End of March garden preparation

We spent a lot of last Sunday out in the garden working on our vegetable patch and herb garden.  So far I have dug over what will be the root vegetable patch near the shed and created about half of a slightly raised bed using some concrete edging that the last owners of the house left behind.  The compost heap is right next to this bed and our plan is to dismantle the heap and spread the old compost on the raised bed and dig it in.  Any remaining compost will be going on the courgette and squash bed nearer the house which could do with some enriching as well.

Then all our future composting will be done using the hot johanna and rotating compost bin in the future.

J spent much of the weekend viciously hacking back at the growth round the edges of the squash and courgette bed at the back of the garage which is where I think we will end up putting the Hot Johanna.

The afternoon was spent with me potting out our seedlings and starting off the courgettes and squash and with J weeding and tending the herb bed.  We have ended up with 24 coriander plants (giving 8 away to the next door neighbour and reserving 3 for friends) 8 aubergine plants (probably 2-4 to be given away eventually) 14 black cherry tomato and 3 unknown chilli plants.  Many of these will be destined for the newly fixed greenhouse.

Our Sorrel and Chicory are both looking really healthy and strong and we are starting to look into planning for the time when we will be picking meals based on what is good in the garden.

My other job was to weigh Sorrel leaves.  We have a book of herb recipes (which we have used to plan the herb garden) and all of the Sorrel recipes are by weight of sorrel.  Two largish leaves weight 22g and so we shall be using this to work out how much we need for recipes so we don't harvest more than we need.  In fact in recent weeks we have used rosemary, chives, sage and oregano all from our herb garden and so are already reaping the benefits (I am certain the chives and rosemary have made back their start up costs.

I feel more and more that we are getting into good rhythm for sustainable living, we are saving all our egg shells ready to use as a slug deterrent when the squash are put out.  We are planning are meals to use our garden produce.  We plan to eat roast meats the day before we have a weekend or a working from home day so that we are able to make and freeze the stock.  I haven't had to buy chicken stock cubes in ages through using up the game/chicken stock in our freezer (which tastes so much better anyway!) and I am hoping we can get even better at this game in the future.  For such a long time I saw all this work as tiring and a chore and now it is a game to me I am finding it quite fun.