Caption: Polytunnel - early stages showing the ground we need to dig over
Caption: Sunbathing Rosie Pig
Caption: Let sleeping dogs lie....
With the continuation of lockdown, I have been turning my attention to bigger garden projects that my husband and I have been planning to complete when we had the time – now that we have buckets of time!
We have begun to build….our polytunnel!
We had earmarked a space behind our garden hedge that was just waste ground on the estate where we live (with our landlord’s permission of course) and wondered how we would clear this as quickly as possible to build our polytunnel? Numerous suggestions were put forward – our rotary cultivator which is probably older than I am, would not be up to the task. Should we just pull our fingers out and get digging? A eureka moment! We would move one of our pigs into the space and let them dig the ground over for us. All the old gardening books say that nothing clears ground like pigs… what could go wrong?
Let me just say that when pigs were used to clear ground the weather must have been awful as ‘Rosie pig’, our saddleback grandma, rather than snuffling around and turning over the ground has been sunbathing all day every day! She doesn’t seem concerned with the weeds and grass all around her – they must be more comfy that way for sunbathing.
We eventually decided that it would be quicker to dig the plot over ourselves. The spades and forks are calling along with the blisters and weeks of back ache! Hurrah!
Not only is ‘Rosie pig’ not digging over her share of the land but Rhuby the dog has given in to the warm temperatures and is enjoying sunbathing too. So much so that we had to dig around her!
Please share with us your lockdown gardening projects and how they are going. We would love to see them!
Laura
Peatland Coordinator at Dalefoot and passionate gardener