My Vegy Plot (picture)

Posted on 06. Apr, 2007 by Tracey in How To Grow Veg, Veg Plot

This is what all the blood, sweat and soil was all about, my first vegetable plot picture is here!

The boards and stakes were screwed into place and layed on the site. Then the stakes were hammered into place one by one and a spirit level was used to maintain the level.

Each plot was forked over to allow for drainage and any big stones removed.
After reading about the soil mixtures from Dr Hessayon – The Vegetable and Herb Expert the advice was to fill the raised beds with 1 part organic matter with 2 parts topsoil.

The plots are being filled with the following soil mixes:-

Plot 1 will mostly be growing carrots therefore there will be no manure. Multipurpose compost (2 x 75 litre bags) and Topsoil sieved from the garden, so far 5 barrows of garden top soil sieved by my fair hands, I must be mad! and it still isn’t full.
Plot 2 A 50 litre bag of farmyard manure from B&Q and it really pongs in this heat! 2 x 75 Litre bags of multipurpose compost and a hell of a lot more sieved topsoil from garden.
Plot 3 Same as middle plot but some compost will be left over for the beans and peas trench when planting the seeds.

The topsoil is soil from our garden. I am quite lucky in that there was a lot of soil dug out of the area where the vegetables plots are now and put in the garden borders. This soil is going back into the plots after being sieved.

Tip! – Topsoil from the garden centre is expensive and if you need it delivered in bulk you will need an area where the crane can drop it into your garden.

Even though it is hard work and very boring sieving the garden soil as it is very stoney, this is a good option to recycle the soil in our garden without buying more in. They do say it is all in the preparation, so the sieving is worth it!