The Potager is finished just in time

Immediately after Christmas we were back to work.  Nick actually started making the gates for the potager during Christmas.  He has always worked with wood, and it is his main love.
Having set up all his benches and woodworking tools outside the big barn, he settled to his work in the gentle afternoon sun with the promise of a turkey dinner and mulled wine when he had finished...

We decided we would use post and rail fencing for the whole plot, as it is such a pretty natural form of fencing, so we used a lower two rail version for the potager...

We attached netting to the bottom rail, and a layer of gravel at the bottom to discourage the wildlife from setting up home in the raised beds..

Then with the help of the JCB we finished gravelling the pathways.

We want to grow grapes and kiwis, so we also dug in posts and set up a wire trellis system to support the vines as they get bigger and hopefully heavy with fruit...

Excited that we finally had everything in place, we took a trip to the nearby garden centre and bought our first fruit bushes...

Three raspberry canes - Mailing Promise and Heritage are both summer fruiting, and Fall Gold, an Autumn fruiting yellow raspberry.

Two gooseberry bushes - a white and a purple variety.

Two blueberry bushes for the ericaceous bed, both large fruit varieties.

And three Kiwi vines, one male and two of the female Actinidia variety. 

We planted them all as soon as we returned, and it was a joy to plant in soft raised bed soil, without having to break the heavy clay ground as we did to plant all the trees.

After a short trip back to England to collect some materials for the renovation, a new greenhouse, and two beautiful old vines from Nicks parents, we returned to the sunshine, and to finish the final elements of the potager.  

We had laid a concrete base to secure the greenhouse, so we were able to erect the frame easily. 

And having glazed it, Nick set to work to make the shelving and potting benches I had designed for the inside of the greenhouse.  We had picked up some thick plywoood from England at a really good price, so I have some really sturdy shelving to start this years seedlings, and a good thick bench to pot up, with a place to mix the potting compost.....

And he has even put in a car battery, with a solar panel on the outside of the greenhouse to power it, so that I can connect up the kettle and an Ipod dock to have music and cup of tea whilst I'm working.....perfect!

We just need to buy a water tank and then some guttering to direct the rainwater from the roof to the tank, and I will have an easy way to water the seedlings separate from the main watering system for the beds.

As the weather was starting to turn very chilly, we decided to wrap all the newly bought plants with some fleece...

And we were just in time!

The night time temperatures got lower and lower to -8 degrees, and then it started to snow....