The New Vegetable Garden Takes Shape
Measuring out the plot
It’s finally stopped raining and long overdue construction works to the new vegetable garden can at last take place, and just in time as the plants waiting to go out from the greenhouse were getting very large indeed.
Despite my best intentions of getting this marked out and dug over during the wintertime, this did not happen due to the constant wet weather, but all is not lost and Mid-April has seen a change to windier conditions that have really helped to dry the soil and make cultivations possible.
My first job was to accurately mark the bed out, recalling many years spent marking out football pitches the first job is to put down a base line from which all measurements are made. Using the 3:4:5 triangle principle it is very easy to get perfect right angles, then it is just simply a question of marking up the 4th edge to join up all edges of the rectangle.
You need a long line that is very taught to get a nice sharp straight edge, and then cut along and out using a half-moon edger.
Prepping the ground
Once all four sides have been ‘chipped’ out, you could go for a no dig option and cover the bed with cardboard and mulch, but for now I am going with the traditional approach much to the delight of my feathered helper who will spot every opportunity to dust bathe in drying soil and sunshine!
All of the old strawberry plants were removed and disposed of in the green waste bin but the turf I simply strip off with a spade, chop into short lengths and bury face down in the bottom of the digging trench, which needs to be around 200mm deep. You really don’t need to remove the turf and compost separately as many gardening books recommend you do, stripping and burying on site works extremely well and providing you don’t fork the turves up again during final cultivations will guarantee no regrowth of neither grass nor weeds in it. After about a day’s hard work to prepare a bed 1.7 metres wide and 8.2 metres long the finished result was almost ready to plant.
One crucial detail had to be sorted though, the division of each planting area which would form the basis of crop rotation. I carefully measured each area equally then sub divided this into the five separate beds each 1.65 metres long. A really good way of providing a permanent bed marker is to use an Elixir Fleece Peg hammered into the lawn to it full length to ensure it is low enough so the lawnmower glides over them. I have put these on both the long edges of the bed and I can then just use a cane across as a guide to gauge the edge of each of the 5 individual rotation areas within the bed.
Choosing the crops
Once each rotation bed was marked, planting progressed with the current progress of :
Bed 1: Cabbage Kalibro (planted), Early Carrot – Nairobi (sown)
Bed 2: Letuce – Salad Bowl and Solesion (planted), Radish French Breakfast (sown), Onion – White Lisbon (planted)
Bed 3: Vacant
Bed 4: Broad Bean – Masterpiece Green Longpod (sown)
Bed 5: Beetroot Bolthardy (planted), Onion white Lisbon (sown)
As has been mentioned in an earlier article, these are the ‘oddball’ crops, the ones I don’t grow many of or are short duration, with each area been cropped at least twice each year.
Pest control
Finally, once the plants were in, I applied Growing Success Slug Killer to the Lettuce Carrots and Cabbage, and covered with horticultural fleece. This covering has two benefits, firstly as protection from the weather which may have damaged the tender lettuce seedlings, its purpose was to minimise any potential frost issues and also help prevent damage from cold winds.
Secondly, for pest control where it completely eliminates damage from Carrot root fly, carrot / willow aphid, Cabbage root fly and caterpillars particularly small white cabbage butterfly larvae which can make an early appearance!
Although the planting is currently about a month late, it will soon catch up and crop well, more of an issue will be the second crop which will now be planted later and probably on shortening days which is not ideal – but that’s gardening you never get a year that everything works out as you want it to!
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