Building raised beds

Happy Christmas to you all. May you also be playing in the dirt on this day.

I wanted to send you a brief ‘before’ series of shots on my new potager. Raised beds everywhere. One day.

Yesterday was not spent queuing at the local shops, or even baking and preparing. No, I was out there with the measuring tape and the sticks and the electric fencing tape trying to get the beds sorted.

I had thought I was going to do six raised beds of 1m70 wide by 3m50 deep…. but as the fence was moved to accommodate the building work, I have had to reduce in girth all over.

So now you see I have six beds 1m40 wide and still 3m50 deep (… or do I mean long?).

And I have made a gap of 70cm between the beds, apart from the middle axis where I will be bashing about with a wheelbarrow – I made that one 1m30 wide.

And I have a dangling bit of land at the very end. Dare I do a one metre wide bed right up against the fence and sacrifice an extravagantly wide path?

A future problem requiring a solution. And I bet you can’t even see the possibilities under that sea of dying back crocosmia growth. I tell you it’s a mess in there.

I was absurdly pleased that one of the huge Gertrude Jekyll roses will fit inside one of the raised beds. I know you aren’t supposed to take such small considerations into the plan. But it was marvellous to think I will only have two huge roses to shift, not three.

And speaking of shift. So many plants had to come up and get shifted before I could find my soil. Up came the dahlias, still in their pots. I need to sort them to one fine day. Some are bursting out of their pots, others need dividing.

But that won’t happen in 2019. I need to move all the other treasures into some pots first. Agastache, lots of rocket, lots of cerinthe. You name it it has to shift so the beds can get built.

And as I worked I had a bucket set aside just for all the bindweed roots I was carefully unearthing. Ugh.

But it’s Christmas and we can’t dwell on the bindweed nasties. Next week if all goes to plan I will have an update of how the beds get made. Permaculture and all the toys.

Happy Christmas.