ᐅ Garden Photos Chat Corner

seth0487 schrieb:

What are you using to grout the stones?

You should use pozzolanic cement, as it prevents efflorescence. As long as your path and the granite blocks are level with the ground, you don’t need to lay them in two rows. One row between the lawn and the flower bed isn’t enough, since 9-11cm (4-4.5 inches) is clearly too narrow.

We’re still far from finished after about three-quarters of a year, but I’m happy with our progress so far. Last year, at least, we got the lawn, the terrace, the garden shed, and the surrounding hedges checked off our to-do list.

With a baby, you really notice how limited time is, so right now the motto is “Only work that saves work.” The bark mulch has so far done a good job keeping the weeds under control. I had really wanted to place the granite cubes around the garden shed, but that keeps moving further down the priority list. Since neither of us is really skilled in garden design, we’re looking forward to the ideas from our gardener; the first meeting was very good, with lots of suggestions to make the garden less boring but also low-maintenance.

Nordlys schrieb:

We only had three millimeters (0.12 inches) of rain throughout April and up to May 19. You water and irrigate, but growth is slow,

@Nordlys It is more humid here, but I know the soil conditions. It's good that we were able to drill a well or dig down, as groundwater is usually found at about 2.9 meters (9.5 feet). The inexpensive pump from the hardware store, costing a couple hundred euros, has been sitting in the hole for over 15 years and works well. I took it out once to see how it looked – probably didn’t need to. You can save quite a bit over time here.

In the new house, there probably won't be any groundwater access anymore.

Well, before drilling a well, I prefer to use the water meter we installed and registered with the water utility. I pay 1.50 per cubic meter (cbm) for that, and no sewage charges. That is manageable. Karsten

Nordlys, so we actually moved in around the same time – but we, as I said, into an older building with an existing garden.

I’ve generally had good experiences with plants bought from clearance sales. Especially in autumn, I like to buy a variety of heavily discounted plants. That is usually the best planting season for most plants anyway, and DIY stores want to clear out their stock before winter. These plants often don’t look great at first, but they typically recover well.

Here, we had almost no rainfall this April, and hardly any last year either... but so far, this May has been okay. I also have a separate water meter so I don’t have to pay sewage fees on the water I use for watering. Additionally, I have a total capacity of almost 1800 liters (475 gallons) stored across six rain barrels, so a lot of water is collected when it does rain.

Ares, that’s a good start. What kind of shrubs do you have in that row?

Rain barrels will be useful too

We are currently warned of heavy rain
First, my plants get sunburned, and now they are being drowned

We are very lucky to have a well. It was especially useful last year—otherwise, my mother-in-law’s English lawn wouldn’t have survived. We also managed to keep the neighbor’s lawn alive over the summer; they had to reseed it and gladly accepted our offer of help.

On Saturday, I took the motorized single-axle cultivator and worked over the vegetable patch. This year, the vegetable selection is limited; there are so many other tasks to handle that I have to cut back a bit. Still, there will be lettuce, beans, zucchini, and pumpkin, while tomatoes and cucumbers are growing in the greenhouse anyway. Part of the vegetable patch will be planted with flowers—they look nice and also benefit the soil and the small creatures living there. Hopefully, next year the patch will be fully cultivated again.