Courgettes & squarefoot gardening in our back garden

Just thought I'd post a couple of photo's of my back garden. I took these I think about 2 yrs back. We were trying some square foot gardening in the first one.
Strawberries in tubs on the wall, tubs from the poundshop and the strawberries where grown from seed. In the main bed at the front there's courgette's and lettuce. I also tried growing sweetcorn amongst the courgettes but they soon got swamped and lost.
On the right there's beetroot, spring onions and carrots. Also those two beds on the right you can see young been plants growing, the swiftly grew to become the "hedge" you can see on the left of the second picture.
The beds themselves are made out of reclaimed decking boards, 2 years on they are still in great shape, just need a coat of fence paint.
The greenhouse is sporting it's summer overcoat of debris netting which makes great sun shading.

Paper Pot Making

Here's a quick and simple way to make your own paper pots, I've made them this way for years now.
These are great for things like runner beans, sweetcorn etc the list goes on
Just plant the pot and it's contents straight into the ground, no need to disturb the root structure the pot degrades into the soil over the season.

A long break and all that !

Well I lost the plot(s) literally ! , not really lost them but gave them up.
We were due to have a new allotment site in our village, and what with helping the new site prepare and being on the new committee. I decided to give my old plots up and start a fresh on the new village site.
Sadly they fell through and I was without an allotment.

For a year or two we have grown at home along the lines of square foot gardening, nice and compact, we had some good salad years but not much room for the "big boys" of the veg garden.

Plot 62

Where I work from the tea room you can see the local allotment plots, this year I finally succumbed to temptation. Put my name down on the waiting list and 1 week later I was offered a plot !

Can't believe my luck ! the plots great, the soils lovely like something off a tv show ... almost apart from the usual selection of weeds, fortunately for me mostly annual grass and fat hen. plus a good crop of stones, half bricks and building blocks, and a chair !

The only down side I've found so far is there's quite a hard pan about a spit deep, but I've been double digging some of the beds to help start breaking this up.

I decided from more or less day one that I would implement a bed system, 4 foot wide and 13 foot long 18" paths all round should suffice. I eventually will have 26 beds. Also saves me the trouble of digging where I'm going to be walking.
So far I've found a few rhubarb plants, and a few raspberry plants.

2nd day in I remembered to take some pictures





3 weeks further along and we're getting there, Garlic and over wintering onions are in, I've dug out 1 row of bean trenches.


And now the rain has started.