7th Oct - I Need My Bed

No post holiday blues for me for once. I came back from holiday raring to get a move on and catch up on my week away from the allotment.

As many keen, amateur gardeners will possibly agree, we spend hours fixating on what to plant, where to plant it and when. I am quite an impatient person and want everything NOW! Gardening is definitely bringing me a sense of calm and more importantly patience. That said, I am also conscious that there are certain plants that I wish to grow that can go in the ground in Sept/Oct. This is my pitiful reasoning as to why I convinced Simon to take me to the local timber merchants on Saturday to buy the gravel boards and 2be2 to make some edged beds.

Having drawn plans, re-planned, had sleepless nights and then re-planned again, I knew that I wanted a permanent fruit bed or two. I want to have a couple of each type of fruit and preferably of differing varieties so that my fruiting season is as long as possible. My chosen fruit bushes are Blueberries; they are so damned expensive in the shop, I love their taste and they are great in a muffin. Gooseberries; great in a pie or jam and not as sour as I remember as a child, I reckon they'll make a come back. Black currants & red currants; great for jams. Blueberries thrive in acidic soil, they therefore need copious amount of ericaceous compost so I will need to treat them differently.

The first bed measures 4 metres by 2.4 metres and will have a total of 6 fruit bushes. This may seem like a huge amount of wasted space but on advice I'm leaving nearly 1.5 metres between each bush. This will give plenty of space to harvest 360 degrees around each bush without damage.

Although the soil has been dug a lot and rotivated to break up the soil, I want to give every plant the best possible start I can so that I can reap the rewards later. Into the new bed we dug in a really good compost suitable for fruit bushes and soil conditioner. It was harder than expected and funnily enough, took much longer that anticipated.

Once dug in, we made a string grid ready for plant placement. When we got all all the soil and some superb advice from a member of staff at Otter Nurseries I also chose 2 lovely blueberry bushes. I was advised to soak the plants in a bucket of water for 12 hours prior to planting as this will help encourage the roots to reach out and well, erm get routed I suppose. Now it's starting to feel reel!