A vegetable garden from a piece of field

We made the vegetable garden from a plot in the corner of a field.

First dig

In the autumn of 2007, the turf of the field was strimmed, then dug over, with the turf turned and buried.

The first row was dug out a spade deep and placed aside, and the second row turned, turf-side down, into that trench. and then each successive row turned into the trench before it, so that the turf was buried. The soil was left over winter to break up in the frosts and snow.

The pear tree on the left of the picture, which gives good pears, was twice its height and didn't look like it could take a hard storm, so we had the top taken off.

We bought a shredder to shred the debris from the tree lopping, hoping to use this for mulch, but it's slow work with a domestic shredder such as this. However the resulting chips are good as coarse material for layering on the compost heap, and it saves having to waste branches and woody stalks by burning.