Vegetable Garden

In 1998, the vegetable garden consisted of a small wet meadow rampant with rushes due to its poor drainage.  Nothing happened to it much, until it served as the area for Tent City, in the Summer of 2001.  The area was named Tent City because we moved the caravan and its awning, a visitors tent and a large tent that served as Sorcha's play area - filled with her toys, to this area while the renovation of the cottage was taking place.  The ground had a smallish layer of top soil with a clay base and a couple of days of rainfall would reduced this area to a muddy bog.  The ground tended to be rock hard in the Summer and equivalent to quicksand, in places, in the winter.



We moved the caravan and tents during the autumn of 2001 and although it was a dry spell we still needed a tow from the JCB before we could get out of the field.  Later that Autumn, Peter used his JCB and a dumper to move most of the left over top soil from the extension foundations to two areas: the field nearest the cottage garden - which also got boggy and the vegetable meadow. While he was at it, he also cleaned up the ditches around the vegetable meadow, as well as laying some underground pipes to take the water away from the back ditch to a ditch, that eventually leads to the lake.  When he was digging the drainage ditch he came across the remains of old bonfires, several feet below the surface.  He had seen these before and said that they were probably several hundred years old.  When the women in olden days washed they clothes, they would light a fire to boil the water, in a pot, next to a stream.   The top soil increased a further four to six inches after the foundation soil was added and this stopped the muddy and hard rock conditions that we had experienced previously.



It was the following spring that the vegetable garden began to take shape.  Initially, we planted a variety of vegetables, including potatoes, strawberries, rhubarb, beans, peas, carrots, cabbage, etc.  We also placed posts, wire netting and a wind break netting, around the perimeter of the vegetable garden.  Visitors, including my mother, Chris and Colin helped with the weeding when they were here, but due to the demands of finishing a new cottage, the vegetables were often left to fight for their space against the weeds.  However, much produce was gathered and inspired us to do it again the next year.  In 2003, my mother was here for longer periods and the vegetable garden started to produce a larger variety and amounts of vegetables.  The weeds were putting up a stiff resistance, but they were losing!  We also created a central Herb section, where we grow a variety of the common herbs.  In 2004, large amounts of top soil from Primrose Cottage's Extension foundations were thrown on top of the vegetable garden and large amounts of produce, jams, chutneys, etc., were obtained later in the year.  Our potato crop kept us in potatoes from September to April, before we ran out.  My mother did almost every job in the vegetable garden, from weeding to tying the canes for the beans, to gathering the crops, to making the jams and chutneys.  In the Autumn I created a small greenhouse, while Colin on a visit finished the roofing.  I also created a small garden shed to house our tools.  Unfortunately, both projects need to be finished off this year.  For example, doors and shelves need to be fitted.  In Spring of 2005, I created a fruit cage where we moved our existing stocks of raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries to it.  Our hedges are thick with wild blackberries, so all we have to do is collect them in September.  We also grew cucumbers and tomatoes in the small greenhouse and a large number of tomatoes in the fruit cage.  Both produced big crops.  We didn't plant so many potatoes this year and began to regret it as we had run out by early December.  Each year we follow the crop rotation method, using lime, compost and leaving it alone, over three successive seasons before repeating the cycle.