Making a start

The altitude here is about 400 foot in the foothills below the Denbigh moors in a small Welsh village. Aspect is important. Our front garden faces south-south easterly and so has the most potential for sun-loving crops. The back is more northerly and the side, where the patio is, faces in a westerly direction.

Front garden has a few shrubs and trees and a rather mossy lawn

 Side garden is part patio, lawn and shrubs with a buddleia and a lovely Californian Lilac

Back garden, more shady as it faces north, has compost bin, bird feeder, lawn and path

Last year, my partner installed two raised beds, made cheaply from half fence posts which cost only £1.35 at the local timber merchant. He also dug an ugly shrub up from the bed by our kitchen door which became another bed where I grew potatoes and leeks. In fact we still have a few leek and broccoli plants which being hardy, have survived sub zero temperatures. The organic purple sprouting broccoli is particularly impressive because it also survived a devastating caterpillar attack (we used netting but were too late). It's all a learning experience though and we'll do better, hopefully, next year.

Our purple sprouting broccoli - growing through the winter

Our Leeks - Good winter survivors

 

This is all very nice, but not enough! So we have bought another twelve of the half-round fence posts and created a new, quite compact 'L' shaped raised bed to complement the bed already in the front. This only cost £19 for the wood, though it'll need another two posts costing £21.70 altogether to finish it off. In addition, I've dug up the adjacent area (front of the picture below) where some straggly plants were not doing very much and have prepared that for a potato crop. For £12 I bought some bags of topsoil, although dearer than ordering in bulk, I was impatient to start and this stuff was good quality. I sometimes find the topsoil that comes by the ton, isn't quite so good quality, having ordered some for my school, it turned out to be heavy clay (difficult for small hands to dig), not to mention the bit of broken glass that was in there. However to be fair, a previous order from the same firm was quite good. I may yet resort to ordering in bulk, depending on how this project unfolds. We now have four beds, but are already thinking it won't be enough!

 

After a few hours on the internet, I've ordered a lot of seeds and am excited about planting much more this year. As well as potatoes and leeks, we're trying for peas, kale, onions, beetroot, spinach, salad leaves, tomatoes, dwarf french beans, climbing beans, courgette, squashes and herbs, which are the things that are most likely to be eaten. We've also got two apple trees (one is being trained against the wall as an espalier), a sweet cherry tree and blackberries which will hopefully yield this year. Although it's still cold (1 degree centigrade), I'm going to start planting indoors, time to sign off and dig the propagator out of the garage.

 

New area (this week so not quite finished) in front garden (less lawn to mow!)