Bed 16 Second Trench Excavated

 

It looks like we are in for a 10 day dry spell, so it was off to the allotment this morning to carry on excavating the second trench. I excavated on the right and standing on the last trench back fill, the plastic shutter did lean forward and the backfill consolidated and dropped a little.  

So one I had excavated the humus material into the square flower buckets I placed them into the trench to hold the first trench backfill and stop the soil of what will become trench 3 from falling into the excavation. 

Having excavated enough material I dropped a second plastic shutter on the other side of the trench and then continued to bottom out the trench. I undermine the L shaped shutter so it could drop into place such that the lip was more near the surface of the bed.

The two square flower buckets were withdrawn and the shutter to the trench 1 backfilled face was removed. The trench was backfilled with rotted timbers from some of the 10 year old framed beds. 

Timber battens, branches from trees and raspberry canes that have been stacked on the top of the bed 15 raised beds were dropped in the trench. 

By the time I got this far, with a couple of water breaks it was 1:30 and I was flagging and needed to go home to get a late lunch. I should have given up around 12 :30 but wanted to try and at least get the trench excavation completed. 

I filled the trench with rotting timbers, branches and cuttings, next visit I need to get a couple of wheel barrow loads of wood chips and back fill trench 2 and top up trench 1. 

To get more than 50% of the existing bed excavated and into buckets will take another two trenches. It's hard work with my mobility issues and fatigue but little and often is making progress.