Garden Tasks

Almost all the beds in our terraced vegetable garden have now been dug over and fertilised with seaweed, the only remaining ones being those which still have some of the winter crops such as broccoli, leeks and spinach. Meanwhile, the greenhouse is filling up with seedlings, all of which seemed to have survived the recent cold weather even though the greenhouse is unheated.

As well as the seaweed, our proximity to the sea is good for washed-up fish boxes, which are an ideal size for growing crops like mixed salad leaves and radishes.

Four sections of the beds are down to strawberries, which seem to have survived well through the winter, and the raspberries and gooseberries are shooting - though the raspberries are still in need of a final prune to take the tops off the canes.

The garden is watered using unchlorinated water which is brought down in blue pipes from the neighbouring burn. There are two standpipes and the green water butt which holds reserves for the occasional dry spell.

It's an ideal site for a vegetable garden being southeast-facing and sloping to aid drainage. Building up the beds behind the terraces, and ten years of feeding the thin croft soil with compost and seaweed, has made a huge difference to the garden's productivity - this productivity including the number of worms, much appreciated by the local robins.