Vegetables

As I mentioned in the first post, there is bugger all topsoil over the lower part of the land where we propose to plant our vegetables. During the first week here, I was determined to create at least a small vegetable patch to plant some garlic. A 4' by 6' patch took two days to double dig requiring my trusty pickaxe (recurring theme...) to break through about 6" to 12" of the local siltstone (Rab) into the underlying heavy almost white clay.

The lean-too on the back of the barn had been used to stable a horse and was covered in a 6" layer of well rotted manure. Two or three barrow load of muck were dug in with the clay in the hope it might grow something. So far so good, as the garlic appears to be doing well.

However, we decided that this was an unsustainable form of cultivation and have opted for raised beds. After a bit of trawling across the Internet, we came across Celtic Sleepers just beyond Haverfordwest and went to look at what they had. We were looking for untreated sleepers and ordered 4no. 18' long and 2no. 10' long by 12" by 6" sleepers that had come from Pembroke Dock. The 2 10' sleepers we cut in half with my new chainsaw (thanks Auntie Maggie) in about 10 seconds to make two beds. The 18' long sleepers were very heavy and had to be moved into place by balancing them on a wheelbarrow with motive power provided by No.1 Daughter Laura and boyfried Mo.

The holes left in each sleeper for the chairs were ideal to bolt them all together using M16 coach screws (the cheapest place I found was Leo Fixings). In hindsight I should have gone for 250mm long bolts rather than 200mm as they only have 50mm of bite and can't be fully tightened without stripping. However, they are not going anywhere!

The next task was to fill them. Tim from West Atherton Farm sold us 4 tonnes of topsoil which in hindsight I should have got him to tip a bit closer to the site of the beds. I lost count of how many barrow loads of soil I moved over a weekend. The base of each bed was loosened with a mattock and one bed treated to copious quantities of the aforementioned horse manure. The non-manured bed will be for root crops.

We are members of Garden Organic and the Heritage Seed Library and so buy seeds from them and obtain the 'heritage' varieties from the seed library. This Sunday we planted out the onion sets and peas in the beds and the window sill in the conservatory has trays of broad beans, french beans, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, runner beans and celery.

It is clear that we are going to run out of room this year and so are digging a few smaller beds on the other side of the road behind the mobile home which has a good depth of dark topsoil. Next year we will add further raised beds but it will be interesting to see what we can grow this year with limited space.

We cleared a large patch of brambles behind the workshop and had intended to plant potatoes there. However, it is really just broken rock (Rab again) with a bit of clay. Our agricultural consultant (Tim!) said we would be wasting our time and said even if the potatoes did grow there they would taste of the rock. He pointed to the large patch of nettles next to the raised beds and suggested that it was a former muck pile and said that would be the best place for them. Under the mat of nettle roots was about 12" of well rotted manure and has been transformed into our potato bed. We have now planted first earlies (Orla) and maincrop (Desiree).

When the weather improves and we have few (more!!) days of sunshine we will start to plant up the rest of the raised beds and the patches we have dug over the road.