Double Digging

For the past month we have been double digging our produce garden. This time honoured technique of digging will provide us with an excellent topsoil, deep rooting zone and well drained vegetable beds. However, this method of cultivation should come with a health warning, it is back breaking work, especially when you have large boulders scattered just below the surface!

So, what is double digging and why are we taking on the challenge? 

This year, we have planned out 6 equally sized vegetable beds, 7 metres in length by 1.5 metres wide, this will give us just under 100sqm of planting area. The double digging process we have pursued is as follows:

- Mark out the vegetable bed; [1]
- With a spade cut the turf layer into small squares; [1]
- Remove approximately 500 cm width of turf layer and put to one side; [1]

- Dig out the soil to approximately two spade depths and also put to oneside (preferably on a tarpaulin), at the same time remove any large stones or boulders; [2]

- Loosen the soil at the bottom of the trench with a fork; [2]

- Scatter organic matter (manure) in the bottom of the trench to about one third of the depth; [3]

- Place cuttings of twigs and branches over the top of the manure; [4]

- Replace the turf dug out at the beginning, but upside down; [5]
- Place a covering of newspaper over the turf; and (finally) [6]
- Cover over with the soil you dug out. [6]

Quite a lengthy process, I think you would agree, but this will be worth the effort. Double digging loosens soil to a greater depth and therefore adds air deeper into the soil which enables roots to grow and the microbes to create good soil structure. This is key to creating the most productive vegetable bed.

Hopefully we will be able to reap the rewards later on in the year...watch this space.

Digging Rings

Ok, so it wasn't exactly sunny today, but with spring quickly approaching, you've got to take advantage of the snow-free days. Cat and I were on digging duty today and boy did the rocks make us feel special... The size of the holes that these lovelies leave behind are actually making it a bit tricky to build mounds of our deep beds. We've only got so many twigs and compost.

Trophy rock

The good thing is that we've got plenty of material for a stone wall and stone paths between the beds. Like Monty Python sang, always look on the bright side of life. 

After 3 hours of digging, we finally finished our first bed. All in all, it probably took us 3 days of digging 3-4 hours a pop. 

After that kind of workout, the rings in the garage provide a great stretch. I'm looking forward to the day when I don't feel like a broken woman after a bit of digging. 

• Putting Simon's Xmas present to good use

Poor weather for digging

So, just as we started to gain some momentum digging out our new produce garden, bad weather stops play. For the last few days we have had snowfall and freezing conditions almost everyday, not perfect conditions for digging.  We have a huge list of other jobs that require our attention, so it is certainly not tools down, although we did find time to build a snowman!

Hard Labour

So, the first week in Sweden has been pretty energised. Apart from getting used to living in a completely different, even alien environment, we have kept ourselves busy by jumping head first into some essential manual labour. This comes part of the package when you live fairly remotely and have a bit of land to look after.

First job was to cut back and clear any debris, such as twigs, branches and trees from the electric fence that surrounds our property. Presently, this is used to stop unwanted creatures in, i.e. the wild boar! They have been burrowing in one of the fields, so keeping the fence live to prevent entry is key. This job gradually turned into a tree felling exercise, so brandishing a saw we started to remove some of the trees that were too close to the fence. Fun! We still have a way to go but the pile of logs is pretty big and should make for a good Easter bonfire celebration.

Second job was to start thinking about the Produce Garden. This is a key element of our self-sufficiency plans and we want to be ready to transplant the seeds and seedlings come the beginning of April. We agreed on a perfect location; slightly sloping ground facing south and within close distance from the house. We set out the beds in 7.5m x 1.5m bays and started to dig. The actual technical term is 'double digging' but we'll go into more detail on that in another post. Anyway, this turned out to be really hard work, as the top layer, just beneath the surface was littered with large stones and the odd boulder. We persevered and reached halfway along the bed. Unfortunately the weather turned for the worse, so we will be hitting it hard again this coming week when the freezing rain disappears.

All in all a good first week and the sign of times to come, my body has that satisfied achey feeling all over. Bring it on!

Harvest Time

August is an exciting time in our garden... It's time to harvest some of the veggies that survived the slug attacks. Granted, the harvest isn't as large as I hoped, but it is amazing eating your own vegetables!

See those chillies? Ouch, they are incredibly spicy!

I am also lucky to have a colleague with an allotment and a surplus of courgettes. So many that I made some "zoodles" with them. Yum!

Zoodles are made by cutting courgettes with a julienne peeler, then salted to draw out the liquid (leave for 30 minutes in a colander), rinsed and patted dry with kitchen roll. Then fried briefly in a pan with fat of choice. They are served here topped with roasted seeds, broccoli and burger.

Instead of a Workout

We're still knackered after the CrossFit workout, so Cat and I skipped the morning run. Weaklings, I know. Instead, we spent most of the day working in the garden. Raking grass, cutting branches, lifting roof tiles, digging holes, refilling holes, playing with daddy's axe...

Posing with weapon

As pappa is still recovering from his surgery, he had to resort to giving instructions. More difficult than you think, as he'd rather do everything himself. Cat put him in his place though.

Always a pleasure to boss your dad around 

I have a feeling we'll be sleeping well tonight. And probably aching some more tomorrow. 

Second Best Use For Nettles

Sporting my gardening gloves, I raided my local park for these beauties this afternoon. A whole bag full is now soaking in a pot to make an all-natural fertiliser.

This is clearly only the second best use for nettles. The best use would be nettle soup, but I don't think I would be able to find any nettles in London that haven't been exposed to dogs.

Preparing for Spring

It feels like spring in London, so my (slightly) green fingers are getting increasingly impatient to start gardening. It is a bit early to sow anything outdoors, but I have started planning what I want to put into the vegetable patch and even drawn out some plans for rotating the crops. I have been reading up on the importance of crop rotation in 'The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: The classic guide for realists and dreamers'.

This year, I am attempting to grow some peppers and so far they are looking good. I didn't fancy buying any seeds, so I took some from the gorgeous pepper that came with my organic veg box. I dried them on a plate for a week and then stuck them in some compost in peat pots. Apparently, peppers are particularly difficult to transplant, so it is important to put them in peat pots that you then can stick in a bigger pot once needed without disturbing the roots.

Bring on spring!

Autumnal Benefits 2

A week or so ago, I wrote about my leaf clearing workout and the disappointment of just putting the leaves out for the garbage men to collect.

Well, in the last few days the final load of leaves fell off the lime trees into our garden and this time it was Cat who went to get some fresh air and sweep them up. After a comment one of our readers made about using the leaves to feed the soil, Cat swept the leaves up and dumped them in our nearly empty veg patch (beets, chard and leeks still going strong) and turned them into the soil.

Cat working the veg patch!

Hopefully, the leaves will decompose in the veg patch by feeding worms and give us a rich soil for next years garden produce.

Autumnal Benefits

With autumn well and truly underway and the trees shedding their vibrant leaves, last weekend I finally found a spare hour or two to tackle the mounting leaf coverage in our garden.

We have two large Lime trees in our garden, that seem to hold an enormous number of leaves and which come autumn turn a vivid yellow and then promptly fall to the ground. For a short while, this yellow blanket transforms our garden until the rain comes and makes the leaves a slip hazard.

So, I spent Sunday morning sweeping and clearing up these leaves. This made me think about the benefits:

I was outside. It was a brisk morning (5-6ºC), the sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky, so this made me feel happy;

I was burning calories. Sweeping and clearing leaves gets heart rate up, so I was keeping fit;

I was tidying the garden. With the leaves gone, the garden is back to looking fairly respectable and the borders are clear;

I was removing the hazard. No-more slip-sliding down the path, especially treacherous when you have a young baby.

In total, I had filled 3 large refuse sacks full of leaves which I left out for refuse collection on the Tuesday. I thought afterwards, there must be a way of using all of these leaves for our benefit. A much better scenario would be, for us to have a composting bin ready for the leaves, so that we could turn them into leaf mould, ready for feeding our garden the following year. 

It goes to show, that even the seemingly most mundane chore of clearing leaves can provide health, well-being and garden benefits. The leaf blanket has returned, so I am sure I will be out in the garden again this weekend!

Brassica Napobrassica!

2013 has been an extremely good year for this root vegetable. Out of all the vegetables we planted in our garden at the beginning of the year, the crop with the largest yield has been the good old Swede. I am not entirely sure why it did so well, but it grew in abundance and completely over shadowed its smaller rooted brother, the beet.

Needless to say, we finally succumbed last weekend and dug them up. We now have a box full of Swede in the shed and last night we roasted a couple to see how they tasted. To our horror they had an extremely strong bitter taste and were pretty inedible, disappointing to say the least. After a bit of searching online we found that as the Swede is a hardy veg, it actually likes the cold weather and is very much like a Turnip in that it requires a good cold frost to turn some of the starches into sugar.

We have now taken the box out of the shed and are hoping that the colder weather sweetens the Swede! We’ll keep you posted on whether the cold improves the taste.