11 April 2008

April Challenge - Grow Your Own

ALS has a new monthly challenge forum, and this month's challenge is to 'grow your own' food, which seemed doable to me.

In the interests of not getting too carried away, I picked this garden bed, which is the first one I built here, to do over. As you can see, it's pretty overgrown, but those tomatoes, while still producing fruit sporadically, really aren't producing enough to justify the space they're taking up. So out they came, along with the watermelon vines that were way past their time, and most of the dead corn stalks. I left a couple for the climbing peas to grow up.

I edged the whole garden using some of the bricks that were leftover from the house brickwork (we have STACKS, that's a whole other post)/ Then I put down a lot of dolomite, and re-newspapered the whole thing. The original attempt hadn't been too successful, and a lot of weeds had made their way through, so rather than weeding, I figured I would just start again. DD helped by 'watering' the newspaper, which is actually a really good thing as it will help it break down, and we've started mulching it with compost and grass. I'll post some more pics when it is ready to plant.

The plans for this bed are lots of peas and beans, maybe some carrots, and possibly a few more lettuces. Perhaps I will let a cucumber wander through it. I like to mix things up.

No comments: