Thread: Sorting the Garden

Loombucket, I think we touched on this subject earlier.
Is your pond going to be used for swimming? If so, how is the cleaning of the water going? There is some research I have just found saying that Lotus plants are the best way to clean slurry or waste water so lots of those in your pond should get it clean enough to swim in later on.
Let us know!
Great thread, again.

Can't wait to see more.

LOOMBUCKET. Hope you have't fallen into one of your pre soaked holes!!!!
Looking forward every day to the continuing saga of the garden........??

I had a couple of sticks of sugar cane left over from the wedding. Worst mistake I ever made was to put them in the ground. Within a year they were 4 m high and had spread about 2 m wide. Digging it out was not easy!
Hows it going?

Sorry everyone, I have had all manner of problems, that are not related to this thread. I hope to be up and running again, a bit later. I have all the pix and will share them, so do not fret.

The lake will not be used for swimming, although you are welcome to try. It may look inviting, but getting out again, with wet feet, may be a problem.

Cheers.

Great thread LB enjoyed your house build and have been fortunate to join TD in time to be currant with your gardening thread. I know this one will take much longer just can’t rush mother nature. Got a chuckle about the water in hole trick. My MIL taught me that one about eight years ago :-)).

Here we go again.

Here we see the first of the replanting, along the back fence.



No blisters yet, but the hands are starting to harden up.



Time passes and all of the chaps who have promised to make this wall have let us down. I am keen to start a bit of serious tree planting up at the house but there is no point in doing anything untill I've cleaned up the builders mess, and they haven't made any yet. At the eleventh hour, this lot arrive. The Guy on the right, with the extra head, is married to BIL 2's Daughter.



The guy on the left speaks a bit of English, so we knock out some rough plans. I want an arch, with gate, at the back, some lights around the edge and we want to level the ground around the house. This means that the wall to the right hand side will have to be reinforced, to allow for the weight of the soil.



The job will take 60 days and a local gang will come and do the groundwork.

Unfortunately, shortly after our meeting, I develop an infection in the upper waste pipe that stops me doing anything physical. This is compounded by conjuctivitis. Injections, pills, eye drops and rest eventually sort me out but I am out of action for over 10 days. P & P agree to help out, they will send a specialist to dig the remaining trees.

As soon as I was able to push the barrow, I started digging holes to put the trees in. Every morning I would load up with tools, a seat, lots of water, radio and sun shade. My vision was a bit blury, but I could see the ground well enough. Days were short as I was so knackered by lunch time, I had to take a rest. Many days and thirty odd holes later, my help arrived. Here he is. I will simply call him The Butcher.




Here he is in action,




....and here is his mate, ready to trim a few bits off.



This is what I was presented with. No root ball, precious little laterals and about six inches of tap root. This was a good one!



I was distraught, suicidal and, after I discovered that my pills and Tequila did not mix, very, very ill. I shouted, ranted, raved and, thankfully, passed out.

Next morning, or maybe the morning after, I had a go at planting the sticks that were left. They had been left in an old jar full of water and I can vaugely remember carrying them, lovingly, down to the end of the garden and giving them the best possible start.



All but six of them eventually died. Three more sprouted from the bottom, but looked like they were on life support. I am indebted to Karl from Switzerland, who took the first four pix and carried me up to my room, Fireman style, after that first day of tree digging/shouting/overdose. He later took me to Du Home for some more tools and generally behaved like an old friend. He does not post here but I just need to thank him again.

Here we have, in black, the trusty, Isaan style, rebar, grass rake and a hand trowel. In red, a soil rake and a 'potting shovel'.




Thanks, also, to all the staff at Du Home, who probably think I am mentally retarded.

After the tree incident, I made a mental note not, under any circumstances, to let anyone mess with my garden, unless it was Mother Nature herself.

Around the house, we had the trappings of the average thai kitchen garden. This one is obviously a member of the Cucumber family, but I don't know what untill it starts to grow a bit.



We have six of these plants and I was initially puzzled by the tiny white flower. There is no mistaking the fruit however. My first chilli.



Time for some more hard labour. I needed to try to sepperate the drive from the surounding soil due to the fact that every time it rained, most of the mud ended up in the dinning room or the kitchen. I tested a couple of areas, to see how deep the mud was. Not too bad here,



...but in other places, it was far worse.



I decided to stop the drive at the front of the house. I didn't want any one parking in front so it was time to take steps. There was a cement pad by the front door and it was starting to look a little worse for wear. Digging the bladdy thing up was a pain but one day, some workers in a thread nearby, left a few tools behind. A couple of hours of lifting and bashing, made all the difference.



Then it was relatively easy to pick up the bits and cart them away.



Having got the bits of cement out of the area, it was a matter of scaping the sand away and saving as much of the chippings as possible.



Some decent soil would be appropriated as soon as possible, but, for now, we just need a little block wall to make a deviding point.



It's not beautiful, or a long term thing. It just did the job. A couple of solar markers, will help to ward of the BIL and anyone else who tries to drive over the wall.



Then it was just a case of working my way down the drive, marking the soil hump with a few bits of yellow conduit,



...and stuffing the blocks in, with a variety of sticks, odd bits of rebar and the odd tent peg. I could only do it after a bit of rain, cos the ground was just too hard. Here we are about half done,



....and here is a hand update.

Have you finally snapped and killed them Loomy?

Originally Posted by jizzybloke

Have you finally snapped and killed them Loomy?

No, actually they are having their post lunch sleeping thing. Any more than six of the perishers at one time and we soon run out of handy shade.

Originally Posted by wichenburi

Are those the hands of a murderer, you seem to have overlooked the dead bodies in your garden. Will they used as part of the foundations. One is obviously dead, then you seem to have someones leg, left near by. I think a comment is called for, and a little remorse maybe. I think this thread was going well up to this point, but to overlook such a serious matter and not even cover the bodies before you take a picture. Is not what what i expected to see. Have they been left out for the dogs.

You seem to have left out the smiley, I take it that you meant to include one?

Originally Posted by Loombucket

Originally Posted by jizzybloke

Have you finally snapped and killed them Loomy?

No, actually they are having their post lunch sleeping thing. Any more than six of the perishers at one time and we soon run out of handy shade.

Originally Posted by wichenburi

Are those the hands of a murderer, you seem to have overlooked the dead bodies in your garden. Will they used as part of the foundations. One is obviously dead, then you seem to have someones leg, left near by. I think a comment is called for, and a little remorse maybe. I think this thread was going well up to this point, but to overlook such a serious matter and not even cover the bodies before you take a picture. Is not what what i expected to see. Have they been left out for the dogs.

You seem to have left out the smiley, I take it that you meant to include one?

To the rescue again, I know now., Thanks, I hope i have not killed this thread.

Originally Posted by wichenburi

....I hope i have not killed this thread.

No,.....I'm having far too much fun.


Anyway, time to go and visit the nearest Garden Centre. This is Khun 'Ronaldo', he has a little place just up the road from us. Speaks English but like to overcharge when he can.



He specialises in Orchids and pots, but has a good line in ferns and '5Bht special' bedding plants but I only wanted some sort of baby tree, for now. I found something that needed a little TLC, beat him down to 40 bht and dashed back home to plant it. Here's how to do it.

1. Shove a post into the ground, to serve as a marker, then clear the area around it.




2. Dig a hole that is wider and deeper than you need.




3. Have some decent soil on standby. Here, we are using a mix of topsoil, from a good part of the garden and some Ban Samur that the soil man just brought round. It's black, clay like and jolly expensive but full of good stuff.



4. Chuck the stuff into the hole, keeping some back for the edges,



....add a little water and chop it up a bit.




5. Add the magic ingredient, in this case, dried Buffalo droppings,



....and give that a little stir.



6. Now for the tricky bit. We need to get the plant out of the plastic pot. The pot should pull cleanly off the root ball. Sometimes though, the soil is rubbish or it is too wet. In these cases, we have to tear or cut the pot off. Take great care not to cut anything other than the pot.



7. Plop it in the hole using the saved portion of the good soil to stuff around the root ball. Try and make sure that it is upright and firm the soil as you go. Create a little earth wall arount the plant, to retain as much water as possible. Then water it untill the water won't go away.



Check every now and then that the plant is getting enough water and that there is enough slack in the stake tie to let the plant grow. I decided on this random place because it is just below the study balcony and I can see it peeping over the wall.

The place seems to be alive with winged creatures at the moment and I am keen to get a few pictures of them. Trouble is, they never stay still for long enough. The Dragonfly will return to the same stick, over and over, and it's just a case of waiting.



The Butterflies are a different thing entirely. Some like to hide,



...others just don't stop flapping.



This one was a bit more considerate.



I swear this one knew exactly what was going on and flew off every time I had a focus lock. I just pretended that I wasn't really interested and it kept still.



That's two sets of batteries gone and I am nearly out of 'fie'. This one didn't have wings, but was still worth a shot. So gracefull in motion.

Right, we have nearly reached a safe planting point, but there are one or two little points to be addessed first. We are having this local chap come over and put some drains in, after the wall/cash fiasco, so that the excess water goes out into the fields. The Headman was really nice about it, but he didn't want nasty blue pipes poking out of the high wall, into the bit that he is still trying to sell. The rubble drain around the tree was doing that already, albeit unobtrusively. This was working well untill one super rain storm......



Oh, B*gger, there must be a big bit missing. A closer inspection, revealed a hole.



There was nothing for it but to break out the Isaan style digger and go down a bit.



After some time, we reached the tree. Here you can see that the water, and soil, have a clear path under the horizontal wall support.



I decided to do it myself. I had had enough of workers that did not understand simple translations. The family were all off visiting some outpost. I had food, fags and some clean clothes left, so I started digging. I needed a hole large enough for me to get in, but it was wet and I had to go down a way. Eventually I had to fall back on the 'five finger spade'. This had a flexible joint at the end and it was easier to get the mud off again. Scraping the spade/jod/planter every time was a bladdy nightmare.



After what seemed like a week, I had enough space to kneel in the dirt and see what I was doing. It only hurt when I got out again, so I had to be a bit carefull. Having rammed some 'used building products' into the base, I made up a bit to take a couple of blocks long and recycled the last of the plywood to make some sort of former.



Now it was getting exciting. This was the last usable bit, that was long enough, of the rebar, from the spares box.



We'll just knock up some stone and cement, in our trusty wheelbarrow,



...spoon it into the former, bung the support in, pannic when the mix runs everywhere and stuff a few blocks down at the last minute.



Then we squidge it down, top it off and wait for it to set. I pack up for the day as there's no one around to complain.

terrific stuff loomy. Thanks.

In the harsh light of morning, it looked ok to build on. Not a perfect example, you understand, but good enough.



The next problem was the last surviving tool left by the house builder. As you can see, it is well broken and has been welded before. I hammered the old, bendy hand trowel into something vaugely flat, and used that. You wouldn't want to point with it, but I have fingers for that.



Back in the wheelbarrow, we assemble everything ready. I like a spot of washing up liquid in the mix, as it gives me a better idea of how quickly the mix is going off (that and the smell).



Here I am readt to start. There are some holes in the wall so I can link up with some bits of bent bar, like I saw the blokes doing, but there isn't enough time to take pics as I go. The pug is going off before my eyes.

Unfortunately, I left it a bit long before I crawled out. When I did try to stand, everything ached but I had managed something with five blocks and a bit of cheek. You wouldn't call it pretty, but it was designed to be hidden by the soil.



Putting the soil back, bit by bit and standing on it, was nearly as bad as getting it out but for the fact that I could stand up.



Later, I plopped another course or two of red bricks around the tree and made it all look like new again. The random wooden pieces are screwed and glued but arranged to look like they are held there by art alone.



In the kitchen garden area, by the back door, the first of many 'little things' were planted. This one is a Lime and it was presented, as a gift, and planted by the wall gangs Apprentice Goon. I remembered the one or two bottles of Low Cow that we shared. It came as no surprise that he remembered them as well.



Last one for today is a small curve of Khun Ronaldo's 5Bht specials, snaking their way along the drive retaining wall. Now, at least, I had something colourful to weed and water.

Now Loomy, don't get me wrong, I know nothing about gardening and flowers and stuff., but the red brick cement work round the tree?

Won't the tree grow?

There-bye destroying your brickwork?

Originally Posted by jandajoy

Now Loomy, don't get me wrong, I know nothing about gardening and flowers and stuff., but the red brick cement work round the tree?

Won't the tree grow?

There-bye destroying your brickwork?

Good point and In time, yes it will. It will need 'doing something with' at a later date. I looked at several examples in the village of a tree growing on the wall line. They all used 'disposable' bricking around the trunk and a suitable growing distance around, between the arms of the wall proper. Ours is there just to hold the soil/water erosion at bay untill we have a few more things growing. The tree actually leans in, towards the garden. With a bit of practice, I should be able to get it upright or leaning out. In any event, it has lots of time to do it's thing before we have to worry too much.

Ok no worries, I'll sleep better now. Thanks.

I've seen quite a few of these nasty little beasty things, are they as dangerous as the bigger ones?

Originally Posted by jizzybloke

I've seen quite a few of these nasty little beasty things, are they as dangerous as the bigger ones?

That little fellow was about 5 1/2-6 inches long. I don't get to see many because the locals always bash them with something heavy. If you do get a bite from them, it comes up in a bladdy great lump. A bit like a nip from a tiny blue Spider, only worse. Hurts like hell! Fortunately they only try to bite if they are disturbed. They are great to watch, but don't even think of picking it up.