Got up and it was raining….  waited an hour and it was still raining, so I decided to go out and get wet.  I wanted to sort out the two remaining raised beds which had sat under a load of rubbish since we first cleared the plot.   These last two were going to be split between rhubarb and strawberries, since we have discovered two rhubarb plants in the ground already it meant these two beds will now be for strawberries.   I just need to get them ready, and I need to find some strawberry plants to put into them.

The rain wasn’t hard, just drizzle which tends to make you wet without you knowing, and as I quickly found out, turns every small bit of soil into a full blown mud bath.  Without meaning to I would end the visit covered in mud, tools would be covered in mud, paths where covered in mud.   But I did want to get these two beds sorted and so went with it.

The rubbish was cleared, wire netting (which will come in handy at some point I am sure) was rolled up and stored up against the fence.   I was able to trim back some of the small branches coming off of the trees in the field next to us, but I think next time I will bring a small hacksaw and trim the trees back a lot more.

I thought I would quickly fork the beds over and all would be good, taking out the odd weed as I went along.  I was soon uprooting lots of long white roots, which meant this wasn’t going to be a quick job.   I emptied most of the first bed, filling up a trug of weed roots as I went, digging quite deep and still uprooting more.   I leveled it off and used some of the millions of old newspapers we picked up off of Freecycle the other week to layer over the ground.  It won’t stop any roots remaining that I have missed, but hopefully it will slow them down (I have a lot of old newspapers and so it is about 2xDaily Mail deep, which is probably the best use for that newspaper).

I replaced the bed and filled it half with the soil I dug out.  By now everything in the world was covered in mud, the rain hadn’t really stopped.  I decided to leave the other bed until another day.