We’ve made our 72nd – and final – garden bed! On Monday morning, with six beds to go, Alex declared this would be the last week. It hinged on the timing of our compost delivery and securing enough used cardboard boxes (for mulch on top of the grass). On Tuesday a truck delivered what should be our last load of compost for a while. And Alex upped the pressure with a new declaration that we would finish by Thursday so we could celebrate with lunch at one of our favourite local cafés (which wasn’t possible on Friday). On Wednesday afternoon we collected the cardboard and smelled success (in my case vegetable frittata and pinot noir). Despite oversleeping on Thursday morning we pushed to finish the last two beds and paths (it was a decent workout!) and thankfully made it to lunch before the kitchen closed.

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With the last garden bed we have 540m2 of standardised garden beds (10m long and 75cm wide). Standardised beds will in theory help us to become more efficient in planning and planting. And there are increasingly tools being made for small-scale market gardeners based on 75cm-wide beds. We also have three larger beds in the tunnel and this season we will use some of the border to grow annual vegetables while we wait for the herbs and other plants we’re (mostly) growing from seed. Overall this should give us plenty of space to allow for inevitable inefficiencies as we learn.

The beds dominated the week but there were other developments. Most importantly, it seems we have somewhere to sell some of our produce from September, which is a great relief (although Alex didn’t seem nearly as concerned!). Alex took his compost to the next level: since the first batch seems to be cooling down he added some of our compost worms so they transform it into extra nutritious plant food. A few frosty mornings in a row helped us learn some more about growing through winter (coriander seedlings don’t like frost!). And through a few different trades we swapped rainbow chard, carrots, baby fennel and kale for eggs, garlic, passionfruit and lemon verbena cuttings. Everyone was happy about that.

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