Although spring is a month away, it's time to get the vegetables started. Just as summer bodies are made in winter, summer gardens get started then, too. I couldn't care less about having a summer body but I do like home-grown vegetables.
When I first moved in, the front garden looked like this:
I decided to grow vegetables at the front although once I got digging, I discovered vast quantities of rocks, stones and sundry rubbish in the soil. There was a lot of cleaning to do and I only had time to sow cabbage before winter so I had only got half of it dug up. Last year this time, I was still recovering from my shoulder injury so heavy activities like digging were out and I had to make do with a half dug-up patch.
Now it looks like this:
Oh dear, I let some pelagoniums run wild and now it looks like an even bigger mess than before but at least there's no more grass and fewer stones up to where the line of rocks is. The rocks are just a few of those going to be used to make walkways between small beds that I have planned. The entire growing area is roughly 10 square metres and I want to divide it up into semi-raised beds which I can rotate crops in.
In our climate, we can grow crops like spinach and cabbage in winter but they grow so slowly, it's barely worth it unless you plant large quantities of those and the spinach in the foreground hasn't done very well. I also had a big problem of a lot of tree roots which were sucking all the water in the soil, causing the vegetables to struggle. The problem trees have been removed so hopefully the vegetables will have an easier time this year.
In order to get the ground preparation moving, I have sowed some seeds in seedling pots today so I am forced not to procrastinate over finishing the digging. Digging soil causes a fair amount of backache so I can only do a small amount at a time but it's a little warmer so I have a window of opportunity to work outside now.
Once the beds are complete, I will sow beans and zucchini directly in the soil. I like growing tomatoes, cucumber and butternuts on the compost heap. I'll try and squeeze in some sweetcorn as well.
