After a few busy weeks of visitors and a work trip – and before that bad weather – we had great intentions to catch up with all our garden jobs – mainly planting out our various vegetable seedlings and weed some of the worst beds. But unfortunately John’s been ill for the last few days and has been taking it easy, mainly doing light jobs like mowing the lawn, and lifting heavy sleepers, which I can’t do alone.
Despite this – we managed to make good progress. Our second new vegetable bed, designed for potatoes and squashes, is now mostly finished and filled with a mix of soil and compost – the last thing we need to do is make the removable slats along the front of the potato side to make it easier to dig out the potatoes later in the year. We’ve planted 6 types of potato (some first earlies that should have been planted last month, fingers crossed they still grow), and I think 10 varieties of squash and pumpkin. We’ve tried to gain space by setting a few to grow upwards – we’ve seen squashes grow over arches before so hopefully it’ll work! If it does, we may invest in an arch in future – but given our build costs are going up significantly, we’re trying to cut back to essential purchases only. Having the proper bed in place makes such a difference – our first year here the space was just completely overgrown with brambles and nettles; then last year we cut it all back to create an experimental soil bank for our squashes. As it worked pretty well, but wasn’t particularly stable or attractive, we decided this year to make a proper bed. It’s taken us a few months but we hope that now it’s done, it’s done, and it’ll be there for many years to come!
While we didn’t get round to weeding, we did take the opportunity to start pulling up our invasive three-cornered leek that’s taken over our front garden suddenly. We made a pretty delicious pesto – light and tasty, and hopefully easy on the stomach!
Given many of our other seedlings are desperate to go out, I suspect we’ll be grabbing every morning and evening during the week to try and plant them all. The vegetable covers do a great job in keeping away the birds and rabbits but they do make it harder to plant in, so it’s a little more difficult to get the planting done quickly!
Ley Farm Cottages 