It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post but we have finally moved into a greener, less polluted part of Essex in the countryside. Life here is a little bit slower paced, less traffic, although lots of tractors and rolling fields.

Its taken some time but our new Vegetable Garden is now up and running just in time for the late Summer vegetables.

We have used big chunky sleepers to create the raised beds, 2 sleepers high. The sleepers were sunk into the ground to stabilise them and screwed together.

The raised beds were filled with good quality, no weeds or seeds topsoil and two bags of Peat free compost on the top.

We used Rocket Gardens to buy our plants from so they could get established and we could get a harvest before the frosts come in October. Rocket Gardens currently have a sale on so you can get even more plants for your money, like we did! They also include a top tips booklet which gives you all the information on how to grow lots of different vegetables and fruit.

We found the best way to work out plant spacing was to start with a tape measure down one side of the raised bed. Then take the soaked plug plants and lay them on top of the compost so we knew where to dig the hole for the plants.

Plants in this bed from left to right are:

• Beetroot ‘Detroit’
• Perpetual spinach,
• Rainbow Chard
• Lettuce ‘Freckles’

Once you have dug a hole, plant the plug plant level with the soil, fill back the soil round the plant. Water daily for 7 days and then every 2-3 days after that. It’s been amazing how these plants have settled in the ground after just one week in a heatwave, we are very impressed and everything is growing well. (see 2nd bed in on the picture at the top of this page for 1 weeks progress).

Other vegetables we are growing from plants are:

• Leek ‘Musselburgh’
• Onion ‘Bedfordshire Champion’
• Peas ‘Kelvedon Wonder’
• French Climbing Bean ‘Cobra’
• Sweetcorn ‘Sweet Nugget’
• African Blue Basil.