Start of the hard work

Finally decisions made (turfcut !) and the weather with us, we made a start on the physical work. Needless to say I left my carefully designed computer generated plans at home so just went with the flow.

• 20 foot patch at the top for chickens, shed, compost and all that
• 5 lots of 9 foot wide beds with 2 foot paths between. 9 foot width totally arbitrary of course and based only on 'that looks a bit narrow better make it a bit wider !' - the 2 foot path width because that's just slightly wider than the mower wheels.
• 15 foot patch at the bottom for fruit trees (?)

After 10 minutes of pulling the starter cord on the turfer I found the on-off switch but we won't mention that again. Totally hard work, but the beds were pretty much de-turfed on Saturday, and most of the turf rolled up and moved off the beds on Sunday.

Side View

Giant ! Late sunshine

Paid up and staked out

Although it feels like ages I guess its only been a few days. Subs are paid and the plot is staked out. Of course this has left lots of time for research and planning. To kill and rotovate, or cover to suppress and do things bit by bit, or - current favourite - turfcut first then rotovate.
Found some nice pages of others who've done just that, together with ideas on what to do with the turf (form a barrow 2ft high, grass down, then plant spuds - great loam next year), designing for beds (leave some turf to allow barrows).