The new shed/greenhouse combo has arrived

It was installed on Friday by the company that made it and we've started transferring things into it. In case you're thinking "that's the shed of my dreams, where can I get one?", it was made by Himley Garden Buildings. They were very flexible about design and were even happy to include a gutter along the back for me.

The shed part is slightly larger than our previous shed, which is handy. But the truly exciting part is the greenhouse - which has real glass in it. Having initially planned to get a shed then add a separate greenhouse later, I'm so pleased I got a combined one. The greenhouse part is much bigger than I was expecting to be able to fit on the base and its shape is a perfect match for the shed. So it looks sleek and planned instead of my original design of mismatched and makeshift.

My big question now is: should I fill the greenhouse to maximum capacity with plants or would it be nicer to fill only the front of it with plants and put in a chair or two in for reading on days when the garden isn't quite warm enough, but the sunshine is glorious. I'm currently leaning towards the chair idea. I can always do it temporarily and then discover my plant urge has filled the whole thing and the chairs have to go.

Because of the guttering, I'm having to move the compost bin to make room for a water butt. The good news is that roughly the bottom half of the compost heap turned out to be good, usable compost, albeit possibly not up to the standards of Monty Don's home-made compost. It's been rotting down for 2-3 years now. But it still had big bits of sticks and roots in it that had to go straight back into the compost bin because they hadn't rotted down. This is largely my fault, as I didn't chop them up before putting them in. Also my back was very weak when I started the compost heap because I didn't go to the gym back then. That meant I couldn't stir it much to get air into it and mix what I put into it. Well, that and the awkward design of the bin, which makes stirring the compost with the garden fork difficult even with a strong back. The combination of the two means I had far from optimum composting in my bin, as revealed by the imperfect state of my compost.

My initial plan was just to pull the bin off the compost, but it was wedged on too firmly. Instead I forked the compost out of the top of the bin and into a pile next to it. After I got about a third of the way down, I managed to wiggle the compost bin enough to pull it off the top and put it over my new pile. I had to keep digging for a while before I got down to the decent compost.
I've saved myself a little bit in composted stable manure this year. I reckon this was a couple of big bags worth. I've mainly scattered it over where I'm going to plant the sweetcorn, plus some extra on the cucurbit bed and around the brassicas.

We've expanded the cucurbit bed (on the right in the picture below - cucurbits this year only because I'm using crop rotation). I should have plenty of room for my squashes, cucumbers and courgettes now. The remainder of the garden compost has gone on the cucurbit bed. Squashes love plenty of organic matter, so I'll be adding composted stable manure before they go in.