Preparing new greenhouse borders

[Dazzerelli]

Hi Charles,

I’ve previously used growbags in my small greenhouse but an moving over to using the earth borders directly. The area is less than 2 square metres in size. I was wondering how best to prepare this for the planting of Tomatoes, Cucumber, Basil etc. I have access to lots of well rotted horse manure and also have about 60 litres of home made compost and some leaf mold. The soil is not very good and I was thinking of removing the top 15cm or more of soil and filling in with a mix of the above. What do you think? As the area is so small, I would consider any work or purchasing of extra materials to create an ideal growing environment.

Thanks,

Darren

[charles]

 Hi Darren,

Normally I would recommend placing all your lovely additions on top of the soil but this may make the level too high, especially for tomatoes and cucumber. So removing some soil from the greenhouse sounds worthwhile, and all the proposed additions are good except I would keep leaf mould for outdoor use as it is less full of nutrients than compost and manure. Tamp down the deep layer of organic matter to make it form before planting.

You should have less watering to do than with grow bags.

[Author]

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