Back in April, David and I had a day building new raised
beds and shifting a load of topsoil which was removed from the pond hole. I blogged about that day here.
Over the last week or so I have been taking advantage of the
local M&S food hall selling peat free compost, and with help from Momma P
and her homemade compost, the new raised beds are now completely full, and they have also been planted up! I am so excited to watch
these grow and fill out. All of the plants except the tagetes have been grown from seed. I bought the tagetes from M&S with the compost.
The two square yellow beds have got tomatoes, tagetes,
sweetcorn and calendula (seed). The long purple bed now has a pea tepee with
two types of pea seed, a row of bean canes with three types of bean seed
(borlotti, yellow French, and purple French climbing). It also has 3 courgette
plants – one yellow and two green – and a pumpkin. In between the rows and the
plants, I have sown seeds of mixed lettuce, spring onion, and carrot. The
shorter blue bed has a sturdy growing structure attached to it, and up this I
am growing a loofah, sunflowers, and I have also planted gladioli bulbs along
the back. This growing structure will be permanent so that next year I can grow
peas or beans up it. In the front part of the bed I have put two courgette
plants, and some rows of carrot and parsnip seed. Around the edge I have bodged
some calendula seed, and I think some dwarf foxglove. The small square blue bed
has sweet peas that haven’t climbed at all, and a pumpkin.
Building these beds has completely transformed this part of
the allotment and has given me some much-needed growing space which is well
above the water table. I can actually use this bit of land now!!
I am now going to start focusing my attention on the other
half of the plot opposite these beds. The quince get flooded every year but it
will be a big job to dig them out, fill the bed in, build new raised beds, and
then back fill them, and replant the quince! I am going to take this as an
opportunity to redesign the layout of this bottom area, so that I have a car
parking space, and maybe I’ll spread the quince out. This was originally the
holding bed for them to get the plants out of Mommas greenhouse some years ago,
but it is now dock/nettle/teasel/cleavers heaven so it does need sorting.
