Hello I'm Liz Zorab and this is Byther Farm and today I'm preparing a new
vegetable patch.
So I'm out here in the area that used to be called the Diesel field, named
after one of our chickens that's no longer with us. And for two years this
area had all the muckings out from the chicken houses, so there is a good thick
layer of chicken bedding, that's now two and three years old. It's really springy
and soft underfoot, absolutely covered with weeds.Tthis is where I grew the
potatoes last year. So last year I cleared some area across the middle here
and grew the potatoes and just over there is where I did the potato trial
where I was looking at would different types of mulch affect the
development of potatoes. That was a really good experiment. This year I'm
going to be doing something slightly different and I'll tell you about that soon.
But in the meantime I kind of want to get this area set up a bit more, I
guess more, like a Market Garden in some ways. So long straight rows of crops and
the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to lay down some weed
suppressive membrane as pathways and I'm not going to cover it, I'm just going to
leave it blank. Then in between those pathways I've got some very very weedy
ground, which I'm going to cover with either cardboard or with paper sacks
that we use for chicken feed. And then get some old chicken bedding on it,
that's been sitting out for a year now and cover that and that will be my
growing space. Across where I'm standing here I'm
probably going to have a double width path so not just 50 cms, but
maybe, a whole meter or possibly even more. The weeds here are really bad and
really heavy and I'm just going to smother those for this year, have a bit
less growing space but at least then those weeds will be killed off.
They're all are huge, horrid thistles, the ones with the very painful spines on them and
stinging nettles and docks. So pernicious unpleasant weeds that I really want to
get to grips with. And then next year I hopefully I'll be able to lift that and
use that area for growing in too. So where I've got to so far is I've got out here,
I've I've cut back a whole load of those nasty pernicious thistles. I cut them off
right at the base, just so that the roots aren't able to feed any longer and
hopefully that will prevent them growing back, and I've laid out the first two
rows of weed suppressing membrane kind of where I think I want them.
I'm quite excited by this, but the next thing I need to do is to pin these down
because as soon as I stop working, I'll go indoors and all forget about
this area for a while. It gets incredibly windy here, so these really do need
pinning down well. And to do that I have these metal, like large staples, some of
them are slightly thinner than others. These are very
rusty, but very effective. So I'll pin it down each end and if I can in the center
or on each side of the of the membrane as well f I've got enough of these
these pins. If not we might have to go out and buy some more pins to hold
this down, because it's going to be in place for at least the next year.
So I've got those first few pieces down. This is the double width and I think I'll have
to put more along here to smother these weeds and then I can have bit, where
I've dropped my gloves over there, I can have another row of plants there.
Eventually I will work my way that way with these rows and that way as well.
But I've used all the pins that I've got for pinning this down and I
don't really want to leave these huge horrid thistles exposed, so Mr. J and I
are going to go to a garden centre pick up some more of these pins to hold this down.
I'm really hot now, but I have got all of the bags down I wanted to get down and I
swapped some out at that end. I had put the bags going quite thickly across that
end because that's where the worse the pernicious weeds are. I took those up and
swapped them out for four layers of cardboard. So hopefully that will keep
the stingers at bay at the far end of this row. And I've bought over the pretty
well rotted chicken bedding, it's still obvious that it is chicken bedding, but
it's very definitely breaking down or broken down mostly and so I've got a
pathway. Then I'll have a growing space and a pathway and I might make holes in
that. You know burn holes and plant through it. I think I'll wait and see how much
space I really need at the end of the planting season and if I'm still short
for space with all of those raised beds and everything that I'm going to do here,
then I'll do that, but that would be my last choice.
Well that's it for me today,
and so wherever you are in the world and whatever you've got planned for today I
hope it's good one and I also hope you'll join me again next time!