Cedar Singles #5 Treating and staining a cedar shingle roof
In this post I will show you how I gave my old cedar roof shingles a new lease of life using a preservative and water-repellant stain treatment.
Garden Buildings
Cedar Singles #4 How to remove and replace shingles
In this post I am going to show you how cedar shingles can be replaced using only basic DIY tools and a bit of understanding of how cedar shingles are fixed.
Cedar shingles #3
Identifying and preventing damage
As I learned the hard way, cedar shingle roofs can deteriorate prematurely. Here are the problems to watch out for and the maintenance needed to get the best out of them.
Cedar shingles #2 How to clean and restore them
After seventeen years of neglect my shingle roof needed a thorough clean. Here are the techniques that worked for me.
Cedar shingles #1
Weathering, maintenance & longevity
In the first post in this series I look at how cedar shingle roofs have weathered in my garden over 15+ years, and how maintenance could extend their useful life much further.
Greenhouse Makeover
For the last 10 years the greenhouse has been used for growing produce: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, melons, strawberries. Although this has been very successful and productive it has also required a great deal of work. I am ready to …
Success with Greenhouse Melons
Here’s how I grew 30 Charentais melons in a narrow greenhouse bed just 5 ft long and 1 ft deep. Charentais are a fragrant variety of cantaloupe or musk melon, bred in France in the 1920s. Typically they are more difficult to …
Cabin construction pages finally added!
I have finally got round to adding the missing information pages about our first garden building: the Cabin. How I designed and built it and what it is like inside. Take a look here and let me know what you think. …
Greenhouse 2017 – hot house plants
I’m using the staging and shelf at the north end of the greenhouse to grow a range of ornamentals, including fuchsias, ferns, hosts, pansies and plectranthus. For the most part they are watered from the automatic drip system which makes looking after …
Greenhouse 2017 – the Veggies
I’ve planted the greenhouse with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, aubergines and some hot-house ornamentals. Trying to cater for all of their needs is tricky: the tomatoes need good air circulation to avoid fungal diseases, but the aubergine and cucumber like a humid …