I'm going to record here my progress on my new kitchen garden/zone one plot. Following discussion on the design here I've now got a fair idea of the layout i'm aiming for, but at the moment I just want to get some more seeds in the ground!
So this is the area I started with, having finished the construction of my new polytunnel:
new growing area looking South
It is fairly open and sunny, athought the polytunnel does shade it in the evening. I think the soil here is fairly good. It doesn't seem to have been ploughed to oblivion like the field further down the hill, and has a fair amount of organic matter in it. It is compacted however, from having the digger going across it, so I'm going to at least fork it all over to enable some drainage. There are also docken, creeping buttercups, silverweed and creeping thistle, as well as an expected weed seed load.
digging the docken
The area is roughly semicircular, and much of it has been covered with mounds of soil for a year, which has killed off most of the turf, leaving just the more pernicious weeds. The outer part of the circle was not covered so much, so I have decided to plant that part mainly with potatoes, as they can complete fairly well with weeds, and harvesting them will also give me another opportunity to fork some more of the weeds out.
planting my potatoes
I did put a little sheep manure on some of the potato bed. My neighbour has a couple of barns with a thick layer of manure in from several years over wintering and lambing, which I have permission to help myself to. I did do a 'pea test' for poisons, which came up clear, as i expected. They started off a bit smaller than the ones grow with added compost, but soon caught up after this picture was taken.
poison peas
It is a fair trek with a wheelbarrow (no vehicle access to barn perhaps hence lack of clean out) so as my soil is not bad I don't expect I'll generally add manure, but I felt it would be interesting to see whether it does help the potato yeild at the end of the year.
more digging.....
After a couple of fairly hard afternoons' work I have now got half of the main digging done and have started to mark out the secondary paths and sow some short rows of the vegetables I have less seed for: bulbing fennel, spinach, root chiccory, mooli radish. The nasty weed roots have been removed to a pile on the edge of the escarpment where they will do no harm.
first seed sown
I'm thinking of using the area towards the polytunnel as a nursery bed for more perennial vegetables and flowers that tend to get lost in my garden areas. It will also probably tend towards a herb garden, although I did sow a row of fennel alongside my vegetables today.
There is still half the area to clear and level, and some of the soil needs moving to the future perennial bed before that can be sown.
That polytunnel position looks good. Skye weather being what it is, having it close to the kitchen garden makes sense for quick access when the rain comes in sideways. Looking forward to seeing how it develops.
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A longer spell between posting than anticipated - so much happening in spring in the garden, it's a rush to try and get sowing before it is too late in the season. The weather didn't help much, however having the kitchen garden right next to the polytunnel turned out to be a genius idea! During the showers I could pootle round in there out of the rain.
So I've started making the dog resistant fence. It's marked out with sticks at the moment and I've made gateways out of old pallets fixed to surplus posts. Having used the garden a little bit I'm thinking I'm going to use one of the pallets at the North end as part of a little shed to put tools in: more pallets and a slightly sloped 'green roof' is my plan at the moment. The tools will then be handy for both polytunnel and garden, with no excuse for not tidying them out of the weather, which ought to improve tool handle durability.
gateways to nowhere...
The area next to the polytunnel is going to be a perennial border, so I have sowed some seeds (the mallow are already germinating!) planted out my leeks from last year to hopefully go to seed, some skirret plants that I dug up ages ago, a tiny wasabi, which I hope will like it next to the tunnel, some new strawberry plants, and my dahlia seedlings. It's looking a bit sparse at the moment, but hopefully once the seeds start germinating and I get more herbs transplanted in it will fill in before the weeds take over. I've got buttercups, docken, sorrel and all sorts germinating everywhere of course!
perennial border next to tunnel
Quite a bit of clearing despite the piled up soil - moving and loosening the under soil, coping with silverweed that was buried and regrowing.... Finally I got my runner beans transplanted out and my peas sown and the last bed cleared and ready to go. There is still more silverweed coming up in the pathway between the last bed and the potatoes, but that can wait....
runner beans and pea sticks
I used some of my coppiced hazel for pea and bean sticks and put the beans either side of one of the little paths making a sort of tunnel - I may regret it as it is a bit small!
I love this stage of a garden, where it is all tidy and ready to grow, before the weeds take over and it all looks chaotic!
view down central path
As a side note the manure seems to have affected one variety of potatoes quite dramatically, although of course I can't remember which this is! The other variety has less of a difference between those with manure and those without. I have since put a little more manure on all the potatoes, so hopefully it will even out. It may not affect the final yield however, but the plants do look happier for it!
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