Digging up a Storm, Part 1 – Creating the Plot

I believe I mentioned a garden. Said garden has recently become my plaything, whereby I take a shovel and dig the bejesus out of it.

This isn’t just playful destruction, mind, this is a girl on a mission to grow vegetables.

Yes, I hath created a plot for myself. I am very proud of it, and feel very strongly that you should be proud of me too. After all, I have never had a garden before. Well, that’s a lie. I grew up in a house with a garden, but the most I did in it was lie in the sun. Then I became a goth and avoided sunlight at all costs. But that’s another story.

I have never attempted any kind of gardening before, unless you count growing herbs and salad leaves on my windowsill. I had a brief stint (one afternoon) in an allotment where I helped someone till their plot but that was ages ago and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. My attention was mostly on avoiding anything creepy, crawly or maggoty and not getting my knees dirty.

How much has changed since then. I’ve gotten over the creepy and the crawly (but not the maggoty, keep those things away from me) and I don’t mind a dirty pair of jeans. I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I’d like to think that I’m quite intuitive and that it’s not rocket science. The digging part I mean, of course. There is a science to growing things.

Thankfully I had the good old ‘Big Allotment Challenge’ giving me helpful tips and inspiring me to stride forward with this endeavour.

As an aside note, for someone who doesn’t watch TV, I’ve been talking an awful lot about TV recently. But what the hey, I found Jojo an inspiration, seeing as she’s only been gardening a couple of years and despite not winning the overall competition, she won many ‘Best in Shows’. It showed me that although I’m only just starting out, with some hard work and research, I can be just as good as her.

So a couple of weekends ago when the sun started rearing its beautiful head, I got out into the garden and assessed the situation. It’s a South-West facing garden which should get a decent amount of sunlight in the summer, however due to the placement of a couple of houses across the street, at this time of year the sun is disappearing and leaving most of the garden in shade.

I chose my spot based on convenience, in that it’s up against the fence and isn’t in the way, and doesn’t coincide with Dexter’s favourite playing (pooping) areas. Plus, as you will see from the ‘Before’ photo, someone has clearly been growing stuff here before:

I was tempted to just dig up their plants and re-use their plot, but a) where’s the fun in that, and b) it wasn’t nearly big enough for all the crap I’ve got planned. So I took a step edger and I marked out my new – and delightfully bigger – territory. 60 square feet, to be exact.

Next came the shovel. I basically started from one side and dug up the entire area, leaving clumps of grass, mud and roots everywhere. As I said, I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I figured I needed to get the space from green to brown, so the grass had to go! Actually, to be a bit more accurate, I dug up about half of the area with a shovel, only to realise we had a long-handled garden claw in the garage which made the second half a lot easier.

Once all the surface had been uprooted, I donned my gardening gloves, knelt on a compost bag (go me) and got my hands in there. One by one I saw to every clump of grass, loosening the soil from its roots so as not to waste any, and chucked the stuff away. When I say ‘away’, I mean chucking it over my shoulder and hoping it missed the dog, who was whining and hovering around me like a shadow for the whole day. I don’t think he was injured in the process. He seems fine.

Next, once all the big clumps had disappeared, it was time to sift through the multitudes of soil and get rid of any remaining weeds. Let me tell you, there were a lot. Unfortunately since the house was rented for a few years before we bought it, the garden was really neglected and I spent a good few hours on my knees picking out roots and weeds. But pick out I did, and gradually my soil began to look green-free.

Sadly I discovered that at the edge of the bed, the paving from our driveway (behind the fence) actually extends into our garden, so the back of the bed was very shallow. In order to tackle this I decided the best solution would be to fence it off somehow and raise it slightly. No one likes flat, blob-carrots, after all.

I dug a small trench around the edge and lined the plot with bricks (we had a load leftover from the tenants’ makeshift BBQ) and topped up the soil with a couple of bags of compost from the garden centre and a couple of spadesful of sand, since our soil is clay-based and gets quite dense the further down you dig. Adds a bit of drainage. See, I do know what I’m on about!

And voila, this is where I am now:

As I said, be proud.

Now, I can’t really plant anything out there for a few months, at least until the frosts have completely gone, but I have started planting some seeds indoors. Currently I have onions, leeks, aubergines and purple sprouting broccoli basking in the sunshine in the spare room.

Aww, it’s like a little seedling nursery. Aren’t they cute?

More to come, that’s all for now folks!