The first job was to mark out the beds. These are narrow enough to tend without stepping on them. Hopefully now the site has been ploughed we will be able to keep this as a no dig allotment. The first rule of no dig gardening is to never stand on your beds. After lightly tramping down the soil to make seed beds after the ploughing, this rule is now in place. DO NOT STEP ON THE BEDS.
Immediately 3 beds were put down to green manure. This means we can now forget about the beds and not worry about weeds too much. The mulches will keep the fertility of the soil up, and 6 or so weeks before we are ready to plant, all we do is cover the green manure with farmyard manure, a layer of cardboard or newspapers, water well, and plant straight into the enriched soil when we are ready. Or we can do this over the winter, it will take a little longer, but we will have lovely, ready to go beds next spring.
The fourth bed has been planted with Yakon - Smallanthus sonchifolius, a Peruvian Tuber, Jerusalem Artichokes and 3 squash plants.
Yakon ready for planting
Yakon in the soil
Bed five has been planted with 4 Globe artichokes, which have been interspersed with courgettes. We then broadcast Yellow Trefoil green manure over the bed, leaving a decent space around the plants. This is a low growing green manure which will keep the space on the bed covered while the courgettes spread. They should just spread over the trefoil, cutting off its light so it will rot down into the soil. If it grows to high it can just be cut down with shears and the cuttings left on the soil to rot down.
These five beds have been covered and planted up very quickly, and should look after themselves now while we concentrate on the remaining 3 beds of vegetables.
