A herb rockery made with... sinks!

This weekend we used the four sinks we had collected to make a herb rockery.

We had no plan or any idea how it was going to look or even how we wanted it to look. Which was a bit daft really. We started with 3 metal sinks, one ceramic, two bags of flamingo gravel, 10 red bricks and 10 breeze blocks. Oh and a small bag of ready mix cement. We decided it would be positioned at the front of the plot, right behind the small she'd but visible from the main path and right next to out path, for easy access for picking

Mr Allotmum and myself spent a good half hour arranging and re-arranging the sinks into different positions, muttering to eachother about how we had no idea what we were doing. It was rather comical. We'd never built a rockery before, we obviously thought we knew how to but every time one of us thought the layout looked good, it was dismissed as looking a bit rubbish by the other.

Eventually though, we agreed on a layout and set to get it all stable. We dug the ground a little way down to make a stable base for the sinks. As we laid each sink we filled under and around it with loose soil and packed it down. We also used whole and smashed up breeze blocks to wedge under them to stop them from moving around. Oncw all 4 sinks were in position, we edged around the base using some red bricks (which cost 20pence each from the local builders merchants). I planted some flowers in the ground around the sinks and then covered that with flaming stones. They're rather pretty stones of irregular shapes and different colours.

Once that was complete, we filled the sinks with compost and planted mint, thyme, marjoram, parsley, dill, chives and garlic chives, as well as some spinach beet seeds for good measure. I'd started these plants off as seeds some weeks back and they weren't too happy getting parched in the greenhouse.

I'm happy to say that they are doing much better outside!

All in all this project cost us around £20 and it's a nice addition to the plot.

Planters, planters everywhere!

So we’ve been back up the allotment now that Christmas has passed and out next step is to create some raised beds. We’re using the squarefoot gardening technique so we have decided to make 4 beds that are 8ft by 4ft. I dragged my dad to the local timber yard and bought 24 3.6 metre decking boards along with 4 3metre 2x2 batons. All in all it cost £111 for all the materials to make 4 huge planters.

Each planter will be laid in squares and they're 8 squares long by 4 squares deep. So we have 32 squares in each planter. We'll spread most crops over 4 or even 8 squares depending on the plant and how much space it needs.

While the weather has been bad, the ground has been covered by black plastic sheeting. This has done quite a good job in keeping the weeds at bay. Sadly, there are some rogue potato plants in the ground that just keep coming up. I’m trying so hard to get rid of them without using any nasty chemicals. I guess I’ll have to keep digging them out!

While Mr Dig was cutting the wood I was digging and turning over the soil to even the ground out and make a decent base for the planters.

We put legs on the corners of each planter so we could anchor it into the ground so while I sat on one end, Mr Dig used a sledge hammer to give it a good whack. Luckilly as I'd been hard at work digging the soil, it was reasonably soft which meant he didn't have to smack them too hard!

In just half an hour we built one planter. Sadly that was all we had time for today but we’ll be back up there over the weekend to finish them off. We’re leaving the black plastic down and will put a mulch of bark chippings on top to make low maintenance pathways between the beds.
I’ve got the spring bug and I cannot wait for thing to start growing!