I need to get cracking on the new beds in the veggie plot as I have strawberry plants that really need to be planted out. I received them before Christmas and had to plant them into pots because I didn’t even have anything to make new beds with at the time. I filled a trailer with some green waste compost yesterday and today started spreading it on cardboard laid over the grass.
The plan is to mix the green waste compost and my own compost about 50/50, because I’ve found that the green waste stuff can form a bit of a “crust” if it dries out, at which point water tends to run off it rather than sink in. Initially however I just wanted to get as much cardboard laid as possible with compost on top to weight it down.
Rain stopped play at this point
The plan was to have a 60cm (2′) wide path alongside the raspberry beds on the left, with two 1.2m (4′) wide beds separated by another 60cm path parallel to them. Once I’d actually tried it out I decided I needed the path alongside the raspberries to be wider, but as I couldn’t move the beds over (one of the paths has a stop cock in the middle of it, and I don’t want that under a bed), I just made the bed a bit narrower. I’m sure it will work out ok. There’s also a path splitting the beds from left to right so it’s possible to walk straight up into the main vegetable-growing area from the house rather than having to go around the end of each bed.
So once complete, what I should end up with is two beds about 6.5m x 0.9m (21’x3′) and two slightly wider ones of 6.5m x 1.2m (21’x4′). At least, as long as I don’t run out of cardboard now. I’ve been stashing boxes away for months, but making these could well clear me out.