Veg Beds Cut!

A shockingly effective day spent preparing the veg beds. We had help, in the form of parents-in-law turning out. The weather started a little unprepossessing (light rain), but cleared by 11ish, and we got started. I hadn't expected to get as far, but the addition of a strong father-in-law meant that digging speed was more than doubled. The Q-shaped bed is all but cut and turned, and almost the entire C-shaped bed, too. The top-right corner of this was rather difficult: there was a cotoneaster growing well into the proposed bed, and a berberis rooted outside the bed, but hanging into it. The latter was easily resolved, but the cotoneaster was a struggle to cut back, and then up-root. Eventually I managed to dig its roots out (discovering, along the way, that it was an appropriately named Cotoneaster congesta, purchased for a miserly £2.25—probably some thirty years past), and then did a bit of excavation, as the ground sloped up quite steeply under it. The bed will be butted up against one of the large rocks that support the terracing, but I think (hope) will miss it.

The long rectangular bed was already partly dug—we'd cut a nursery bed, quickly, last autumn, knowing that it would roughly fall where the veg bed would eventually be. It's not far off, about a foot north of plan, so the plants that fell in the new path were quickly lifted and replanted, and the uncut section can be prepared tomorrow.

In laying out the beds, we also worked out that there should be a 12x16 foot space available for greenhouse/shed. I'm quite taken by this shed/greenhouse combination. It would allow the two to exist side-by-side, and catch the sun best with the greenhouse part.

Tomorrow, I'll start building the beds, while everyone else finishes cutting the turf, digging it over, and barrowing down top-soil.