Building our first raised bed

Our aim was always going to be to grow lots of tasty fruit and vegetables in the garden here at Paddington House.

When we had the allotment whilst living at our previous address I clearly remember the back breaking slog of digging over the soil, forking in well rotted compost, getting on my hands and knees to sow the seeds and then.. having to get back up again!

Seeing as we are going to try and grow as much as possible at home before we reach the top of the allotment waiting list in our new parish, I wanted to ensure that vegetable growing here was as comfortable as possible.


I bought the raised bed from Harrod Horticulture. It measures 4ft x 4ft and is 2ft deep. I have put it behind the shed where it tucks in perfectly and I can easily access all areas of the bed without it being an obstacle in the garden.

One of the greatest fears that a new raised bed owner can have is that the cost of filling the thing with good quality material can often exceed the original cost of the bed. I did spend about £20 on 480 litres of compost, but if I had filled the bed purely with the stuff it would have exceeded that figure greatly.

I actually filled the bottom layer of the raised bed with turf which was left over from the border I created at the weekend. I turned it upside down and hopefully it will compost away under all of the layers of goodness I had to pay extra for.

I have cheated a little bit and I have bought 12 lettuce plug plants for £2 from the garden centre. I have put them in straight away and we should be harvesting fresh veg at Paddington House in absolutely no time at all. I also have an abundance of lavender, lots of strawberry plants, some gooseberry bushes, and 4 fruit trees to get in the ground too. Despite the joys of spring, roll on harvest time when we can taste all of our hard work's rewards!

Thanks for reading, don't forget to check back soon!

Martin

Our Garden at Paddington House

Welcome to our garden at Paddington House!!

As you can see, it is another blank canvas and you can also infer from the houses opposite that we are living on a working building site! These houses are brand new and even though the house is very modern we really believe we can have our own good life here and we truly believe we will be very happy with it.

We have big plans for this little area here.. 

Tucked around the side of the house and in between our house and our neighbours..

We bought this house purely because of it's garden. It is the biggest garden for any of the 3 bedroom houses on the 168 home development site and most importantly it is south facing! Perfect!

We really hope you'll visit our blog soon to see our progress.

Martin

Introducing 'Our Good Life at Paddington House'

Hello everybody,

It has been almost two years since we last blogged. In that time a lot has happened and I am delighted to tell you that Amy and I are getting married next month and we have recently just purchased our first house together.

Being such a momentous time in our lives, we have really got the urge to come back to blogging so that we can record our memories and also share them with you!

The theme of our blog was always 'living the 21st century good life' and this is still case. This time we really will be seeing how achievable 'the good life' is in the modern day. We have bought a new build house with a moderate sized garden compared to other new build gardens we had seen and we are wondering whether we will be able to grow, raise and make everything that we want to. We have had to give up 'Plot 114' due to relocating outside of the parish and we have left our 8 hens with Amy's Dad who is completely attached to them. We really will be starting again from scratch and implementing our own stamp on the blank canvas we have found ourselves with.

It feels so great to be back. I really hope you will join us on our adventure!

Martin

LIVE: Collecting a Honey Bee Swarm

I know I haven't blogged for a while, but what better way to get back in to it than a live post from my Grandparent's house whilst collecting a swarm.

I was down the allotment just about to put my sweetcorn in and my mobile started ringing. It was my Grandad
'Martin, your grandma wants you'
'Ok. Hi Grandma.'
'Martin there's a swarm of bees outside the back door do you want them.'
'Yes please. l'll be there in 5 minutes!!'

So, I put the sweetcorn in the she ready for planting tomorrow morning. Dashed home, got my veil and off I went. This is the 3rd year in a row that a swarm has congregated by/at my Grandma's house!! However this is the only year that I've had an empty hive to house them in!!

They were congregated on a wall so I scooped as many as I could in to the bucket before turning it over and waiting for the rest to follow on in. I'm just waiting for the last few stragglers whilst having a coffee indoors. Here's a few pictures, I'll let you know how it goes and maybe I'll even make an allotment blog tomorrow!!

Thanks for reading,

Martin

Finally catching up...

Well this blog post is certainly long over due. In fact, everything I will mention took place about two weeks ago when I took a couple of days annual leave to catch up at the allotment. So when you come back to read tomorrow's post, pretend it's been a whole two weeks since this post and not 12 or so hours...

Anyway....

The Potatoes and Onions are finally in the ground!!

We might have slightly overdone it with our potatoes. We have 4 rows (5.5m long each!) of Desiree and 3 long rows of Charlotte and we still have some seed potatoes to spare. If I get some big pots I might just put them in there and see what happens. It's not like we are going to be short of them anyway... Well, I hope not after the back breaking amounts of work I put in to planting them..

Next along from the potatoes are two rows of Onions (Stuttgarter Giant) and then a row of Beetroot (Boltardy)!

After the onions there is currently a large gap which come the middle of May will be planted up with Cabbage, Kale, Pumpkins, Courgettes and Squash. After this currently empty space, closest to the patio area is the beans. 6 rows of broad beans and there is space for a further 2 rows of dwarf French beans. I have also dug out the trench and emptied one of the compost bin’s contents in to it and then filled it on top with some used compost from last year’s raised beds, the support frame has been erected for the runners, and finally the allotment looks like an allotment again and not just a wasteland!

Here's a full on shot of the once again allotment like allotment!

The next couple of jobs are to actually sow the runner beans, courgettes and pumpkins and also prepare the ground for the cucurbits by digging in some well rotted horse manure!! There is also the unappetizing job of weeding the strawberry bed at the top of the allotment. It will be done, but when... I am not sure!

More soon!!

Martin J