The big spring clean

A sunny weekend here, and so the co-gardener and I rolled up our sleeves and finally tackled our big garden spring clean. After spending all day out there in the sun I think I'm actually a bit red, and we're both absolutely knackered. But the garden does look much better for it.

So as part of a general tidy, I decided to tackle our pots. They've been looking manky for a while now with several casualties of winter and neglect. I have a zero tolerance attitude to pot plants. I just can't really be bothered to water them in the summer so we only grow plants that are very drought tolerant (ie can take a bit of neglect) or things we really want that we're potting on. 

Before - a sorry state...

An hour or so later, and they're looking much better! I recycled most of the soil from the pots, refreshed it with a bit of well-rotted horse manure and a few chicken manure pellets, and reused it. Hopefully they'll be much happier. There are some Sedums I'm growing on, a Phormium, some indestructable succulents, some Shasta Daisies I'm growing on, and some very unhappy thyme plants that I'm hoping will survive the slug onslaught.

Meanwhile the co-gardener was working very hard on the shed. What a difference a day makes! We're not just painting it so it looks neat - we can't afford a new shed, and the paint should protect it for a good few years to come.

Before...

And after

On the right in the photo above you can see some Cavolo Nero (black cabbage) that we've overwintered. It's now flowering all over the place, and the bees and bumble bees love it. I'm also slightly obsessed with it. I think I now have at least 30 photos of the flowers. I'll spare you the whole batch (including the arty ones I took using the flash - which just looked crap). But here's one for the road.

Sorry - couldn't resist adding one more... there's a bee and everything.