Anyway we both had been saying that we should set aside some of the expanse of grassed garden for a vegetable patch, only it seemed daunting as to where to start. First we thought about the bottom end of the garden but that would mean full sunshine all the time with no let up except at night. So after much deliberation we decided to give up the side of the house part of the garden.
Raised beds were what we fancied and after thinking about scaffold battens as a first choice we tried to source some used ones locally but failed. So railway sleeper sized chunks of wood were then considered and we found so me that were not too badly priced and could be delivered.
Soon an order of 21 railway sleepers, 3 tons of topsoil, 2 tons of pea gravel and a ton of sharp sand was placed.The weekend would be busy one !
A turf stripper was hired and what a job the neat little machine did, soon stripping off the top layer of grass and and moss leaving a reasonably level base of top soil.
After a good deal of sweat and back ache the beds were soon constructed and the pathways between set out.
Some of the turf was laid upside down (grass side down) into the bottom of the beds to compost down hopefully ! Then on top went a mixture of topsoil and general compost. I think that we will need to add some more top soil once all settles down a bit.
The gravel hasn't gone as far as we'd hoped and so another two ton's will be on the way ready for next rest days.
So that's about it for now. We'll be starting some seeds off in window sill propagators this week and then some plants put out next month.
We've still got a good chunk of grass, for now at least but room for expansion of the vegetable garden if we want to.
His lordship watched over the work, no doubt he'll sleep tonight after a hard day being foreman !
We'll try to keep the blog updated with how the garden comes along, the successes and the failures as well.
Bye for now. DKD. (David,Kim and Duke)
