I have been putting a lot of effort into the garden this year. During the warmer months each year I tend to spend a lot of time in the garden . This year in addition to the normal veg cultivation I have embarked on a compost project and I have started using the no dig method to break in the old veg plot which I have left to lie fallow since arriving in 2015.

Cultivation
The tomato harvest is looking like it will be pretty decent . I have had a decent coriander seed harvest , I’m perhaps self sufficient for coriander seed for the year. I have a salad bed in with lettuce, radish and beans. Some onions as a wee trial. Beetroot inter planted with spring onions, and a kale and cavelo nero bed. I bought myself 2 wine barrel 1/2s for my birthday and after discovering they needed drainage holes the hard way I have tomatoes, chillis , and herbs in them. I have a bunch of dwarf borlotti beans in with the hope of an addition for winter pottages. I have horseradish growing enthusiastically in a tub.

Compost
Growing up my old man always made compost. There was always a big heaps beyond the rhubarb patch by the old clothes line above the Edwardian food safe that was set into the bank. In a pre internet age he didn’t have easy access to information and differing views on how to do things so he made compost the way he always had made compost. No consideration was given to greens and browns or their ratio , food scraps of all sorts headed to the heap. Once a year he would turn it over and the neighborhood would stink of fetid decomposition for a week. Being ground zero our house was always hit the worst. It was a childhood trauma.
Well I’m not going to follow in his footsteps too closely on that one. I have set up a three bay compost station out of old pallets held together with cable ties. The first bay is starting to fill up with garden waste, shredded paper, horse poo collected while out riding and household kitchen scraps. while I have a delivery of manure coming to age in the third bay. I have become that elderly relative who is obsessed with collecting horseshit .

Reclaiming the Veg Plot
When I moved in here in 2015 I left the established concrete edged vegetable plot to go fallow. The time has come to bring it back to production. I have been indoctrinated in Charles Dowding’s No Dig method and have started collecting cardboard from work, laying it over the earth and weeds and mulching it in with compost and a little top soil to level out the dips. The old garden is divided into three with concrete pavers so I have broken in the first bed, divided it with a path to give access to the compost bays. I’m working on the second bed now. I already have three lines of celeriac in the first bed, soup mash and slaw awaits!

The garden as ever is giving me a lot of pleasure.