Plan number 1

Now I know where my beds are I've measured them out and done a rough plan of where things are going to go. Surprising how quickly the space gets used up. I may halve some of the beds, Otherwise I'll be over-run with one crop and won't have room for anything else; we'll see how much time I've got! I'm also going to think about successional planting, so that everything doesn't come to maturity on the same day.

Colditz

My neigbour's plot has been referred to by some as Colditz due to the amount of wire fences around it, but I've always thought that looks like a good idea - why grow a row of carrots to feed the wild rabbits?

After the appearance of some little anonymous visitors to my garlic patch, I realised that protecting each individual bed would take a lot of time and money, so I've decided that a better long term approach will be to fence round the edge of my plot.

My own fortifications have begun, the cheapest supports I can find are half-round fence posts, 2.5m for £2.50 from Wickes. I was going to order wire online, as during the winter that was the cheapest source; but Spring is a different matter, because as the seasons change I notice that places like my regular supermarket have started stocking gardening supplies, so I will continue to shop around. (Asda, 10m x 0.5m chicken wire for £7.97).

Green Manure Update

Only about half of my winter field beans have germinated, although some have germinated some distance away from where I actually scattered them! I suspect that birds (or as my neighbour John pointed out, mice) have stolen some of the beans. Either that or I was not very careful when I planted them; both are a possibility. They may also have just decided not to germinate due to conditions not being quite right.


I expected them to have grown a bit bigger by now and to have blocked out the weeds, but the weeds are much more numerous than the green manure. I think I planted them rather too late in the season to be truly effective. They were planted at the end of a very wet summer/autumn, and really only just before winter set in, so I might try again earlier in future, and I might protect them with some mesh whilst they germinate. I know that birds like to pull up seedlings, but that was a risk I was prepared to take this year as they weren't an important crop to me, just an experiment.

And So To Bed

As it is fast approaching planting time for most of this year’s crops I urgently need to get my beds sorted out and decide where things are going to go. With this in mind I took Mrs Moog-Keeper and a notepad down to the plot at the weekend. My intention was to make some sort of plan or maybe start marking out.

We decided we needed a clearer view, so with considerable effort from my other half, and manly supervision on my part (I have a bad back this week and can’t bend in the middle that well) we got the carpet removed and exposed the plot to the light of day for the first time since last September. What this has revealed, now the tall grass has nearly rotted away, are the outlines of beds that haven’t been used for years. I knew the ground under the grass was lumpy, because I kept turning my ankle, but seeing it for the first time without weeds was a very pleasant surprise.

The joint decision was that the most economical way of using the space would be to follow the line of the existing beds with paths in between. As the plot hasn’t been worked for years and years, hopefully soil-borne diseases and pests will not be a problem. Also digging should be marginally easier if the soil has been dug before.

We got to work marking out the beds with string until the string got hopelessly tangled after one bed. Then we started using wire until the wire got hopelessly tangled after one more bed. We could have tried the Alexander the Great trick of cutting the knot but that would have left us with lots of tiny useless pieces of wire/string, so we just started digging the first bed instead. I was reminded of Monty Python’s String Sketch - what to do with 122,000 miles of string in 3 inch pieces. "Simpson's Individual Stringettes!"A MILLION HOUSEHOLD USES!" but I digress. One bed down, many to go!

All in all a successful weekend of activity.