Front Garden Project

The Front Garden Project is coming together nicely. It's funny I largely dismissed it last year but having put a bit more effort in this year I've accessed a fair old chunk of extra growing space. I'm especially impressed with the square metre of earth which has the bean frame on it. It's currently planted with 3 Borlotti bean plants, one petit pois, one courgette and one butternut squash. I've also planted some broad bean seeds parallel to the house which are poking their heads above the soil.

I'm mindful of the dangers of overcrowding though. Squashing (no pun intended) too much in merely results in stunted plants and no crop at all so I'll be keeping a close eye and will transplant the courgette if necessary, especially as the back yard courgettes are looking ropey. I'm also already pondering how to rejuvenate the soil over winter. That's something of a challenge as we don't have room for a compost bin so don't have any compost of our own. I did try a wormery but I killed the inhabitants fairly rapidly (unintentionally I might add).

On a separate note, I had a mad idea for growing radishes. The mantra of the small garden owner is "Make use of the vertical space" so I thought I could fasten a length of guttering to the back fence by the gate (pictured a few weeks ago when the garlic was still 'growing'), fill it with compost and, hey presto, a trough for radishes. Went to the diy shop to discover the cost of guttering plus brackets would be about £15 so it doesn't seem financially viable, even at the farmers market I could buy more radishes than I'll ever need for that! Still, it's an idea, if I see any guttering offered of Freecycle I'll snap it up.