Porch Footings And Digger Work

Dad came over on the weekend so we could start on the porch and a little project in the back garden. He came in his usual style, with lots of equipped and machinery, there was even a different dumper for me to play with (I'm not aloud on the digger when he's here!). 

The front door before work started. 

The overgrown area of the back garden. The picture doesn't show it but there's an old dog pen in that mess that needed pulling out with the digger

Removing some horribly invasive shrub. Unfortunately it also showed us how unstable the garden wall is in the back garden.

Digging the footings for the porch. I did very little with a spade, most was done with the digger, luckily

The footings dug. even though it's just the porch we went to the same depth as the house footings. Building inspector was happy.

Concrete poured in. I went for quite a deep fill as it saves a lot of brick and block work. 

Dad's dog found it hard work as well!

I've got a bricklaying friend coming round on Monday to bring the brick and block work up to damp, plus some jobs in the garden and to see what he suggests with the wobbly wall. Hopefully the porch won't take too long and then we can crack on with the extension, although I'm sure it's my bits that will take the time!

Building A Greenhouse Base

I've been on about getting my "new" greenhouse up for ages now and time is rapidly ticking away until I'll really need it. 

On Friday dad sprung the news on me that he was going to give me a hand on Sunday and to make sure I was ready!

 The trouble is where I wanted to put the greenhouse has been, how should I put this, somewhat neglected.

 A few hours moving bit of rubbish and chopping down all the nettles and I was ready for dad to arrive.

 As usual he arrived in style! A trailer full of stuff and the knowledge that we'd have a hard afternoon a head of us!

 It's pretty handy having a dad that has a digger (well multiple diggers) and is rather good when he's in control of it! The site slopes quite a bit (probably around 18" over the 12ft) so we levelled it off first, making a large pile in the garden to be moved at a later date. 

 Then using a narrower bucket on the digger we dug a strip for the foundations of the greenhouse, levelled it up and began mixing concrete.

 It took around 20 barrows of concrete for the base. As I took this picture dad shouted "Is that so you can remember what I was like before you killed me!" I guess that we were working rather hard on a Sunday afternoon.

 The 12ft by 8ft strip foundation. I'll lay a concrete block one layer high all round this and fix the greenhouse to it to give me a little extra height.

The last picture shows where it will sit next to the smaller greenhouse. I'm looking forward to having some more under cover growing space. I'm planning on lots of tomatoes and chillies!

Now the question is what should I do with the floor of the greenhouse. Should I have beds and clean them out every year or grow things in  pots/buckets and have slabs under them?

Rotovator

I've finally managed to buy a rotovator that I think will be up to the job.

My new work horse

It's a Lombardini Diesel powered rotovator. This means it will run all day on a lot less fuel than a petrol powered one and give good power.
I did have a quick try of it tonight (although it was raining) and it made a great job of the strip of soil in the veg garden with very little effort (but it's not easy to start). The clay soil didn't even slow it down!
I've got no other attachments for it yet, but looking at it I think it can have a cutter bar (or Allan Scyth) fitted and there's a hole for a tow bar. I'm guessing I could make it into a little garden tractor if I wanted, and make a trailer up for it for lugging firewood and things around the small holding.
I'm hoping that by having a good rotovator it should speed things up in the garden and let me concentrate on more important jobs. And although this makes me more dependant on oil it does mean that I should have more time available.
Does anyone else use a rotovator for their garden/allotment or do you prefer to dig it all over by hand?