In the beginning we made a little fenced off area from pallets filled with strawberry plants. Then we decided to build an outdoor stone floor pizza oven within it (nearly finished). This of course led us consider outdoor pizza in a relaxing rural Welsh garden - a great combination if it isn't pouring with rain and your pizza going all soggy.
Therefore we decided we needed a garden shade to sit under which we could then add some discreet plastic sheeting to as a rain shelter. So while the wife and kids were away I got started.
This project wasn't technically difficult, particularly expensive or massively time consuming yet the finished effect would really transform this part of the garden by providing a visual AND practical structure that should increase our garden season no end. There was only one tiny little hiccup - the thing needed to go up on what was previously a substantial garden rockery. Arse.
Having organised an unsuspecting helper by way of my dad to get the large posts into the ground I arranged for the materials to be delivered and we began.
It. Was. Horrible.
I'd decided that rather than cement/post fix the posts in which would require digging six reasonable sized holes in such rocky ground as I usually would I opted to use metposts, a metal tub in which the post base sits that has a long spike to be driven deep into the ground for stability. In theory all we'd need to do is make a small hole with a bar to the required depth then hammer in the post and tadaa! repeat five more times. I'd hoped that this would be quicker (it wasn't) and it would be easier (it wasn't) because we'd need a smaller hole to begin with (we didn't).
The ground was like concrete due to the recent heatwave and the rocks were plentiful. We found that through jabbing (and hammering) the bar into the earth it still took excessive sweating and cursing to make a decent sized, deep hole even when watering the ground as we went. Having checked and re-checked that the depth was good we hammered in our first metpost expecting it to become buried until it rested snuggly on the turf. But it just didn't, instead it sank about a foot, projected from the earth like the Eiffel Tower and remained extremely wobbly. Clearly this would not do so we decided to remove the post, widen the hole a bit and try again.
It was at this point that we realised that even though the met post was only partially in place and despite the fact it was freely wobbling within our pilot hole it was impossible to get the bloody thing out. Pulling, hammering, levering with a bar and eventually it would loosen enough for use to tug the thing away and start developing the hole again but it was frustrating and physically demanding work. Nightmare.
Jabbing the bar in and yanking it around seemed to widen the hole effectively enough so we tried again. It got just as stuck. We widened, looked and felt around in the whole we had made to help easy the metpost in. There were no rocks, it was deep enough and the earth was now moist but try as we might the bloody think just wouldn't get lower AND every time we had to remove it was a ten minute battle. Finally we found a tiny piece of stone half way own the hole. Fifteen minutes of bashing and pulling and we managed to remove what we thought would be a Stonehenge remnant only to find that our progress had been thwarted by a pea sized pebble. Triumphantly the metpost went back in, hammering began in earnest and we gleefully watched it pass deeper into the hole than we'd managed thus far and then inexplicably it stopped again. We'd made about one inch of progress and had to do everything all over again.
In the end it took almost seven hours of constant battling to get the six posts in. We destroyed one five foot bar, obtained countless blisters and even then we still had to cut down four of the met posts just to get them in. It took such a toll on my hands that for the entire night and most of the next day I couldn't sense my fingertips properly.
Fortunately they all went in pretty solid in the end and the next day I was able to cut and fix in place the majority of the cross pieces to finish the structure off by myself since my dad had crawled home vowing never to bring his gardening gloves to our place ever again.
It still needs painting before we can add the plastic cover and of course we'll be sticking more strawberries and grapes however despite the initial hassle it's gone up pretty straight and I think it looks great. Can't wait to use it properly although as my wife pointed out when she say it..you'll have to make a new picnic table for it now.
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