4 raised beds and some grave paths occupy the present site for my polytunnel. The beds still have some winter crops that will need to be either sacrificed or harvested.
Each raised bed has 280 litres of “Mels Mix” (1/3 Compost, 1/3 Peat and 1/3 Vermiculite), which needed to be moved and stored. Some has gone into spare potato tubs/buckets , some onto of other raised beds but will need to find a place to store the other 400-500 litres until I can re-site the raised beds.
I did have a shock when I removed the weed control mats at the bottom of the raised beds; the soil underneath was covered in slugs. The chickens were let loss to clean up, but this means my other 6 raised beds will have the same problem and not sure what I’m going to do about them.
The suns shining and my back is hurting but need to do some more work.
7 December – Over 1inch 2.5cm of rais has fallen in the last 24 hours so no work on the polytunnel site. The garden is very water logged.
10 December
Two raised beds empted and one frame moved to new location. I have replaced an 1m sq click a bord plastic raised bed with 4ft by 8ft raised bed. The plan is for the click a bord raised bed to go into the Polytunnel.
21 December
The ground has been frozen for the last few days, but have moved thrid raised bed and emptied half of the remaining bed. Due to the cold the gravel paths have frozen and the weed matting is “glued” to the ground.
Besides the the slow progress due to “bad back” and weather I have another problem; the ground where I want to build the ploytunnel is not level. There is a slope along the length of the poly tunnel and I cheated when I built the raised beds and never leveled of the surface. Need a way of leveling if the surface. Have a couple of options:
1. Dig it and rake flat – Not practical with back and frozen ground.
2. Add some soil and rake flat. I’m running out of soil and again digging it out will be a pain. Not sure how much a cubic meter of soil will cost.
3. Add layer of gravel and add a couple of layers of weed mat. This may be simple option and would allow for better drainage.
7 Jan 10
Not much progress due to snow and freezing weather.
8 Jan 10
The ground is frozen so will need to wait for the thaw in a couple of weeks.
31 January
Finally managed to layout the site and bury the first “ground pole”.
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