Oh, Well Bum, Poo and Bottom

You know how it is when you think you’ve got something sussed out? When there is a Plan in Place, and you know EXACTLY where you are heading in order to implement that plan because the vision is bright in your mind’s eye?  And just as you are bowling along quite happily because all the planets are in alignment and the omens bode well, bloomin’ OBSTACLES inveigle their way into your pathway, leaving little bits of annoying debris in their wake? 

I’m talking the Damson Cottage Vegetable Garden Project here. The project that started in earnest a couple of years ago with the purchase of a lovely greenhouse and wood planks enough to create eight substantial raised beds. 

Well, the greenhouse was very productive last year, as were two of the raised beds. In fact, I am still harvesting purple sprouting broccoli, parsnips and chard. A goodly start to The Grand Veg Project then. However, this year’s Grand Growing Plans were beginning to be scuppered because of the lack of compost to fill the remaining beds. Oh, they’re sort of heading towards being filled, what with various bits of garden waste being flung their way over the last year - grass clippings, leaf mould, bark chippings and the contents of our two and a half compost bins. But completely full? They are not. And this has irked me. 

So, this week I contacted some compost companies that deliver compost in bulk in order to secure some substantial piles of well rotted cow manure, spent mushroom compost, anything composty really, in order to fill the beds and be all systems go for full on veg growing 2022. And the constant resistance I met with was that these bulk deliveries arrive in dumpy bags on pallets on wheelie trolleys that are NOT to be used on gravel. And we have a gravel drive. Oh, the lorries would leave a pallet on the road, no problems, except we live on a twisty bendy countryside A road upon which people drive like lunatics, and leaving a pallet containing a dumpy bag full of a tonne of compost would NOT be a good idea. In fact, the words ‘foolhardy’ and ‘dangerous’ spring to mind. 

It looked like His Lordship Malarkey and I, then, would be doomed to purchasing multiple small bags of compost from local garden centres and transporting them in our small cars, which is a) uneconomical b) environmentally unfriendly AND c) time consuming. Sigh…

However, at the same time as this compost débâcle was ratcheting up to an annoying level of irksomeness, I happened to be studying this…

…and suddenly the way out of this gardening conundrum was becoming clear! 

Because whilst I shall always be a little in love with Monty Don for all things gardening, Mr Charles Dowding and his no dig method has, inadvertently, solved my problem for me, and then some! 

Was it inadvertent though? Or have I been guided by forces unseen because I am a more ‘go with the flow’ girl now, who tries not to live too far into the future? Anyway, the way forward seems to be to dismantle the raised beds, mix all the accumulated composts together in one big heap and then, after applying a goodly layer of cardboard over the WHOLE allocated vegetable garden area, whack the compost on top and start again! The growing area will immediately double in size and I can plant everywhere immediately. It’s like a gardening magic wand has been waved for me. 

I posed this suggestion to Andy because ‘twas he, after all, who laboured to make the raised beds. And although there was the hint of a glint in his eye that suggested he thought I was barking mad, he said, ‘Whatever you want to do. And I’ll always find use for the bits of leftover wood.’ Which roughly translates, ‘I will build some structure for the garden and make you guess what it is.’ 

The greenhouse is filling up nicely with seedlings. In the next week or two I am sowing courgettes, beans, beetroot etc, so the race is on now to secure as much cardboard as I can and to set about amalgamating all the compost so I can mulch over cardboard bases to a level of 3-5 inches rather than try to fill raised beds to a level of a foot or more. This is all VERY exciting, which I understand that the non-gardeners amongst you will not appreciate. But humour me, dear reader. No dig gardening is proving to be a revelation.

Two members of the Much Malarkey crew, however, are still of the ‘dig’ persuasion of gardening. And they will be Edith and Sidney Bunny who have taken to excavating burrows in the grounds of their Palace. I might have to see if Mr Dowding will have a word with them…