THE Bed!

Regular readers may remember my failed attempt to grow Butternut Squash last year. One of our problems in growing anything, is that the large poplar trees surrounding the garden suck all the goodness out of the soil. We are forever digging up roots in the potager... Those trees will have to go...

In order to prove this I have created a special bed... It was going to be a raised bed, but as that meant buying timber, instead I dug a hole...

It was then lined with some strong visqueen and into this went a good layer of leaf mould covered with a layer of soil. Yes, I did put some small holes through for drainage...

This was then covered with a good layer of our home produced compost together with a little general purpose fertiliser...

Then the secret ingredient... "Chicken Sh1t"

Then more soil...

and with a top dressing and a little more general purpose fertiliser... It finally looks like this...

The chicken whisperer 'Elizabeth' has been training the chickens to do more 'secret ingredient' between the posts... Not a lot of success though!!

It will be planted with a more squash and perhaps some other test veggies... Watch this space!