I grew strawberry plants from seed*, and they did well, so I needed somewhere to put them. We had an old raised bed from years ago that was totally lost to weeds, so I decided that was the place, but I hadn't reckoned on the weeds having other ideas.
It was a thatch of vetch and grass, and despite soaking it for several hours, I couldn't get the bloody weeds out.
So, I discussed it on Facbook as I planned to smother the weeds. I got some good advice from friends who'd tackled similar challenges.
The first suggestion was before doing anything to cut the weeds right down. I don't know why I hadn't thought of that myself, but actually that became step 1.
Which was a lot of hard work, as you can imagine.
OK, maybe not. Martin did it with the weed whacker. Once he had you could really see what we were up against.
There was literally a mat of roots.
The next suggestion was to cover this with newspaper rather than my idea of landscaping fabric. The thing was I had no newspaper, but I did have landscaping fabric. Then somebody said cardboard...so that's what I did.
I opened up boxes and filled in the gaps with other bits.
Then we filled it with soil. OK, Martin did.
And finally I planted the strawberries and watered them in.
This is the end - or the beginning , depending on which way you go - of our new "fruit walk". Fruit bushes and trees are going along both sides of a path through the wildflower meadow, along the back of the pond. I'll show you all the steps in this ongoing project.
*My latest "thing" is growing everything from seed.
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