My new kitchen garden

Finally, after an unbelievable sale/purchase process, we are in the new house and I have a new kitchen garden - complete with a 14 x 8 foot greenhouse. I freely admit to feeling very overwhelmed by the garden as it's pretty neglected - but I also relish a challenge.

The first task has been to remove many years worth of rubbish dumped in the garden - its unclear quite why, but the previous owners kept absolutely everything. The scrap metal man has done very well out of it and the cast iron bath, four old lawnmowers, slide set, numerous metal fence posts and a random and varied assortment of other things filled half his van one weekend.  There is much still to remove.

23rd February - 8 days after moving in

There is also an abundance of glass panes all over the place - probably about 30 in all, none of which seem to be the right size to replace broken panes on the greenhouse but might make some nice coldframes?

3rd March - a developing path to the greenhouse

The plethora of paving stones in all sorts of random places around the garden has been highly beneficial - new paths are under development around the greenhouse - none have been put down properly yet, but they are keeping me off what will be the beds for now.  There are also some nice chunky pieces of wood abandoned here so I'm using them to mark the edges of beds

4th March - one clear veg bed emerging

One thing the previous owners seem to have been obsessed with is water - there are hoses, watering systems, sprinkler heads, watering cans and more hoses everywhere. The greenhouse already has two metal water tanks running off it - annoyingly they are to the side of the greenhouse taking up valuable space. Clearing the overgrown ivy behind the greenhouse added 4 foot to the end of garden and has provided space for the water tanks to be moved to. I've plumbed in two water butts onto the front of the greenhouse.

10th March -in the background is a mammoth heap of ivy that Rod pulled

 off fences and trees to double the available garden space

Other useful things that have emerged from the overgrowth include a plastic coldframe, gazebo frame (the cover was totally knackered), huge quantities of pots and tubs, two nice metal watering cans, numerous apple picking loppers and about 100 empty bags of compost.

17th March - water butt already totally full!

There is plenty more to do with the beds, but I'm trying to concentrate on getting seedlings underway in the completely rearranged greenhouse. I'm going to dry a no-dig system on some of the beds - as the garden has been previously worked I think this may work nicely - or am I just trying to avoid some hard work?