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Our garden is about 12×18 meters. It’s big. And mostly consists of a very lumpy lawn. We’ve been living here since the end of October and after a long winter (as you can see here: Snow in our garden) we were happy to finally get stuck in.

“This year we’ll only be making two raised beds and start growing a little veg (for the first time)”. That was the plan.

And then the (veg)gardening bug kicked in. We ended up with six raised beds, made by Mario, and a green house! It has been on my wish list for years and I was allright with it being on that list for a few years more but I let myself be convinced that now was the time ;)

Let me just walk you through a few photos of the whole process:

 

So I started sewing some seeds and researching about growing veg. This little one sprouted first: a tiny radish.

 

A LOT of digging. Also in the rest of the lawn, to get rid of moss and weeds (we’re still busy removing them on a daily basis).

 

Setting the legs of the greenhouse base in concrete, then adding sand and flattening out the surface for laying tile in the greenhouse floor. You can see my hand prints where I thought I was being helpful. Mario decided using a board would be more accurate ;)

 

A week later the frame went up!

 

It was getting too dark to put in the glass, so Mario would do that the following day while I was in Rotterdam (read here: A day in Rotterdam). He was only just done by the time I came home. It was a LOT of work. Apparently, greenhouses need billions of clips and an ginormous mount of rubber strips (slightly exaggerated). Who knew.

 

Spring arrived and we added a water barrel.

 

That radish would surely survive outside now.

 

Six raised beds and filling (and filling and filling…). The beds are a little higher than usual, because we have dense clay soil here and we really couldn’t stand any more digging…

Also, it’s great for sitting on the edge (we’ll be adding copper tape later though, to ward off snails and ants) as buying outdoor seating is definitely off the table this year because of that greenhouse ;)

 

A closer look. I can’t believe how neat everything -still- looks.

 

We put pots in the greenhouse only yesterday. Here we’ll (hopefully) be growing some herbs, cucumber, red pepper and tomato.

 

Like this one :)

 

Are you growing your own? Let me know how you get on, and all tips are of course most welcome.

Have a good week!