Today I got the posts in and managed to line the first bed with yet more suppressant membrane. We’ve lined them so to protect the wood. Hopefully they’ll pretty much last for ever now.
Helen making sure it can drain well…
And all done! Ready for tomorrow when we’ll fill them. That’s going to be fairly back breaking!
The fencing along the back has been generally used by the bindweed as a trellis of sorts. Mainly because it’s been so manky.
Helen embarked on stripping the green and exposing the panels. Today they were stripped out and hopefully on Tuesday we’ll be digging holes and fitting posts.
Finally I’ve connected the IBCs
Taken off the guttering
Replaced angled towards the IBCs and connected them up with whatever came up hand!
When we removed some of the nasty blue ply board off the front of the old windows the full extent of the poor maintenance became visible. Ben kindly said “I’m annoyed of looking at it, so get me some putty and I’ll sort it. Which is at this moment exactly what he’s doing!
And puttying
We’ve put together the fourth and final bed. We’ve actually got enough to do one more bed, but no room.
To accommodate the cherry plum which I’ve rather viciously pruned we had to move the boxes a little way off our plans. This did mean to accommodate the greenhouse at the end of the garden and still get round it to maintain it, we lost the fifth box which was to be for strawberries. We’ll have to locate them elsewhere.
2nd bed constructed but hasn’t had the posts banged in yet. We’ve decided to anchor it using just the posts in the middle.
Tomorrow we’ll be putting in the first load of compost into the raised beds, then covering it for next year…
Whilst I drill bits of wood and assemble them vaguely into wooden boxes, Helen is painting. The cat as usual is paying her far too much attention as you can see in the photo.
The first bed went together really well. Too well. Unfortunately the spikes were too long and pointed in the wrong directions. We’ve decided that it’s strong enough without the spikes but we’re going to add a couple in the middle of the beds.
The first one will need a bit of TLC before it’s properly settled.
As you can see finally we’re underway making the raised beds. It’s taken a lot out of me this morning already due to returning screws to screwfix (I doubt I’d ever use them again) getting the circular saw, getting wood (the wrong stuff), cursing the temporary traffic lights, returning wood, getting more wood, cursing the traffic lights again, then getting lunch.
Nevermind, the boxes are going together quicker than I thought.
I'm Tim, a 28yr old ex-Allotmenteer. My wife and I used to have a small 5 rod plot in South Essex where we grew all manner of veg. I'm also involved in brewing the odd keg of beer.
Recently we bought a house with a 65ftx30ft garden, which we're converting into a mini orchard and veg beds. The entire transformation is happening at the moment and being chronicled by a timelapse camera.
The hope is to introduce chickens next year into the orchard to allow them free range.
If you want to contact me, you can do so here
