2nd July 2021 - More Building

 Construction continues, growing continues, maintenance grows!

July arrives and we are now into the middle month of summer. Everything is nice and green, receiving plenty of sunshine during the early part of summer. Since we thoroughly weeded the soil during the second dig, nowadays the weeding consists of disturbing the soil and picking up regular weeds, with the consistent removal of “the enemies” (bindweed and couche grass) as they raise their heads!

In the picture above, take a look at these courgettes as they find their footing in their new location. Freshly fertilised soil and well spaced out, they are starting to take off with first flowers already making an appearance.

6 Butternut have made it into the “field” as well, along with the tomatoes, making up the rest of what we will grow in this area. Butternuts are incredibly prolific growers and we are thinking they will easily fill this area, although difficult to imagine what that might look like right now.

Looking down the other side of the plot, we have the beans doing well beginning their journey up the “bean poles”. These are filling a space we left when we erected the polytunnel - we wanted to create some usable area behind as well as the front of the polytunnel.

This next picture shows the Brassicas. It is difficult to say what is what, but we have cabbage, sprouts, kale, cauliflower and space for leeks too! They have been growing well, and now we are thinking if we put them too close? One of the biggest problems for gardeners is wanting to grow as much as possible and the tendency to cram plants in. These plants each need the space they need, so being mindful of this is an important lesson.

First stage of the terrace complete! This is the easy bit, although not without its challenges. If you cast your mind back to the very early scenes in October 2020, you will remember we dug a trench around the plot. This was a random trench really to identify what we were working with, to define the patch, so to speak.

Now when coming to put the Terrace boundary in, the trench turns out to be in the exact spot needed to put in these pillars! Put it down to coincidence maybe, but if you seek out these confirmations to support "being on the right track", then here was the first one! How did we know, when we didn’t even know where and if there would be a terrace? 

This is another snap of the trellis looking up the plot from the polytunnel and check out the temporary seating area - much fun riding those chairs in the soft earth…

The last picture is another Trellis picture. This time you can see the dry wall addition of the bricks to assist in creating the side of the raised border which will eventually house a lovely flower display for us to enjoy sitting around.