In which we move a lot of soil from here to there

Way back in October 2016, I decided I wanted to grow my own vegetables, so we built some raised beds up along the hedge we share with our lovely neighbour, Barbara. Here’s how it went…

[This is a blog post I wrote back in 2016]

Like giant drunken Jenga

I love living here. A week or so ago, we were in the pub having a pint, and I mentioned I was looking for railway sleepers to make raised vegetable beds. Farmer Leddy asked how many I wanted, and how long.

“Ooh, 16, about 2.4m long. Know anywhere?”

“Yep. I’ll ask.”

~ Fast forward to Monday morning ~

A tractor pulls up outside with a farmer hanging off it waving manically…

“I’ll be along in about an hour with those sleepers, alright?”

“Erm… Okay! Brilliant!”

A couple of hours later, and these are in our backyard:

Not too filthy, and all ready to move up the hill. Except they’re about 100kg each. Joe and I moved two of ’em, then decided it was a bit lairy. Slippery hill and potential broken legs and all that. It would have been okay if we were just moving them around on the flat.

So, last Saturday night, we were in the pub. Again. There were three drunken farmer lads.

“We’ve got these sleepers…”

“Aye…”

“There’s plenty beer in it for you if you fancy helping us move ’em tomorrow please…”

“Tomorrow? Ha! Tomorrow is for WIMPS. We are men. We shall move them NOW.”

Joe goes off with three drunken farmer boys, and I wake up to this:

Later that day, Joe and I and my Dad created two raised bed masterpieces:

[NOTE: If we were doing this again now, we’d have laid weed mat all over that entire area before doing anything, but hey how — you live and learn.]

I’m going to line them with polythene so we don’t produce poisonous carrots and whatnot, then dig out all the grass and weeds, and fill ’em with topsoil and chicken poo.

I’m also going to create a border around them, either of gravel or wood chippings, so the grass doesn’t get all mashed up and muddy.

Next spring, we’ll be producing all manner of delicious goodies.

[NOTE: We didn’t line them, and didn’t grow poisonous carrots. We also didn’t create a border until much later, and then abandoned that, too. UNTIL NOW!]

Back to today…

Okay, fast-forward — um — 8.5 years (GOOD GOD HOW DID THAT HAPPEN) and we have this mess:

I’d like to note that we have grown a LOT of amazing veg in the intervening years, and our raised beds have looked beautiful, but the last two years have been quite a lot in terms of work and general mental load, and we neglected them.

Then I had a conversation with my friend Sarah and she told me about the Pot Gang, and suddenly I was obsessed with vegetables again!

I remembered two things:

1. How much joy growing, harvesting, and eating my own vegetables brings me.

2. We need a Zombie Plan, especially given the current, you know, RISE OF FASCISM. Feels like humanity should have learned from the last time, but I guess that’s too much to hope for.

The thing I struggle with, gardening-wise, is overwhelm and organisation. But the Pot Gang send you a monthly box of seeds with everything you need to grow them, complete with instructions and reminders via WhatsApp, I believe. That’s what I need: someone to tell me what to do and when to do it.

So this weekend, we set to work. Here’s what we did:

1. Strimmed everything in the raised beds right down to the surface.

2. Dug out the bigger dead stuff.

3. Dug out the lavender and put it into two pots. Hopefully it’ll survive!

4. Trimmed the hedges way back.

5. Raked everything up and started uncovering the weed mat from the grass and moss that has encroached upon it.

6. Chucked weed mat on top of the big raised beds and weighted them down. That should kill off all the weeds and grass over the next 2-3 months.

7. Dug up and dismantled the one small raised bed that was kind of out on its own because we never really used it. We put the soil between the two big raised beds to level out that space between them, and we’ll put another layer of weed mat on there.

The chickens helped:

Over the next few weeks, we will:

1. Dismantle the two smaller raised beds because they’re rotting. We never expected them to last this long to be honest — they were built from old floorboards we took up while renovating the first floor.

2. Weed mat that whole area ready for another big raised bed, so we have three in total.

3. Acquire more sleepers and build the third raised bed.

4. Fill it with soil and compost from our compost heap.

5. Weed mat all around the edges of the raised beds and around the greenhouse area.

6. Edge the weed mat with spare bricks we have lying around.

7. Cover the weed mat with 10cm of wood chips and bark, so we have weed-proof walkways.

I made a video to walk you around:

It feels really good to be doing something useful in The Dingle again after feeling like we’ve done nothing for so long.

I’m excited about growing my own food again, too. Tomatoes, here we come!

Now, though, we’re knackered: 10,583 steps yesterday, similar today, so we’re chilling with a fancy drink. Cheers!