After moving the shed I was left with a patch of ground that is relatively low in weeds and planned on using it as just another area for growing things. However, after getting rid of the other greenhouse I was also left with a greenhouse base that either needed giving away to the local metal fairies or reusing somehow. So I had an idea…
If I removed all the grass, flattened a lump of grass that I built up after last year’s wasp incident and dug in the remains of a compost pile, I’d have a nice area for growing more delicate plants.
Also it’d thoroughly dig up the ground where the wasps were, so future ones didn’t get any ideas.
My trusty battery powered rotavator chewed the ground up fairly well, and after some mildly dangerous antics with the greenhouse base, I had an area that was enclosed which should help keep the weeds out.
The next step was to actually plant things in there. The Range were selling strawberry plants, and after the demise of Wilko they also seem to have bought all their stock and are selling it off cheap. So Wilko’s 99p seed packets were 50p.
The second photo is for my reference too. There’s two rows of beetroot, two rows of carrots and then several rows of parsnip. The ground had a really good chewing with the rotavator and now actually resembles something you could grow plants in, rather than a field that’s had the grass ripped out.
The final stage was to set up a small plant cover I’d bought off Amazon. It’s one of those kits made from the tubular metal and plastic connectors that tends to last a season at best before something fails or the wind takes it away. I’ve tried to buy a more robust one so maybe it’ll last all year if I’m careful?
It was a bit bigger than I expected too…
The only irritating thing is the plastic cover doesn’t have many straps for tieing it to the frame. I hope it doesn’t explode in the wind the next time we have a storm.
To prevent this I got creative. I was tempted to attach it to the greenhouse base, but once the parsnips and carrots have grown a bit I’m intending on moving the cover to another part of the plot to cover something else.
Here’s the finished thing
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://plot88.uk/2024/03/31/creating-a-covered-planting-area/