The Secret Garden.

The thing that I maybe love most about our new to-be home is the garden. We have a bit less than 1ha of land which is not over the top, but quite a lot of space. Another benefit is that we are surrounded by empty space, not houses - one side is the road, another is school stadium (but it is a small school so not much action there), third - and furthest - side is the back end of a really big plot (our forests meet in the middle) and the fourth is an abandoned railway dam - so we are hoping for much privacy for times to come! There are trees surrounding the whole grounds which gives a nice nested feeling.
Also, we are blessed with a really old orchard. Ever since I was a kid I have dreamed of living in a collective farm's orchard so I have always checked for houses with orchards while scanning the real estate sites. Somehow this makes me feel safe - having fruit trees and bushes around me. And I have always loved picking stuff! And baking! And freezing! And drying! Ohhhh!! :D
Last week we finally tried to count all the fruit trees and bushes that are there at the moment. We might not be 100% accurate, but there are approximately 20 trees - one cherry, one damson or cherry plum, four plums, at least one pear and loads of apples - and about 30 bushes - of gooseberries, blackcurrants, red currants and something we cannot identify. Also there is one flowering quince, some chokeberries and quite a few raspberries. There are some beds of strawberries but they seem to have been unattended for a long time so we'll have to replant them in autumn after seeing their state this summer. And there is a big bush of rhubarb plus two smaller plants we brought in before we discovered it.

A quick video tour of the back garden. At the moment it is still quite monochrome.

A general plan of the garden. Our house is not on the picture, this building is going to be pulled down and replaced with a summer kitchen, storage and parking. Some time in the future, that is.

You might think this is more than enough and some people have advised us to cut most of them down but for me this is happiness - and we are planning to plant some more. Some less common varieties at first, that we definitely don't have yet - like different cherry plums and sweet cherries and apricots (an obsession of mine) and in autumn as we finally know what varieties we already have make lists of the trees we want to add. (If someone knows where in Estonia I could get yellow and juicy cider pear trees or branches for grafting it'd be highly appreciated! I have once seen some really old trees in one garden bearing beautiful golden pears that melt in the mouth, four different varieties, but they seem to have died out everywhere else and in garden centres there are only late and/or green varieties..)

It seems that the previous owners had no plans to put any of their energy in the house so they put it in the garden instead. This mainly means planting a load of flowers everywhere possible. I am not a flower bed person at all so most of them are going to go or at least be replanted somewhere more closely together. We have at least ten if not twenty roses, at least four bushes of peonies (which I love), most apple trees have something under them, random beds here and there.. and then there are these greenish shrub-thingies with weird flower like things on them. Here are some photos if anyone is interested in having these plants. They creep me out a little.

M. had a look at the trees in the garden and said they needed pruning as they have been cut all wrong. As this seems to be one of his most favourite things to do in the garden I am a bit reserved because - as I see it - he tends to climb the tree with best thoughts in mind and lose it up there, cutting down most of the tree. Maybe it is right to do it like that - you are welcome to comment - but to me it looks too much. 

M. beginning his battle with the tree. And me. In the end he probably gets what he wants.

Celebrating the fact that for the first time in my life I can actually plant something and see it grow and maybe even hopefully harvest something (I have tried multiple times, but with rentals and moving lifestyle it is really difficult) and I had lost everything during our multiple moves I provided myself with a LOT of seeds. I sowed my first batch of tomatoes, peas, physalis, cucamelons and lettuce on the 12th of March because I did not want to wait any longer and on the following weeks I sowed some more. Finally I had three windowsills full of young plants and M had to make me plant shelves to fit them all.

The shelf that M. made. I love it! Plus it gives the cat some shade.

All would be beautiful if most of the plants had not started dying on me a few weeks ago. I have managed NOT to kill the tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins and peas, but mostly everything else is gone and I cannot understand what I am doing wrong! That much about green fingers :/

Why so many plants? Because we also have a polytunnel! And we are going to make many raised vegetable beds for all the crops. We upgraded the polytunnel a bit both inside and out:

M. defined the beds for less mess and hopefully less pests. We are covering old soil with newspaper to lessen weed growth and will cover this with a thick layering of compost just before planting for the compost not to dry out. 

The polytunnel is raised and therefore has sloped sides. We pulled out all random flowers and made beds for edible flowers and herbs instead. At the moment it is plant graveyard though. I put everything that wanted to die on me there to give them one more chance. 

The experimentalist in me wants to try to grow potatoes in straw so we bought straw bales from a local farmer. 

All in all there is loads going on in the garden at the moment. We are hoping to finish some more beds and put first seeds straight in the ground. So stay tuned!