Alfred's Thoughts
April 9th, 2024

First time gardening - Day 1

DIY

Over the past few months I have moved to a new place, and have gotten upgraded to a backyard garden (wow). Given I have lived in apartments and in city for some time, I have never developed any skill sets for gardening. 

I was not only lacking skill, but also tools/material to deal with this monster of a backyard garden. It seemed like it was not taken care of for like 5+ years.

Before
Before

Here are some of the before pictures, they seem like a lot, but I was not prepared for what is to come once I have trimmed all the green.

Before
Before
Before (from below)
Before (from below)
So in order to tackle this, I went ahead and bought about €300~ on tools and equipment and began this journey!

Removing Begins!

I started with trimming the first of these pesky plants, having used some garden scissors I was able to get it pretty short, it got me closer to the root, I thought I would be able to lift it up and away it goes, but I was very wrong about that dream.
First plant trimmed.
First plant trimmed.
I began to dig around it (based on feedback and advise from people who own a garden and much more knowledgeable than me), this went on for a day or two, but no change was happening. It seem I had no applied enough force. After getting a friend over, and digging deeper and cutting the plants roots, it was finally out! (yay)!

Onwards!

As I thought I might as well get it done today, I pushed further and went onto the next bit of roots. Removed that, and kept going. At the bottom of the hill I reached a large root, it was painful to get out. In my smart brain, I was thinking why not use a chainsaw.. surely that will not damage the chainsaw or anything, pushing it deep into the dirt and all... The rental place for the chainsaw ended up taking my deposit :) But the good news was that root was out!
Picture before that pesky bottom root had not come out yet
Picture before that pesky bottom root had not come out yet
After that was done, the trimming the other side began, after tough and some more smaller root pulling, it was left with one giant bench block of root and rest of garden waste :)
The big blocky root I mentioned
The big blocky root I mentioned
And with that, the trimming, cutting and taking things out came to an end for the day. Next step is to get rid of that big root, and a few rotten words here and there as well as clean up the whole garden waste! Until next time! - Alfred