Week #3

 

20/3/21

Moved stuff around today and did things with some of the plants. Got rid of my worm farm under the ramp and chucked them all in the compost bin, it had worked, there were hundreds of them, so hopefully now they’re all in one place they’ll get through the compost. I’ve used the big yellow Hippo bag to put topsoil in – so all the bins that had compost in are now empty ready for other stuff e.g. moving earth around or storing stone or rubble in.

I’ve got rid of some of the green waste (Ivy) and now only have a little bit left, there’s some wood I need to get rid of – hopefully that’ll go in the Bin at Michelle’s workplace. Still not spent any money – which was nice. Had another little session – got rid of the remainder of the green waste and got rid of the top layer of the remaining wall and collected some rocks from the woods.

21/3/21

Today was a good day, some decisions have been made… (1). The blokes across the road dug all the dirt out and left it in a parking bay for a couple of days and a big truck came along and grabbed it all and took it – that option is £150 whereas a skip is £200 or more. With a skip more carrying and lifting is involved and getting the dirt from ground level up to 4’ and into a skip is back – breaking work I would imagine? https://www.hhmuckers.com/services/grab-hire/

I got a couple plastic trays/boxes to test how much might be moved in one go, so I used one of the orange re-cycling boxes and a green Tesco tray and filled them both up to see (1) How heavy they’re going to be if they need to be moved and tipped into a skip and (2). How much impact it would be in terms of how much dirt goes into one of these and therefore how many single trips it might take? The answer is an awful lot. I then had some other ideas see below…

Plans

(1) Allocate a dry weekend where all of the dirt is dug out and piled up in the parking bay. 2 Days for 4 of us to get the dirt out and into the *bay. Arrange for a grabber lorry to come and

*Or pile it into the top part of the garden and the grabber takes it from there over the fence/wall? That way less distance to move the dirt and it means we’ll be potentially left with a mound of leftovers to level off the grass once and for all. Increasingly this feels like the best option

(2) Dig all the topsoil out first and have at the bottom to spread later for re-seeding or re-turfing. Or some other option although that sounds expensive. Maybe put something down on the shady sides of the garden on Tony’s side where the grass doesn’t grow?

At the moment my estimation is that 4 of us might be able to do it in a weekend.

Steps might be an issue here’s one company with small step style gabions https://www.manomano.co.uk/p/gabion-stone-basket-100-x-30-x-100-cm-7232406

At the minute I’m liking design #3 (see note papers). 2m wide x 1 mtr high x 0.5mtr deep x 4 @ £38.30 per Gabion.

Another variation on steps see here https://www.gardenista.com/submission/2018/gabion-terrace/