... is not as easy as you might think. I did another one today and all in all it took me a good four hours to have it ready and planted. This particular one has the shallots and also some of the onions. And I hope that I have better luck with them than I did last year. I didn't find a single shallot and neither did I find a single onion.

Anyway, here's a photo of the garden as it is at the moment. Down the right-hand side you can see the land that I cleared a couple of weeks ago when I had my garden fire The framework for the greenhouse and the windows to fill in the framework are there as you can see. You can see the drain to the right, and then right on the extreme right-hand edge is the stone wall that marks the property boundary.

There's also a pile of gravel and a pile of broken bricks there too.

The white metal that you see is the remains of an old Ford Transit and in it is a pile of wood from trees that I cut down when I started to clear out this area, whenever that was. The other pile of wood in the right foreground is from trees that I cut down this winter.

On the left side are the raised beds. Down at the end is the newest of the beds, which will have the new potatoes. To the left of it is the new compost bin. The three beds covered in black plastic - they were last year's beds. They are dug through and they will be having beans and peas in them. Then, by the cloche are the two beds that I have dug out these last two days. The two beds that will be having the brassica and that I dug out last week are the two covered in black plastic by the old grey Cortina.

So just four more beds to dig out, and two that need just a quick going over, and then everything will be ready for planting. But I need to put the early spuds in soon, and the cabbages will soon be past their planting date if I don't get a move on.

But it's hard work.