May 2023
A lot can happen in a month…
The main wall at the end of the enclosed garden gradually 3 inches up. The pile of old bricks wasn’t in the way when I first stacked it up there. Double handling shows poor foresight. Any more handling than that and clearly a considered and methodical plan of action has gone awry!
In spite of the best intentions for making a weekly blog to chart the development of the walled garden, this soon became every other week. Now I find that with the time that it takes me to water in the evenings after a solid day of brickwork, building greenhouse frames or doing some groundwork, my remaining energy is conserved for easing a glass of wine to my parched lips. So it is that May went by with no words set down and a random set of photos.
The great thing about having a large selection of raised beds is that they offer the opportunity for long term allocation of planting. I did have some asparagus at my my last house but, with a vegetable patch a fraction of the size of what I have available now, it only ever amounted to a weekly handful of spears through April and May. Now there is the chance for a long term investment and with 30 plants to get into the ground, I enlist the help of my daughter in law Marian. Good techniques come with time and practice so what at first felt awkward and arduous soon turned into a rapid pleasurable routine.
First the mounds. Pyramids would have been ideal I guess but that would require setting out the position of every plant at an early stage of the process.
The crowns go in looking like a bunch of weird dried up sea creatures. Some are already starting to fire out spears and we wonder if these anemic early risers are going to make it.
One month on and every plant has taken beautifully! Especially the ones that I pre soaked for two hours before planting. You’d think that Morgan and Thompson would be all over this in their You Tube video but I had to find a video by some rando hippie gardener to garner this valuable trinket of knowledge.
ive had to avoid taking any of the spoils in this first year of growth. The flailing ferns will take nutrients down to the roots for a better, stronger plant in year two when 50% of spears can be cropped. Every year after that its fill your boots and smelly wee time!
Ive focused on the Asparagus bed here but there has been plenty of other planting going on and since the last update, a whole bed of dishes has shot up, and been consumed. Now a batch of lettuce has moved into the empty slot.
Tomatoes on a trellis, broad beans under a cloche, Leeks, Rocket, Parsnips, Beetroot, Carrots, French Beans, Squash, Brussels all in open beds plus a special level of insulated protection for the chillies.
More tomatoes, Squash and Brussels together with Asparagus, Cabbage, Artichoke, Courgette, Corn and a Cherry tree.
You can just see the start of the little mushroom brick piers going in ready for the recycled timber posts that will support the pergola to sit between the tallest of the raised beds.
The greenhouse inner frame is now complete and waiting for me to round up all of the loose change in order to purchase the timber and glass for the skin. After a lot of research it seems to me that kiln dried Siberian larch is a good compromise option between the ultra expensive Canadian Red Cedar and painted softwood.
Once upon a time around five years ago these beautiful pieces of timber held up the dormer above what is now the kitchen. We have salvaged four equal lengths at 1750mm for the pergola posts. Cutting the timber was a challenge for Alex with a combo of skill saw and hand saw. Identifying the timber species was even harder as it seems to light for oak but to enduring for a softwood. Ash maybe? The plan is to carve the face of the timber with patterns.
Next thing you know, the posts are up! Reluctantly I have resigned myself to having to buy timber for the top rails and cross members but the pain of expense will be offset by a joyous trip to the local timber yard.
Having struggled with unskilled use of the digger through the course of 2022, this year I have opted for hiring the digger with its driver. Mister (not his real name but the only one that he will respond to), made light work of levelling out the remaining areas of the walled garden that we had not yet tackled, set out the paths and cleared out the most offensively large lumps of debris from the demolition that he carried out in June 2020. I don’t think that he considered back then that he would need to come back and re-shift it all again.
10 tonnes of MOT to spread was hard work in the heat but now we can get to the washing line with a much reduced risk of ankle twisting!
In a kind of reverse archeology I am covering up the foundations of the old extension to form a new layout of raised beds and pathways. Perhaps in the distant future someone will unearth this and puzzle over the history of what went before.
There are jobs to finish everywhere around the island and here I finally get around to finishing the brick piers to the front gates. New sign to follow…
After a long period of incessant rain, we now have day after day of clear blue skies and sunshine. Nice for relaxing in but makes for a lot of work watering. I definitely need to build more rainwater harvesting storage!