Planters, planters everywhere!

So we’ve been back up the allotment now that Christmas has passed and out next step is to create some raised beds. We’re using the squarefoot gardening technique so we have decided to make 4 beds that are 8ft by 4ft. I dragged my dad to the local timber yard and bought 24 3.6 metre decking boards along with 4 3metre 2x2 batons. All in all it cost £111 for all the materials to make 4 huge planters.

Each planter will be laid in squares and they're 8 squares long by 4 squares deep. So we have 32 squares in each planter. We'll spread most crops over 4 or even 8 squares depending on the plant and how much space it needs.

While the weather has been bad, the ground has been covered by black plastic sheeting. This has done quite a good job in keeping the weeds at bay. Sadly, there are some rogue potato plants in the ground that just keep coming up. I’m trying so hard to get rid of them without using any nasty chemicals. I guess I’ll have to keep digging them out!

While Mr Dig was cutting the wood I was digging and turning over the soil to even the ground out and make a decent base for the planters.

We put legs on the corners of each planter so we could anchor it into the ground so while I sat on one end, Mr Dig used a sledge hammer to give it a good whack. Luckilly as I'd been hard at work digging the soil, it was reasonably soft which meant he didn't have to smack them too hard!

In just half an hour we built one planter. Sadly that was all we had time for today but we’ll be back up there over the weekend to finish them off. We’re leaving the black plastic down and will put a mulch of bark chippings on top to make low maintenance pathways between the beds.
I’ve got the spring bug and I cannot wait for thing to start growing!