Adding the raised beds

How beautiful was it outside today? We haven't been to the plot for a short while, but boy did we pick the right day to spend some time on the site. The sun was shining, birds singing and the worms a wiggling.

The mission for today was to build two raised beds for our strawberries. These following our ethos for the plot were made from recycled materials. More pallets to be exact.

Both raised beds are 6' x 4.5' and each house 12 strawberry plants.

I constructed the beds whilst Philly sieved earth! We have three compost bins on the plot. Two that we inherited and one that we made. One of the original bins is full of soil and stones and other old gubbins as Philly discovered. This is a waste of composting space, but at the same time provided a good supply of soil to raise the soil level in the new beds.
The beds were dug over and the weeds removed, and then the wonderfully sieved soil and some fish, blood and bone fertiliser added. it was then smoothed over and levelled out.

We have three varieties of strawberries. Earlys called Elvira, a mid crop called Korona and a late crop called Florence. One bed has the first and half the mid crop and the second bed has the other half of the mid crop and the late crop.

That's the fruit end of the plot now sorted. We have strawberries, raspberries (Tulameen), yellow raspberries (all Gold), gooseberries (Hinnomaki), blackcurrant (Ben Lomand) and redcurrant (Jonkheer Van Tets) planted. We also have a Cox's orange pippin apple tree. I have a James Grieve apple tree in a large pot in the garden that I think I am going to move to the site also.

Now that the evenings are getting longer we are hopefully going to be able to spend a little time on site after work. This will allow us to start clearing some more ground, and start planting our first vegetable crops.