Grow Your Own

Last autumn, my brother and I took down the old hut in my mother’s garden as we’d bought a new shed and wanted to use the wood to make raised beds for vegetables and companion flowers and a cold frame for the strawberry plants I’d been growing since spring. First thing was to construct the ‘big green box’ on the site of the old hut, cutting the wood from the sides to measure. Well, more or less!

Next I painted the wood with green preserver (hence the name of the box) and filled it with layers of branches, twigs and leaves.

I’d also planned to make a new compost heap to supplement the plastic bin so we could let one decompose for next year while we used the other this year.

The black compost at the base of the bin was going into the green box as well as some in a bag (for tomatoes I think) that I’d found thrown away down the park.

For the raised bed in the veg patch, instead of building up, I dug down and laid down the same successive layers, to improve drainage – and then constructed a wicker fence all around it. Over winter, the only thing I could plant was garlic so that’s what went in.

Next job was to build the cold frame, from the old wood. I wanted to use the window section, so I had to cut it to size then screw on a wooden support so I could attach the hinges (from the old hut door).

Then a few screws to keep it all together and some gauze sheeting I’d found to keep the soil off the wood. That done, I filled it with compost and earth…

…and the strawberry plants.

Apart from the strawberries, the only thing growing in the garden is Brussels sprouts. They’ve been producing since October, a steady growth of small organic (and a bit bird-pecked) sprouts and I reckon they’ll go on till at least St Valentine’s day when I plan to plant seeds – like last year.

As I said in previous posts, with Brexit and the continuing planned madness of lockdown and shutdown, it’s only common sense, if you have access to any land at all, to grow your own fruit and vegetables. The Great Reset to inaugurate the 4^th Industrial Revolution contains publicly-available plans to clear people from the land so that we can be monitored, controlled and transhumanised in dystopian urban space. I’m a novelist and I really, really wish that this was Sci-Fi. If you still think it is, inform yourself.