferated.
This was the result. But see the next post for better news.
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