Replacing raised beds

Old raised beds

Good afternoon everyone! isn't it a lovely day? Well its warm and windy, cooler in the shade, but at least its dry and we can all get out to do a bit of gardening.Maybe even catch up on piles of clothes washing too.Many posts ago I was telling you all about changing the existing beds to stronger shorter beds and that's exactly what we are at (finally) this weekend.

 It's so easy to say "I'm replacing the beds", but it's so slow and bothersome to actually do it! And as is the case around here, it was late yesterday evening when we finally got outside to tackle the middle beds in the veg garden.

beds minus the wooden frames

Joe started the ball rolling last weekend when he helped Seamus take up the gravel and pull up the mypex out of the way. Last evening we took out the existing bed frames and moved the soil in the beds to meet the bed sizes and new path alignments. The roses from the ornamental border that runs around the veg garden were forever spilling out onto the path so by widening their border I hope to be able to walk down in Summer unmolested by thorns!

moving the soil

Digging up the beds we found an assortment of worms, some weeds of course, a few sprouting spuds, some rogue bluebells and lots of stones but the soil was amazingly good, light and fluffy. It would have been impossible to dig last week before the rain came. The new beds are shorter but higher (the old ones were six inches- these are 9 inches high), so we will have to add some more topsoil but there is a big dig on out the back for the patio so that wont be a problem. And I met Jimmy on the road the other day promising to drop off a trailer load of horse manure.Sorted for fertiliser too!

one down...

Today I'm hoping we can get two more beds done. These ones will be slower as there is considerable weeding to be done(one of the feral strawberry beds, and a fallow bed filled with poached egg flowers and Borage). So out I go, ( yet another Saturday pm start, and no drink to blame) to get stuck in. I might be back blogging in a few hours when weeding fatigue sets in!

Excuse the photos - it was dark when we eventually finished!

two beds in place, back to back

The sun sets over an evenings work at 8.22pm