We started work on the garden again last weekend. Sally’s been quite prepared with ideas and we’ve ordered our seeds for the year. The weekend was mild and dryish…time to start preparing the ground!
The plan is to have raised beds. This is where you put wooden borders up and contain within it a raised area of soil. Sally’s mum, a VERY keen gardener, raves about them and we’ve been told that they have many benefits, such as:
- Warming up quicker in spring
- Not needing digging
- Better drainage
Plus, you get to put paths between them, which, potentially means you don’t get as muddy. You just kneel at the side and reach in to do your planting/tending/harvesting.
So, this weekend we tried to start making this a reality, and rapidly ran into some stumbling blocks.
We measured up and did the maths. Our plot can have 4 beds, each the full width of the garden (about 5 metres), and each about 1.5 metres wide. A nice lot of space.
But that means we’ll need about 26 metres of timber for each plot to do the edges. Once that’s done we’ll need to fill them with earth too. We calculated this on the basis of needing 30cm deep of earth and it came to around 2500 litres of soil for each bed.
WOW!!!
In reality it won’t quite be that much. But it’s still going to be a lot.
So, looks like it’s off to the reclaimed timber yard for some wood at some point, and then to the council…several times…for some cheap compost.
You know, maybe we won’t get ALL the beds done this year. But we’ll try and make a start. Watch this space for progress.