Pea & bean vegetable bed progress

This feels like another particularly busy week and weekend. We’ve made good progress with our new pea & bean bed – we finished making the raised bed on Saturday which we’ve made two sleepers high to help retain enough nutrients for the plants (it’s located beneath a pine tree which will take a lot of the goodness and water away if we’re not careful). We’ve also started installing a wire mesh fence around the bed as it’s a favourite spot for rabbits to come through from the neighbouring fields. We might be lucky and find the fine mesh and the weed membrane keep out the mice as well!

We then started the joyous task of filling the bed back up. Our soil is stony and heavy clay and that part of the garden seemed worse than normal, with the soil caking our boots as we moved about; and sticking to the spade when trying to dig it and spread it in the bed. We mixed the soil with copious amounts of compost as we went to try and break it up a bit – which meant an additional job to turn over the compost bin and move it to the next bin to get to the broken-down compost at the bottom. All in all it was a pretty messy job.

With a storm arriving late on Sunday morning, we got up early to finish filling the bed and give the grass some respite from having tarpaulin across it. We would have had time to put the frame up but decided to give it time for the soil to settle, especially given the high winds that were due. The last thing we want is for our new frame to go the same way as the old one!

On Friday we had another changeover – our first same-day changeover this year. Our guests were fabulous people who left the Farmhouse clean and tidy so we managed to get it finished within our time window. We’re very lucky that I’m able to work flexibly on changeover days – starting early and finishing late either side of the changeover so I only need to take half a day holiday. We spent the weekend washing and ironing ready for our next changeover on Monday. Luckily our next visitors aren’t coming until Friday so we have a few days and evenings to get the house ready for them!