Creating a Vegetable Patch

Another Covid-19 project – we have a large area in our garden that some 25 years ago was indeed a vegetable patch but has now got so hopelessly overgrown that it cannot be described as anything anymore. I decided to see if I could turn a piece of it into a new vegetable patch and will document my progress here!

A bit of research on the internet and I came up with the following steps:

1. Clear away the weeds on the topsoil.
2. Dig down “one shovel depth” to create a pit.
3. Create a compost heap elsewhere from the removed soil.
4. Rotovate the soil at the bottom of the pit.
5. Rake and smooth over the rotavated soil.
6. Treat soil base in pit with weed killer?
7. Cover the whole pit with carpet or similar.
8. Cut and fit wooden frame around the borders.
9. Secure the area from critters?
10. Fill the pit with compost / soil mixture.
11. Choose a suitable crop for the spot.
12. Collect brownie points.

After clearing away the weeds I began digging out massive squares of soil – a process that was considerably harder than I had anticipated. On the second day I was making progress but complaining all the way when, as an aside, I decided to try and “strim away” some of the growth around a nearby path – this proved to be a mistake of epic proportions as the end of the strimmer broke and I proceeded to strim my left leg). It was a couple of days until I ventured back out to continue the work – I had read some horror stories of people who had started digging vegetable patches, taken a break, and gone back to find the whole area re-covered in weeds – I approached the area with trepidation but all was well.

UPDATE: Managed to get some wood – patch is still waiting to be commissioned but is almost complete – save some edge paving and a latch for the gate! (Note the chicken wire along the bottom of the fencing – pesky critters!)