The highlights of last summer? My sweetpeas and dahlias did well on this plot - no photos though I'm afraid. The dahlias in particular seemed happy. I put them in a spot that gets sun for maybe half the day which stopped the flowers getting a bit bleached which I find they can do if in full sun all day. My Charlotte potatoes did well (in a bed which I had manured).
But the low points? My maincrop potatoes were a disaster (as I suspected they would be). The ground I planted them in was rock hard and a lack of rain all summer meant it was impossible either for the potatoes themselves to spread underground, or for me to earth them up. I've decided not to grow anything else on this bed until I can add copious amounts of organic matter to it.... but more on that later.
The only other real low point was the badgers deciding to use my onion bed as a latrine. All 90 sets (that's onion sets, not badger setts :)) were dug up, thrown in the air and replaced with.... well, you don't really want to know.
The bare patch of earth in the foreground was the onion bed
Over the last winter I made slow but steady progress redesigning the plot and adding muck. I added around 50 sacks of manure to the plot, but that was over less than half the beds. I think I'd need five hundred sacks to start to make an impact.
One of the things I am most pleased with is the new wider path I have down the side of the plot. Previously, the path was only about 18 inches wide and once the hedge was growing at full-speed, left no room for walking along, and certainly no room for a wheel barrow.
Room for a wheel barrow!
In the photo, above, you can see I have doubled the width of the path. The good thing is that this is the shadiest part of the plot so I haven't lost any prime growing space. I dare say by high summer the hedge will be making a good job of pushing me into the beds again, but for now it is a great improvement.
In case you were wondering, the soil I used to widen the path came from digging out straight edges around some of the other beds. There was a lot of heavy barrowing going on over the winter.
I now have three beds planted up with shrubs and perennials that I will use for my cutting garden.All three beds had lots of manure, compost and leaf mound added to them prior to planting out. They all look good on the surface but underneath there is still a lot of heavy clay, so still a way to go before I can say I'm happy with the soil. They also all had a lot of couch grass and bind weed in them which I have had a good go at tackling. Of course I haven't got it all out and I accept that in the next year or so I'll have to lift everything from these beds and give them another good dig. It will give me the opportunity though to bring some sort of order to the planting which at the moment is all a bit random - shade lovers and sun worshipers all mixed up together.
Originally two beds divided by a couch grass path
Among the shrubs I have for the cutting garden are Skimmias, Hydrangeas, Hypericum and Rosemary. Among the perennials there are lots of Phlox, Astilbes, Astrantia, Bistort, Scabious of various kinds, Campion and so on. I'm going to be ruthless with the cutting garden, anything that isn't earning its keep will be out.
One of the good things about this blog is that it does make me realise I have made progress (although with a long way to go). I have finally dug over and planted out potatoes on one of the beds that I started working on during the winter of 2013-2014. During that winter I didn't have time to do anything more than dig out the matting that was around and through the bed (and full of couch grass). The ground became too hard over the summer to do anything with it and so nothing was done until autumn 2014 when I covered it with a layer of cardboard and horse manure. My mistake was to not then cover this as it meant the weeds grew straight through it.
The big bed with inadequate cover, letting the weeds come through
But no matter, about 25 bags of horse manure went on in the autumn and in the spring of this year I began the long, arduous task of digging the bed over. It took a month of Sundays, and Fridays but eventually it was done, and 60 seed potatoes were planted out - 40 first earlies and 20 early maincrop. I can see already that I will have more success with the potatoes this year than I did last.
Four rows of first earlies
Again, I can already see lots of bind weed coming up so this bed is a long way from how I want it to be, but slowly slowly things are improving.
One of the reasons why I'm able to write this blog now is that it is pouring with rain outside - the first really proper rain we have had for months. Just when I thought the ground was going to be too hard to do any more digging.... no excuses for not getting back up there tomorrow...
