The first changes - hard work for very little visible result

I put my first vegetable bed in today. The soil was rock hard and riddled with stones, so I sprinkled a few watering cans of water over it first. Even then I could only get the fork in an inch or two the first time I dug it over. I  must have taken out over 50 stones that were getting in the way of my fork.

Before

After

I had to be quite inventive about where I stuck my fork to get it in deep, but I did manage it by the end of my second dig. 

That was when I decided to use the compost from the compost maker the last owners had left in the garden. Unfortunately, it turns out that the last owners weren't so much making compost as storing grass clippings, ants, spiders and flies. When I opened the flap at the bottom dozens and dozens of creepy crawlies started crawling out. The very bottom bit of the compost did look pretty well rotted though, despite the fact they put the compost maker on concrete instead of soil and didn't put anything except grass in it (two no-nos of composting). I didn't have any other organic matter to hand (and was too worn out to go and buy some shop-bought compost), so I decided to use some of it anyway and keep my fingers crossed that the ants and flies in it don't decide to set up permanent home in my veg patch (last I saw it they were crawling all over it).

The sticks are for my beans to grow up. I didn't have any bamboo sticks, so I went and scavenged some sticks from our local woodlands - they're a bit brittle, so I may have to replace them. I have now planted seeds from each of the packets in yesterday's photo, but I'm waiting for some netting and string I ordered online to arrive by post before I plant my seedlings, as I'll use those to try and rig up the netting to protect them from butterflies (and caterpillars).