Bean poles and pumpkin patch

The children do some preparations with the veggie plot on Sunday. The weather was glorious - lovely to be outside for so long with the extra light too in the evening. Wasn't so good losing the hour on Sunday morning though I must say!

I used a pile of old bricks to build a quick veg bed for our pumpkins. I didn't quite have enough to make a minimum 12 inches in depth (as suggested by a magazine I have recently read), so I rummaged around in the log pile and found some suitable chunky logs to make up the few extra inches needed. Having read that pumpkins love to grow in compost heaps I decided, with Ben's help, to fill the new bed with the majority of last year's home made compost. Really pleased with it - it's composted down beautifully (with the odd tea bag still lurking!). Now I have space on the compost heap for this year's lot of kitchen and garden waste, including a fresh bag of horse manure to kick start it.

So, have dug over and raked the main plot, Katie helped put in some tall poles for the peas (which are doing really well indoors) and later the beans. They also both helped plant up the four free potatoes, plus a couple of others which we found sprouting in the garden!