The space allocated for the tunnel includes the site of my old 6 x 12 greenhouse, plus the path surrounding it, the bed next to it, and the bed opposite - home to an overgrown strawberry patch and a clump of thuggish yellow raspberries. It all needs to be dug over, as the whole area is also host to the gardener's favourites: couch grass, bindweed, horsetail, dandelions and docks...
Once the greenhouse was removed (the cover stripped off and the frame given to a lottie neighbour), this is what was left to deal with:
I decided to start with the old strawberry bed, because that's where the path will be redirected to, and work my way backwards. This is Day 1 and 2's progress; raspberries cut down and digging commenced:
It's slooow going because we've had a couple of weeks of 'summer' - no rain and baking hot, plus there's a high concentration of couch and bindweed in this bed, so I'm *trying* to get every bit out...
Day 3 and 4 sees the bed finally dug over, and the outline of the tunnel's footprint marked out:
Day 5 was more of the same, with the back edge of the footprint marked out, and more couch grass, bindweed, docks, dandelions and creeping buttercup being removed, along with glass, pottery, bricks and what appeared to be half a washing line!
Day 6, and help arrived in the form of Mr Wix, and we fairly flew through the last bit (although I'm none too sure how thorough he was with the weed removal.... Time will tell!) and this is what it looked like when I left last night:
Today, Day 7, we hope to get the foundation tubes in, along with anchor plates, and perhaps the hoops up. But as I've just remembered that the cordless drill needs to be charged (!!) it might be a bit later than expected when we get started... Ooops. *rushes off to plug in the charger...*
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