28 Sept 2009

The Day the Earth wouldn't move…

Back at the beginning of our vegpatch adventure, after we'd cleared the tiny walled rose garden for planting, we laid down raised beds over the newly cleared earth to kick start the Veg Patch into some sort of growing season.  The area around the beds is (or was) earmarked for fruit trees surrounded by other herbs and vegetables but, frankly, the soil needs a lot of improving. Recently re-discovered lurking under the surface are back-breaking clumps of pure clay.  Why I thought they would somehow mysteriously disappear goes some way to illustrating what an optimist I am.  Still, there we are.  Now I have something else to obsess over.


 My intrepid camera lens goes under the skirts of our beetroot crop

Nevertheless we have enjoyed, dare I say it, a modicum of success in our first veg patch this summer, and we're now all abuzz with preparation for the next stage:  choosing seeds for winter planting and clearing Veg Patch 2.  In Veg Patch 1, our Johnny-Come-Lately beetroot continues to grow - at this stage it's more of an experiment than a crop - all show and no substance;  the salad leaves are still delicious and abundant and the radishes continue swelling into enormity but are, curiously, still exceptionally tasty.


 Now that's what I call…  Ugly

Having tidied our tools away after our Sunday afternoon dig, we agreed the promised hour had arrived for a reviving libation down at our local hostelry.  As luck would have it,  whilst there I was able to corner our local gardening guru about our soil problem.  I now have it confirmed (on the highest authority) that we have to treat the soil with horticultural sand and revive it with well-rotted manure or at the very least recycled compost.  Righty-ho, then.  Well that's my spare time this week sorted.

2 comments:

  1. Your blog looks good but just curious to know that are your vegetable growing in normal soil?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yay! I've got a comment! Thank you Flowers and thanks for stopping by …
    We planted our veg from seed in raised beds filled with compost from our local recycling centre. Cheaper than buying soil from a garden centre and surprisingly very good.

    ReplyDelete

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