Monday 10 October 2011

First phase of digging beds finished

Finished!
A marathon digging session today, doing all of beds seven and eight in one go. I was knackered when I had finished, but pleased that the initial phase of digging is done.

Next job: planting the onions and garlic.

Since the weather is good and there isn't much else to do, I may add a few further beds before frost sets in. Average first frost around here is mid-October, but there's no sign of any yet - night time temperatures haven't been lower than 5ºC, and mostly they've been much higher, as much as 13 to 15ºC.

3 comments:

  1. Are you just planting the rye to improve the soil fertility or are you going to do something else with it too?

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  2. I'm not actually going to eat any of it, or use the stems for raffia-work or anything like that, but it does several useful things:
    - it prevents weeds taking over the bed while there's no food crop planted there.
    - it keeps nutrients from being leached away, and prevents soil compaction, which heavy autumn/winter rain can do to bare soil
    - when chopped up and dug in, it improves the nutrient-content of the soil, and also the soil structure.

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  3. Ah. Thought'd it'd be something like that. Fascinating stuff.

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