As we are thinking about the best way to cultivate, plant, grow and harvest sufficient food for ourselves everything keeps pointing back to having raised beds.

• We are getting old, so back breaking work of bending to do stuff is REALLY unattractive
• The beds can be built, filled, composted/manured, protected and left to “mature” ready for planting
• They can be built without having to clear a massive plot – even built amongst really badly prepared land (so you can weed between them and lay fancy paths or walkways later).

So that’s the plan: 5 raised beds (so we can do a rotation system) relatively close to the house so we can harvest as and when needed much of the time.

The photo below is a an example of some raised beds beautifully built by Graham Moffatt who runs the Lionsgate Guest House in Pomoshtitsa between the market towns of Popovo and Razgrad.

You can also see the tyre towers in the background – a great way of growing things like potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, strawberries.