After living new at my new home for about a year and a half, I’ve finally started planting in the veg patch. (I’ve been busy renovating/decorating the bungalow.) It was a very scruffy bramble patch (oh, alright, it still is!) completely full of brambles. When I moved here they had been flailed and the area was just covered in short lengths of dead bramble, with fresh growth starting to show through. I have roughly cleared it, had a couple of bonfires on top of it, and dug out quite a few bramble roots, but by no means all of them. I then mulched it over with lots of cardboard and used duck bedding and some grass mowings. The brambles have, of course, been growing back, but they are a lot weaker and pulling out the new shoots is quite easy and will hopefully weaken the roots more and more. To try and give my veggies a reasonable start, I’ve cut up one of those blue plastic barrels that farmers get disinfectant in, into approximately a foot deep rings. I then filled the ring with a mixture of soil and compost and planted into them. I have also covered them over with an old rabbit run for protection as there are plenty of wild rabbits around here.
Up until now I’ve only been able to grow veggies in the greenhouse which has very limited space (it was also chock-a-block full of brambles when I arrived) and one courgette plant soon filled it up, so now I’ve planted a courgette plant in the veg patch and also a tree cabbage and sown a few pak choi seeds. Small beginnings, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Hopefully I’ll now have a bit more motivation to make some more permanent beds ready for next year.
The Frantic Smallholder 