Monday 24 March 2014

A Tonne of Stuff Going On

That's going to take a while to shift...
Since deciding where the raised beds were going to go, and actually putting them there a couple of weeks ago they have lain empty. The whole idea of getting them is that we might be able to grow some stuff that just hasn't worked for us previously - carrots for example - due to our heavy clay soil. So rather than fill them with that same soil, we took delivery of around a tonne of the council's "soil improver" , into which we mixed a smattering of rotted down horse manure. That should hopefully provide a decent growing medium.
We had a hell of a time a couple of years ago, when we took delivery of four tonnes of manure from a local farm, spending basically an entire harrowing day moving it all from the track where it was dumped onto our plot. Memories of this experience were resurfacing as the council wagon's hydraulic trailer kicked into action and an industrial looking quantity of loamy black stuff toppled off the back of it. Happily, the soil conditioner is, at least compared to rotted down crap, really light. Barely an hours worth of barrowing and it was all shifted.
All gone...
...into these
The on-and-off rain made for a refreshing working environment. It felt good to do a bit of graft actually, as Kasia's mum has been performing Herculean miracles in the digging department, leaving us with a plot that is basically ready to go for the season ahead at the cost of almost no effort on our part.

The first of this year's module-grown seeds were committed to the earth, as a tray of Aquadulce broad beans went in. Germination wasn't a total success, so we may do some more, depending on how they take to the soil. We didn't harden them off, but they are meant to be tough little things so we'll see.


The hooded bean-planter
A very productive few hours on the plot then. Good to get back into the swing of things as the promise of the season ahead comes careering into view.

4 comments:

  1. It's amazing how much raised beds hold isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is. Reckon about 3/4 tonne went into those 3 beds.

      Delete
  2. There's gold in them there beds!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good luck with your raised beds. I tried them a couple of years ago but they just weren't for me. That soil you have sure looks good so I hope your seeds/seedlings appreciate it by being great this year!!

    ReplyDelete

All comments gratefully received. Sorry about the word verification thing, but I've started getting bombed by spam.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...