Despite the very cold weather, Dearest Son and I have managed to make some progress on the plot recently. We are taking it one bay at a time and I even managed to remember to take some photos so I could show you the before and after!

The bay we’ve been working on was for the peas and beans this year. The peas did well but if you’ve seen earlier posts, you’ll know my decision to use woodchip as a mulch all over was a disaster which resulted in slugs/snails eating pretty much all my bean plants. Fear not however, as this has led to some good news! The woodchip is showing signs of decomposing including the white mycelium so should be good for next years crop. (I also have a bin full of woodchip which I’ve left to break down for future use).

Here is the disaster zone we started with:

And so the work began – clearing plants, cutting down the canes and putting other structures away. Slowly we began to see results:

So we don’t repeat the same mistake twice, we raked the top, loose layer of woodchip to the side and spread that elsewhere, leaving the good stuff behind:

Bit more weeding – which was a lot easier than I thought it would be, even the docks came out without too much of a fight. For the final touch, we spread home-made compost over the entire bay:

You will notice I’ve left the plantain – it’s too useful to get rid of. I’m going to dry the leaves for use in herbal remedies but will leave a couple as they are very close to my nettle patch and plantain works wonders on stings!

The last job for this patch will be to pull the blue cover over, which you can see to the right with the bags and tyre on it! We’ll use it to protect the bay and keep weed growth down.

I’ll keep you updated with progress on the next bay we will be working on – fingers crossed!