Vegetable garden maintenance

Yep, a new year’s resolution.  I can’t tell you how long I have been hiding from the horror of my top potager.

You rarely see it. Unless you are gazing at asparagus and brassicas.   And even then it’s a pretty tight shot that doesn’t pan back over the site.

The whole area has been such an eyesore that I have kindly averted your gaze.

But gaze now as I am halfway there.

First a little look back ten years.  Here it was when I first had a go at taming this space.  Lush planting outside the wire perimeter, great soil within.

That was me planting my first raspberry bed.  It worked brilliantly in the first two years when the summers were quite damp.  But not having a reliable water supply has meant that things have to cope or curl up and die here.

The slope, too,was the problem. The upper slope.  I eventually took down the fencing as it was just a bramble trap.  And mainly fenced the crops within the space individually.

This was 2010 when Ulysse was a young stallion who often escaped to munch the juicy growth up here. You can see the forest encroaching.

I used a big fabric to cover the slope. You probably know it well. It’s a bit pricey, and comes with absurd promises to repel weeds but permit water to flow through. It didn’t. And weeds grew lustily through instead.

So I next gave in and went for agricultural plastic. Which I have to admit was brilliant.  It repels water of course (but that’s not bad on a slope). And in the two and a half years it has been down it hasn’t deteriorated.

Wow. 2012. I put it down in 2012. That’s incredible longevity. What a shame I was too lazy to lift all the weedproof fabric first. I just laid the plastic over the top.

You might wonder why I didn’t leave well alone.

Well, that’s a project for you – you just want to get the stuff up and see if you can transform the sight.

It was also because it looked revolting.  Here is where all the broken cloches I used to protect against deer and horses went to die.

The cloches worked so well. Until it snowed. And then they collapsed. Not entirely. I could usually bend them back into shape and cloche the crops.

So they had to live nearby.  I used to dump them on the slope.

And mess accumulated. My,  you are seeing the horrors here.  But this is a real garden.  And many real gardens you just can’t hide your mess.

And in 2016 I just didn’t make time to sort things. (I only used the top potager for asparagus and cabbages and kale last year. No potatoes which usually takes up more of the space. And my attention.)

So, first job – remove the mess.

Then have a go at shifting the plastic. It is still in one piece. Amazing.  I folded it carefully and have put it away for another project another year.

Then there was the fun stuff of playing in the dirt.

I have been away from soil for six weeks.  And the weather was perfect for weeding.  It was cold but still and deliciously sunny.  I even had a benign feeling about the couch grass and brambles in my path.  The roots come up so well in winter.

So there you have it.  It gets too cold to work after 430pm, and I have yet to sort out my ideas on the future fencing.

I love the archeology of this site – you can see where people have gardened for ages before me – and I like the idea of excavating my way back to the original stone walls.  The top wall has fallen down. But the one on the west side of the potager is still there.  Buried under mess.

As might I be if I keep on digging.  But as a way of marking the new year and my resolution it felt like a good start.