Each year I am amazed buy how low the level gets in the raised beds. It starts at the top at the beginning of the season and is a quarter of the way down by the end. I judge that it takes between four and five bags of compost to fill them back up again. After having cake and coffee at the garden centre, we bought five bags for around £20.

We have had over wintering beans in the beds as a green manure which I cut down to base level, as well as pulling up some left over beetroot (which were quite usable). I took the top layer of the compost bin off to find just about half of it had composted down and so was able to start by covering the larger bed with our own compost. This covered three quarters of it at around 1-2 inches which was a nice extra.

All I have to do now is try to keep the squirrels off….