Work in progress - Garden Update

It’s been a busy few weeks and we're starting to get the garden ready for spring planting; M made some raised beds a week or so ago from some (found) timbers - i.e. we raided the neighbours skip and rescued some old shelves and bits of wood - which he made into two raised beds, and he also wove a beautiful support frame - for tomatoes and beans - from some bamboo we had left over from last year. 

Before

After

I have quite an ambitious list of vegetables to seed this year, but we’re really excited about getting some staples from this year’s crop. We plan on growing potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, tomatoes as well as courgette, beetroot, lettuce, sweet peppers, strawberries, raspberries, peas and beans. I’ve started mapping out my seedling planting plan, and so far, I've seeded onions – in seed trays on the windowsill in the kitchen –sweet orange peppers, lettuce and I planted garlic cloves - from organic (already sprouted, handy!) garlic from our local greengrocer - and I have a couple of potatoes “chitting” on the windowsill in the kitchen, all looking good so far!

Small glasshouse, which has now been dismantled to add more space, alongside new raised bed - old Cheyenne bush pumpkin patch

Basic garden plan - still working out where everything is going to go!

garlic, lettuce and onions

Dual purpose (up-cycled) shelf - great for hanging saucepans and very handy for stating off sweet orange pepper seeds

Up-cycled/rescued shelves - remade into a raised box for strawberries/herbs

Unfortunately, as the kitty has been making good use of the garden beds over the winter, we will have to dig out the top layer of soil, replace it with topsoil, dig in some well rotted manure and compost and then immediately cover the beds with netting to stop her digging it up again *sigh

It’s been such a mild winter so far (and I hope I haven’t just jinxed it!) but I can’t wait for Spring to get sprung, I’m ready for some seedlings and blossoms now!