The raised beds have come to fruition in our garden and are now sprouting their first crop, a green manure from mustard seeds. The seedlings are now big enough to see from the house, a few days ago, you struggled to see them.
In our garden revamp E and I decided to grow more vegetables- trouble is our garden subsoil is pure sand, dig about 18 inches and the "soil" turns a bright yellow. (Once, when digging a hole for a gatepost, I did not have enough sand to make some concrete, so used some of the sand from the hole- worked a treat!)
So this makes growing vegetables and almost anything else a bit of a struggle, especially during very dry spells of weather. This lead us to thinking about raised beds. We ended up with a plan for four of them, and after careful searching local timber yards and on the internet we decided on 4ft by 8 ft (1.2m by 2.4m approx) beds, and the wood chosen was 7cm by 26cm high. (3 inch by 10 inch approx) which should last a fair while. One of the beds is double height, 52cm (for long tap rooted veg or ones that need to be buried deeply such as leeks or potatoes) and needed about a tonne of topsoil to fill it.
Of course being so thick and wide, the timbers (2.4 m long) weigh about 40 kilos each, so our venerable trolley/porters barrow, was pressed in to service to wheel them in to place. This was the ultimate sacrifice as the small castor wheels gave up the ghost and shed their bearings and the main wheels started to wobble a lot. We have had the trolley at least 20 years and it cost us all of £10 to £12 I think. So a replacement was ordered from Amazon, this duly arrived (now costing £22) and needed hand assembley which was fine.
First used yesterday and I struggled with it to haul some small paving slabs. I was very surprised when comparing the new trolley to the old one, discovering it was about two thirds the size, and the handle was considerably shorter than the old one, which was why it was hard work.
So its not just Waggon Wheel biscuits that have got smaller over the years!
So a revamp for the old trolley is planned - the new one will be used as a sack barrow for compost and bird seed bags, and the old one will once revamped go back to being the workhorse.
Once the green manure crop is big enough, it will be dug in and we will then plant up with either quick growing crops or overwintering ones as we have missed part of the growing season already.
Yes Wagon Wheels are smaller now, why is that ?
ReplyDeleteHow soon after you dig in green manure can you start planting?
I think in the case of Waggon Wheels it is just down to keeping costs down so size shrinks.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the packet instructions for the mustard seeds, you wait until they are about 8 inches tall. This depends on the weather -it says 3 to 6 weeks.
Interestingly we were on Bury St Edmunds Saturday market last week, and a stallholder (Terwins seeds- website www.terwinseeds.co.uk)had for sale other green manure crops, some that you plant later in the year and leave for several months - he mentioned grazing rye as one alternative, but he had alfalfa, buckwheat and clover as well. At the moment with watering them daily to keep moist they are at 1 to 2 inches tall, so a quarter there! Today's rain will help as well.
I've just bought green manure seeds called "winter mix" from www.greenmanure.co.uk It contains crimson and red clover,mustard and Italian ryegrass and can be sown in August or September and left over winter. I'm hoping it will keep the weeds down and help improve the soil on a seriously neglected bed on my allotment.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a good mix, the clover will add back some nitrogen to the soil. The mustard I used covered the whole of the raised beds, once well grown, so no weed would be able to compete. I have now dug in the mustard and we will attempt to get some late crops/overwintering crops established.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a good mix, the clover will add back some nitrogen to the soil. The mustard I used covered the whole of the raised beds, once well grown, so no weed would be able to compete. I have now dug in the mustard and we will attempt to get some late crops/overwintering crops established.
ReplyDelete