New garden/jungle, a lot of work ahead!

peds

Morning everyone,

I've just moved to Sligo from France, where my wife and I have lived for the last ten years. We've got a small bit of land with loads of sheds, and I've started the mammoth task of removing decades of neglect and abuse from our jungle, which has served as something as a rubbish heap for the tiny beef farm just next door. So far I've removed about a hundred empty bags of cattle nuts, four car batteries, an 8ft feeding trough, 220 bricks, and 40 or so barrowloads of overhead nettle, bramble, and assorted weeds, into new compost heap 1, new compost heap 2 (when 1 got full), and a bonfire.

It's not all doom and gloom though, those bricks will be useful for a raised bed I think (unless anyone has a better suggestion for 220ish bricks?), and in one of my many sheds I've found an old 12ft trampoline, which, with a few lengths of rebar and some extra piping, will be turned into a polytunnel measuring 12ft wide, 20ft long, and 9ft high.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi, and ask if anyone can recommend where to get a large quantity of flat material that I can lay out over the area that I'd like to work on first, once I've removed the worst of the weeds, just to kill everything off properly... something like corrugated roof metal, thick polythene sheets, 3mm plywood boards, that sort of thing... I'm looking to do everything for free or as cheap as possible.

Many thanks, all! And if anyone has any advice on generally clearing up a long-forgotten jungle of nettles, I'm all ears...

Lumen

What area?

looksee

You could go on your local freecycle and see if anyone is taking up carpet that they want to dispose of. Carpet fitters often cut it into strips but it would still be a good bit of carpet. However, while it may go horrible it will not rot away so eventually it will have to be disposed of.

Another option would be to go to a local supermarket and offer to take all and any collapsed cardboard boxes - probably baled - for a week. They could be overlapped and will eventually rot.

Lumen

You don't happen to have 100 empty bags of cattle nuts do you?

Cardboard weighed down with weeds or whatever would be my choice.

Has anyone tried getting cardboard from a recycling centre?

Technophobe

Go to supermarkets, Tv shops, bike shops etc and get as much card board as you can..
First use for some of the bricks can be to weigh that cardboard down

Bricks have many uses so have a think before committing them to one particular task..could be used for small pathways for example.
Check out Pinterest etc

peds

Lumen wrote: »

What area?
You don't happen to have 100 empty bags of cattle nuts do you?

I'm in Sligo, near Lissadell.
Unfortunately the bags are all in various states of disrepair, from slightly shredded to one step away from being microplastic! The mostly-intact ones are being used to hold the other bits of **** I find for being taken to the tip...

looksee wrote: »

Another option would be to go to a local supermarket and offer to take all and any collapsed cardboard boxes - probably baled - for a week. They could be overlapped and will eventually rot.

Great idea, I'm friends with a busy restaurant in the area and they recycle all of their boxes through a baler. I'm actually away for two months in the autumn and I was hoping to pin down whatever I find then, so I can easily weight down a load of flattened boxes a couple of days before I go. Thanks for the idea!

Technophobe wrote: »

Bricks have many uses so have a think before committing them to one particular task..could be used for small pathways for example.

I'm a few steps away from nicely-paved pathways, I think! I'll probably be weed fabric woodchip for a few years yet.
But yeah, I'll hold on to the bricks until I find the right use for them.

ednwireland

got rid of a pile of old tin (left over from reroofing sheds) on freecycle a few years ago, so worth keeping an eye on there you never know what might turnup !

Graces7

endorsing the cardboard idea. I have a grand crop of potatoes coming on on cardboard topped with old hay.. Digging etc is beyond me .

peds

ednwireland wrote: »

got rid of a pile of old tin (left over from reroofing sheds) on freecycle a few years ago, so worth keeping an eye on there you never know what might turnup !

Yep, that’s exactly what I was hoping for! Mostly so that I can recycle it into a decent sized compost bin afterwards. I have 3 sheets at the moment, they are currently being used as earth catchers for the raised beds I’m digging. Three down, three to go!

peds

A couple of photos...
Before work started...

peds

Earlier today...

jprboy

^^^^^^

Great progress there....... and drinking on the job, eh?

peds

Well, you've got to stay hydrated... tea until 1700 or so, beer after that.

Edit: here's another two shots of the before and after. First is before I'd started hacking away at the jungle, the second is around five days ago before I'd broken ground for the raised beds.