The Wife took me to the lower half of the garden, pointed, handed me a saw and wandered back inside. Well, she would have liked to have done. In reality, we measured up, and then she wandered back inside. What we decided to do was to use the decking in the lower half of the garden to create five raised beds. Three of these would be 12 foot by four and two smaller beds of four by four.
It was at this point that we came face to face with the reality of cutting hardwood. The chainsaw did its best, but ultimately I had to cut the lengths out by hand. For the long sides this meant sawing through twelve or thirteen joists for each one. The pieces for the raised bed were stacked to one side and then I set about cutting off all the odd bits left. These have been pressed into various uses, including a stepped arrangement to set the herb pots out. Everyone chipped in and did their bit, including the boys who did a fair bit of cutting and shifting wood about. Nonetheless it was a demanding task and it took most of the weekends in May to get to a position where we could construct the beds.
Having put them in place, the North to South slope of the garden became very evident, so various props were put in place to level up the beds. The Wife then got out her stub of a pencil and a bit of paper and did some difficult calculations to work out just how much topsoil we needed to fill the beds. Later that week, four tons arrived on the front drive.
It did not take long to realise that we are somewhat underestimated the total amount of topsoil needed. In fact, we needed another five tons. Shifting the total of nine tons from the front of the house to the rear of the garden was some operation, but I have to say the topsoil was excellent quality.
In expectation of getting the beds sorted in a reasonable time frame, we had already grown some plants from seed inside the house. As we are East/West facing, the seed trays started the day on the window sill in our bedroom and then were ferried through to the conservatory once the sun had passed the top of the house. That way they progressed nicely, and it was a good job that we pressed on with getting the beds sorted as the tomatoes and broad beans in particular were in desperate need of re-potting. As soon as the first bed was complete, The Wife planted them out alongside the sweetcorn. We also planted year old (but cropped back) raspberry and gooseberry bushes into the border (where we had pulled up some dying ornamental grasses).
Once all the raised beds had been filled with topsoil, we planted out leeks, onions, french beans, pumpkin, peas and carrots. As the beds were not ready until the end of May, we had missed out on some plants, such as brocolli, but this first year is somewhat of an experiment as this is the first time that we have tried something quite like this. We did have a share of an allotment some years ago, so we are not total novices, but truth be told, we are not far off.
In pots we have courgette, dill, cucumber (in the conservatory), horseradish, rocket, lettuce, mint, chives, and parsley. Some of these are doing better than others. The parsley, in particular, is not thriving. We are still mulling over what to do about a potato crop and we want to get some garlic planted out.
To keep weeds down, we are in the process of laying down some lining material around the beds, onto which we have so far emptied 40 or 50 bags of gravel. That is nearly finished, I think we need another 10 bags or so. Additionally, this week, the shed arrived - Yay! But I shall let The Wife talk about that, as it is her pride and joy.
Growing your own food is very fulfilling, and The Wife has her eye on Part Two of Operation Garden - the chickens. We are some way off for being ready for that - but I can see a gleam in her eye. It has been very hard manual work to get this far, and we are not quite finished, but it has been well worth it. Not sure how the two dogs and the cat are going to react - their reaction to the new garden has mainly been to crap on it or to try and eat it. More on that another time.
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