Built in April, full by winter

The three new beds out the back planted up with cabbages, the timber edges running away toward the fence

I built three new beds out the back in April. Timber boxes, level and in a line, sitting on churned mud with not a thing growing in them yet.

I filled them with fresh topsoil delivered from Central Landscapes and worked compost and sheep pellets through it, and then they sat like that. It was July before anything went in. Cabbage, cauliflower and broad beans, all of it seedlings from Mitre 10. Winter crops, the ones that quietly get on with it while the rest of the garden waits for spring.

Six weeks on and they have filled right out. The cabbage and the cauliflower have got their feet under them, the beans are up and pushing, and the whole lot looks like it has been there far longer than it has. The best photo I have taken all winter is a red cabbage leaf covered in dew, which was not what I had in mind when I was standing in the mud back in April.

Which is really about the soil rather than the boxes. I am more convinced every year that the soil is the whole job, and it is the reason I keep going to the trouble of getting the clay out and putting something decent in its place.

The beds part way through being built in April, raw timber boxes going together on churned mud with the fence behind

A red cabbage leaf covered in dew drops, purple veins running through the grey green

A broad bean plant coming up through the mulch, buds forming at the top

Note to self

The soil is the whole job. Everything else follows it.

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