Beautiful Wiltshire UK Countryside
Walking across to the hoop house in the morning, in the sunshine and we have to notice that the countryside is stunningly beautiful. And even a poly tunnel has an appearance of beauty, set within the view.
One of our principles is that we want the growing of vegetables and fruit to be successful, and we also want the hoop house to be super-organised, tidy and aesthetically pleasing. It means lots of maintenance - weeding, planting, grass cutting / lawn mowing, labelling, and sign posting. Easily said. Weeding is hard work and inside the hoop house we have a good control. This is due to the “no dig” approach, where the plants are in compost and roots of the unwanted plants / weeds are not deep and strong. These can be pulled up with ease. However, outside the hoop house is giving us more of a challenge. Farm land with well established grasses are a challenge to keep on top of and these are coming through with gusto. We are not sure if we will win the battle to the extent that we would like i.e. no weeds and grasses. So a compromise may be that we work in harmony with weeds and grasses, provided that the vegetables survive and grow.
We even have grasses growing through some of the weed matting on paths! This has highlighted that weed matting comes in different quality levels. It’s important to have a close weave and this is difficult to determine from an online purchase. So grasses are growing through the footpaths with lose weave and being held back well on the large weed mat with close weave.
Lessons for next time:
Replace some of the weed matting!
Also, the beds outside the hoop house need to take on a “no dig” approach, similar to inside. We will need lots of compost; possibly we have time to establish or there will be an initial investment required. That means putting cardboard down (or something similar - possibly weed matting…? TBC) that suppresses the weeds, and compost placed above.
Research options for compost, partly to save initial investment e.g. horse manure.
Grass cutting is getting to be a weekly / fortnightly task. Labelling and signage is fairly static as plants grow. Planting is ongoing, although it feels time is running out for this year’s summer / Autumn harvesting of crops.
