Having developed the Square Foot Garden discussed in the last post, here I show my new veg bed built this spring during the Lockdown. Although it looks like my other veg garden, this has a difference.
You see, it is all very well growing food from last frost May 15th (known as the Eisheiligen in German but the problem exists of the hunger gap from February to April. In the past, many people died from hunger. Indeed, it is coming out that one of the causes of the spring flu is the lack of Vitamin D from sunlight which suppresses the immune system.
However, the problem of course is that a normal garden is too cold to grow anything. I panicked in March and sowed some seeds covered by a cold frame - we managed to eat a celebratory one radish a day, cut in half! :) So I deployed a solution which was made widespread by the Victorians, utilising a resource readily available in the horse and cart era - horse manure! we happen to live in a “horsey” part of the world, threre are even polo grounds near us. So this was easy to obtain.
There are three parts to the system. The base is the wooden bed itself,. I had already bought the planks in autumn and winter intervened, so the build was put on hold until March. Then I had time to begin. You may note that it is incomplete at the front. This will be remedied. The second part is the wooden frame. I scraped together scrap wood and built that. The last part is yet to be finished, the plastic glass top, known as the “lights”. You can see here the parts of my old greenhouse leaning against the bed, which I lost in a storm a few years back.
Because the bed was built too late to take adavantage of the early spring, this is a conventional veg bed this year. But watch this space next February when the project will begin in earnest. You can see the crops peas round the sides, tomatoes, and courgettes coming on nicely.
Thank you for your attention to my jottings. I have other posts coming, such as how I use waste food, my activities in coding in Java, and others of a more “conspiratorial” nature such as Gnosticism, Christianity, Freemasonry and the crazy stuff going on now.
So, if you have any input, drop a comment below this post using the “Disqus” system. I look forward to hearing from all of you!