How I turned my friend's lawn into a vegetable garden Part Three

The plot is nearly complete!!
Along the back edge we decided to make a marrow/courgette heap. These Cucurbits love plenty of organic matter such as manure. Here I am copying what I used to do as a child on the farm, when I was able to grow massive marrows thanks to the unlimited supply of cow manure on site.
So here I first of all forked the soil over, removing any perennial weeds and turning other weeds back into the soil. I then made a big pile of the horse manure and covered this with plenty of soil.
This can be seen at the far end behind the rhubarb plant.
In due course, when all risk of frost is past, we will make pockets of soil in the top of the heap and sow the marrow and courgette seeds. It will be necessary to protect these from slugs as the seedlings show through. It may be easier to sow the seeds in pots indoors first, and plant them out when the plants have a few leaves and have been "hardened off" outside for a few days (this is the process of acclimatizing them to the outdoor temperature before planting).
The vegetable plot is nearly complete!

A Toad in the Netting

This warm November weather is quite amazing. Yesterday I spent several hours up at the plot generally tidying, weeding and harvesting, with just a thin tee shirt and summer weight trousers. I'm very glad I went up there because I found a toad caught in the netting around the brussel sprouts. He seemed exhausted from struggling to get free. I carefully disentangled him, gently put him amongst the strawberries where I knew I would not be working, and he seemed to recover well and crawl away beneath the leaves.
This summer I ran out of space for the courgettes, marrows and squashes, so I covered one of the paths across the plot with black cloth (the sort used to smother weeds) and piled manure onto it before covering the resulting heap with soil into which I planted the cucurbits. They thrive on this treatment - the heap becomes warm as it rots beneath the plants, and they are provided with a rich growing medium, which they love, and it doesn't dry out in the driest of summers. The benefit now at the end of the year is that I have a plentiful supply of well rotted manure which I am using to top dress all around the plot where needed - for example on the asparagus bed, around the flowers in the flower bed, and around the cabbages, sprouts, spinach, etc. which i am still harvesting.





I am well pleased with my handiwork. The plot is beginning to look very neat and tidy, ready for the quieter winter months ahead, and there is still an amazing amount of produce to see us through the next few dreary winter months.

squash and marrows

I spent a happy afternoon visiting a garden today in the lee of the South Downs in Sussex under the National Gardens Scheme. It was a beautiful setting in lovely autumnal sunshine. But what really caught my attention were the marrow and squash plants!
I have never ever before seen any squash, marrow or any other cucurbit plants for that matter grow to the size of these, photographed below. These are trailing out of a huge compost bin, and the distance from the nearest point to the furthest in this photo I measured as 15 of my strides, pretty much 15 yards!! And the crop was abundant.
I have tried myself to grow these plants on my own compost heaps but without such success. Perhaps the abundant supply of horse manure from the neighbouring stables was giving a helping hand to those in the photo!
Anyway if mine grew to that size they'd take over my allotment!!