Vegetable Box - Building Phase 1

A happy co-incidence, when I was out volunteering on Thursday this week, we were repairing a stile. The old wood was going to be dumped onto a pile, where it would be chopped up and probably chipped, so having asked first, I rescued a few appropriate planks which looked ideal for my square-foot plot and turned out to be just the right length.

Today, after putting together a new bench, I created a simple box frame 3ft x 4ft and placed it at the end of the garden, which gets the sun until late in the day. Having broken up the very dry soil where it was going to placed and dug out as much of the bindweed roots as possible, I lined it with dampened newspaper then filled it with a mix of compost, vermiculite, the remnants of a bag of manure that was lying around in the shed and a handful or two of pelleted chicken manure. It's only half full so will need another barrow load or two of compost and if I can get hold of it some well-rotted manual before adding the planting squares.

From what I've read recently the wet newspaper will suppress the weeds. Whether it will have any effect on the rampant bindweed will be interesting to see. As the local cats will think Christmas has arrived early - I've covered it with netting to keep them off.