Wild gardens and rabbit-proof fences

When we first arrived at the new house, the garden was high with grasses and wild flowers. Consequently, it was a popular spot for butterflies, grasshoppers and rabbits.
While the butterflies are an absolute joy so see, the rabbits are a nuisance, scraping away the lawn and pooping everywhere, and with the first salad crops starting to emerge, I was concerned they might ruin those too.
One of the first tasks was to cut the grass (leaving a corner as a wild garden for the butterflies and insects), which seemed to discourage some of the less persistent bunnies.
But one in particular just wouldn't hop off. Banging on the window (me, not the rabbit) made no difference, and even when I ran outside, it would just hop beyond the back gate and peer back at me.
As unsightly as chicken and rabbit fences are, I had little choice but to protect my veg patch. Luckily I was donated some used chicken wire, which was already attached to fence posts (albeit broken ones) and, with the loan of a sledgehammer and some canny positioning of bamboo canes, I managed to hammer a rickety-looking fence around the vegetable patch.
To make sure the blighters didn't dig their way in, I pinned down the wire with tent pegs and laid old bricks around the edge. The only way those bunnies are getting in now is by pole vaulting.
The end result doesn't look the best, but it will suffice until I can decide on a better solution when I dig my additional vegetable beds.

Garden birds: making new friends

I love little birds - the smaller and noisier, the better.
It's incredible how a little wren, as tiny as it is, can make such a loud sound.
One of the most exciting things about my garden is the birds. The southern perimeter is surrounded with Rhododendron hedge where the birds love to hide.
Already I have seen a young green woodpecker and a kestrel on my lawn - although not at the same time. I suspect the kestrel is on the look out for one of the mice which live at the end of the garden.
Other species I have seen include wrens, great tits, blue tits, chaffinches, song thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, goldfinches and my very own robin, whose favourite spot is on the gable end of my shed.
In nearby woodland I have also seen jays, long-tailed tits and buzzards.
As my vegetables began to emerge, the great tits in particular could be seen hopping up and down the rows of rocket and mixed leaf salad, picking off the bugs and flies.
To make the garden more bird friendly, I bought a terracotta dish and filled it to make a bird bath and put out a few crumbs but I quickly abandoned putting any food out because it seemed to attract magpies. Instead I have bought a half coconut shell packed with seeds which I will hang from the eaves of the house (just as soon as I can borrow a ladder).

No tools? No problem

Luckily my new garden came equipped with a shed, but the only tool I had to keep in there was a lonely hand trowel.
Armed with my little trowel and a borrowed fork, I managed to tackle the most pressing task of sowing some vegetable seeds but, with money tight, I had to find other ways of getting some tools.
My great-grandfather bequeathed his ancient but comprehensive tool collection to my father some years ago and, while they look more like the kind of things you find in museums, many are still perfectly good. Thanks to "Pop" I now have my own fork, a dutch hoe, a hand fork and another trowel.
While my salad crops are coming up nicely, I know that next year I want to grow a much wider variety of vegetables so I'm considering putting in another two beds and rotating the crops between them each year.
But to dig more beds, I really will need a spade, and for this I will need to part with some cash. But how can I choose?

Where to begin?

I may never have had a garden until now but my grandparents gave me an amazing insight into gardening, especially growing vegetables.
Beyond the back gate of their modest terraced cottage lay a sizeable plot of land where they grew everything imaginable - marrows and pumpkins, strawberries and raspberries, beans and peas - even neatly trained brambles for blackberries. There were apple and pear trees and row upon row of carrots, parsnips, cauliflower and potatoes. In the sheds were chickens and geese and there was usually a nervous-looking sheep lurking in a fenced off area at the end of the plot.
I spent much of my summer holidays helping my grandmother in her vegetable garden and always dreamed of having one of my own.
Now the dream is finally becoming a reality, but it's difficult to know where to begin.

When I arrived just a few weeks ago, there was already a raised bed installed on one side of my garden, brimming with overgrown, unharvested crops including chard, onions and potatoes. There was also a well-rotted compost heap and a good supply of bamboo growing in the corner behind the shed.
With a borrowed fork, I dug out most of the crops from the bed but left in some of the potatoes, transferring the rest into tubs which I put onto the patio area outside my back door.
But by late July, my options of what to grow were somewhat limited so I wasted no time in double digging the bed (still with only a fork), mixing some compost deep in the soil before sowing a selection of salad crops, beetroot, onions and a few dwarf french beans. I bought the seeds from Wilko for just under a fiver.