Hard Rubbish, White Stones and Celery magic!

The garden is always changing. Each day there is something new to look at, be it a fleeing rabbit who has just familiarised itself with our broccoli plants, a child’s toy sat firmly on a spring onion or the new potato plants popping up everywhere!

Then there are the changes we make, things moved or dug up, items bought, found or foraged. Now Ash will vouch for me here…I am a magpie. Not in a footballing sense, rather in the collecting of things. It is said that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I am the latter man.

Thankfully it is something which I have identified (with some help from the better half) and now have some control over. Gone are the days of road signs, huge Paddlepop advertising hoardings, damp record players and ‘quirky’ ornamentals.

Now when I chance upon a suburb in the grip of a hard rubbish collection, in this case Coburg, I think ‘what can and will we realistically use?’ My mind turned straight to the garden. Of course this meant that I left behind an amazing train set including mountains, tunnels and all sorts of miniatures, boxing gloves (?!) and an ornamental mirror.

Here’s my loot!

Now the 3 tyres are to gradually build up around potato plants, while the chicken wire will be used to construct a leaf bin. The yellow fiberglass container will be used either as a roosting box for our incoming chickens or as a herb/strawberry garden box.

The hose reel is self-explanatory, while the wooden shelving now sits by the back door and houses our dirty garden shoes which had become a source of messy frustration! (We just steamed cleaned our carpet and have turned into carpet protection police!) Lastly, the blackboard was just in great condition and will give the kids some joy.

All free, all in good nick, all other peoples rubbish. Oh, and I also scored these!

Turning attention to the front of the house, we have started digging up a patch of annoying grass which is hard to maintain for some more garden space. It also means our slightly, how do you say, concerned neighbours will no longer have to poison the fence line so as to keep their white stones all clean.

Whilst digging, I bone-jarringly struck upon a well-covered drain pipe (below)! You can also make out our white-stoned neighbours garden. They’ve got quite a crop coming up this year! So while all this digging was great it was quite hard work, so we have decided to save our backs and go with a no-dig garden out the front, so stay tuned for that!

We’ve been out the back, out the front, and now inside to the kitchen. We’d heard a rumour that you can regrow celery from the base which is often cast away. Apparently all you need to do is place it in a bowl of warm water and leave it for a week or so. By this time the shoots of a new celery should be on their way up. Well it’s been a couple of days and I think we may already have some movement in the centre of our celery stub. I’m sure ‘stub’ is not the official term, but I’m going to go with it.  

So that’s where we’re at with the garden. The girls little gardens are coming along nicely and we’ve got some happy little seeds in various states of germination. Thanks for stopping by

John