4th March 2006
We were offered a free greenhouse by a work colleague, Daniella Parris, who, having bought a house, found the offending glass growspace an annoying entry in her garden. In order to prepare for the greenhouse we needed to get some concrete foundations but we still hadn't cleared the ground. So priorities being priorities, we decided to get the hard work done first before advancing any further with our plot.
We kept digging and by 4th March we had dug right down to the plum tree, which was past the three-quarters mark.
11th March 2006
My dad came up to help us build a concrete base for the greenhouse. I had measured how big the greenhouse was at Daniella's house so with help from my dad, who is a builder by trade, we all dug into the bottom section of the plot in order to create as flat a surface to build a concrete slab. I helped haul a load of “dust” into my dad's work van and helped mix it up with cement and water but Tim seemed to be the hardest worker.
Pythagoras wasn't on our side that day as we tried to figure out why the rectangular “mould” we had made out of planks and secured in place with batons didn't measure out correctly. The length and widths of the planks were correct but the diagonals from corner to corner were not the same. Thank God I had dropped out of a maths degree as I realised that we hadn't been following the rules of trigonometry. Our “rectangle” did not have right angles, hence the discrepancy in the diagonal measurements. That was my big contribution of the day so I thought I'd mention it seeing as Tim did most of the hard work with my dad.
Thanks father!
19th March 2006
We decided after this that we wanted to actually start growing things, so having rough dug the majority of the plot, we re-dug the top end of the plot and marked out the plots with string. The earth broke down into a fine tilth and it looked fantastic.
We got our early potatoes (Arran Pilots) planted. I had also planted my garlic up early in pots because I hadn't been able to plant it in any finished piece of ground. We planted those up too!
25th March 2006
We planted up some Polka Raspberry canes and blackcurrant bushes that Tim had bought mail order from Victoriana.
The weather deteriorated pretty quickly that day so our usual long hours spent on the plot were jeopardised. We had put in a curved path around the plum tree, which gave the fruit patch more emphasis. The fruit patch was the first real sign of our plot coming to life. We were both really pleased with the end result and it looked great!
