Garden Project Progress

Well, since posting yesterday, some progress has been made on the vegetable beds, which have now been built and are in place in the garden.

Here's a picture of the garden after their construction.

As you can see, the garden project isn't completely finished. We're a bit undecided as to whether or not to add another plank to the top of each bed and make them even higher, as this would mean not having to bend down to sow into them, so we've left the posts slightly higher than the sides of the beds, to allow us to add on if we feel we want to at some point.

For now, we're going to see how we go with them at the current height, as building them higher means finding or buying more soil to fill them.

OH did a great job assembling the planks into two 1.5 m square beds, which was all that the garden could realistically accommodate. The wood he bought was very thick and substantial, and quite expensive, but should last for a good number of years.

He was going to dig the posts into the ground to hold it all in place, but once built the beds were very heavy, and there is no way that they are going anywhere any time soon, especially once filled, so he decided to just let them sit on the ground.

He managed to set the border edges into the ground too, which makes the beds much tidier and will prevent the spread of wood bark or gravel. We still need to buy this and lay some good quality weed suppressing fabric on the surrounding paths, to give it all a more finished look, but this will probably have to wait until another weekend.

We did start to fill the beds with growing matter this weekend, as our compost bin was full to the top and could be emptied straight into one of the beds.

Added to this were the contents of some old grow bags in the greenhouse from last year, and this has helped to minimise the amount of growing matter that we now need to buy, as well as help clear up the garden and greenhouse, ready for a new growing season. I can now use the compost bin again for my kitchen waste, as I haven't done this for a few months due to it being full.

A trip to the garden centre to get some bales of compost and a visit to the horse stables up the road for some well rotted manure is now on the cards in the next couple of weeks, as this would be a good way to fill and fertilise the beds ready for use.

So far, the project has cost about £220 for the wood alone, which although quite a lot, is worth it to have well built, sturdy beds to grow things in.  I'm sure it would have cost much more had we got landscape gardeners in to do the job, so I'm more than happy with the results.  I think the finished work in total might be in the region of £300 to £350, but this is still good value for such a transformation of the space, so that we can use it in a more productive way.

Although we could probably have finished it completely this weekend if we'd really pulled our fingers out, we took our time, didn't rush the job, and used some of the weekend for other pursuits as well. There's no particular hurry to get it finished, and now the bulk of the heavy work has been done, a lot of the rest I can do myself, as and when I have the time and the inclination.

I'll keep you posted with regard to further progress and once finished I'll take a photo from LB's bedroom upstairs, to give you a view from above of the new layout of the garden.