First Sowings

Spring is finally in full swing. The sun has shone for a couple of weeks now, prompting us, beginning last Sunday (7th May), into a flurry of activity in the garden.

Onion Bed

This year sees us continuing our soil improvement plans and reclaiming land in keeping with our long term Terraced fruit and vegtable garden plans, which will rise up from both sides of the little farm road that runs down to the field. Last year, we were very lucky to come to an agreement with the real farmer that he would use our large pile of rubble as part of the fondation of his new tractor road and replace this with the soil he dug out of the road. Giving us a great mechanically assisted step forward and removing a load of back braking work for us.

The final layout and allocation of land for soft fruit, vegatable beds and fruit trees/orchard is not decided yet. Fruit trees and bushes will have to wait another year for both readiness and financial reasons. So this year we will use as much of this area as possible for "bulk" vegetables in an attmept to keep the area weed free and blend in the copious amounts of manure that the real farmer added for us whilst filling up with soil.

After a couple hours of hard digging, stone picking and manure spreading we had an area 6m x 1.5m prepared. In here we planted 1/2 a kilo of Sturon onion sets and a row of sugar snap peas. We also prepared an area 1x1m for a 4x4 square of Marshalls Metoer Vroma Broad beans.

Futher plans for this area later in the spring/summer, include french beans, leeks, courgettes/marrows, butternut squash and sweetcorn.

Photos to follow.