Building beds

The first of three new veggie beds

This morning we finally found time to rebuild one of our veggie beds. This job has been on the list for a very long time but between pregnancy, baby and then rain (soooo much rain) it hasn't happened. Over the last few weeks I've been slowly moving, stripping and de-nailing boards to build a slightly raised bed in order to try the no-dig method! With the help of Mr Mudpixie they got cut and nailed together this morning. In total there should be three finished by the end of the week.

The no-dig method will be a new experiment for me ... I've always prepared new ground by double digging (ugh!) and followed my Grandad's example of ensuring I dig in the winter to break up the soil. Well, I've known that an alternative school of thought exists along the lines of preserving soil structure as much as possible by letting nature (worms etc) do their thing to aerate / nourish the soil - it makes a lot of sense to me - plants and wild veg grow perfectly well outside of our managed gardens without digging, in fact often the soil is in better condition. So inspired by my lack of large chunks of time at the moment I thought I'd give it a go. This bed will be filled with up to 6inches of mulch (I have bins of compost waiting to go in), I'll then grow my seedlings on in the greenhouse and hopefully pop into a happy no-dig bed.

(An inspiring site for info' re: the no-dig method is Charles Dowding's site)

It was so nice to get out in the garden today and see the signs of Spring appearing. The fruit bushes to the left of the bed above are starting to bud and there are tadpoles, frogs and newts in the pond. Feeling quite excited about the garden year ahead!

Froggy poking its head up in my slightly overgrown pond!