Waiting for a thaw

The compost heaps are still covered with snow but it's now thawing fast. 

While we wait I thought I'd tell you some of the things we did last autumn.

The first few trees in the forest garden were planted in September. It was a bit early to move them and we may have some losses but they were dug up with as much of the root ball intact as possible. For now there are a couple of pears, a couple of cider apples some cherry plums and a bunch of fruit bushes. In the next couple of weeks I'll start producing the planting diagrams and I'll list the varieties. All around the polytunnel garden we've planted redurrants, gooseberries, blackcurrants, a couple of holm oaks, some chocolate vines and a large bed of Apios Americana, the American ground nut which is one of the species I hope eventually to use to produce vegetable oil. Another 10 simple mulch beds have been made with a couple of proper wood sided beds in that area so far. 2 beds contain strawberries, 3 others contain a mix of plants brought up with me from my last project in Wales, I intent to propagate them for the forest garden. I'll list them when I put up my first proper design document. There are two beds of garlic and all the other beds contain winter onions.

Mulch beds are the quickest and easiest way of making beds. You start by clearing whatever is growing there at present to the ground. You then cover the area of your bed with a layer of cardboard (Preferably without too much coloured ink on it) then depending on what you want to plant in it you sprinkle an amount of well rotted manure onto the cardboard and then a few inches of properly rotted down compost. to keep down weeds you keep mulching it as they appear with more compost or you can cover the bed with straw or haylege to suppress unwanted plants.

The bulk of the beds we're going to make we intend to double dig with a mini digger and lined with planks made here at the farm by Danny. I have double dug beds by hand before but it is back breaking work and the planned 150 beds would take me a couple of years to dig if I had the stamina.

To double dig a bed you mark out the area of the bed, then you dig to a spades depth a few feet putting the earth you dig out to one side. You then dig down another spade depth and mix that earth with the first earth you dug out and you work back along the bed until you have mixed up the earth to two spades depth all along the bed. You fill the bed to ground level, put in your restraining planks then mix the remaining earth with whatever mix of compost and manure you want for what you intend to grow in it and fill up the box made by the planks. (The stakes to hold the planks are better on the outside in my opinion but some prefer putting them inside for appearances. You never dig or stand on a raised bed once it's made. From now on maintenance will mostly be mulching as you put back the organic matter your plants will use up.


I'll document the process in pictures once we get started in earnest.


The photograph is of a chicken hut on tall legs to prevent the fox taking the chickens. It isn't occupied at the moment but that will change in a few weeks after we visit the agricultural auction.