THE major work to set up my urban garden is now done. The garden has been levelled and the boxes put in place.

Around the boxes and on all three levels I have spread various colours of stones and pea gravel for a maintenance free garden.

I have a plastic shed which, despite the mirth caused in the office by last week's peekaboo shed photograph which prompted a rude caption competition, I find very useful.

I also have two potato barrels in place and one compost bin about a fifth full at the moment.

My wife, Anne, made the square foot grids out of cane, which we bought from the council owned Heaton Fold horticultural centre in Overdale Drive, Bolton, which is a little gem of a discovery. These will help me plan each square foot of the garden.

Heaton Fold is great for tomato plants, onion plants and seeds, canes, pots, compost, flowers, shrubs, fruit trees and plants.

This is where I bought my peat moss which I mixed with the other ingredients for my boxes. If no-one uses this great mini-garden centre it will probably close within a couple of years and that would be a sad loss.

As you are aware I am doing this garden according to the principles in Mel Bartholomew's book The All New Square Foot Garden: Grow More in Less Space, which advocates intensive raised bed gardening.

By planting in square foot raised bed gardens you can get a much bigger return than gardening by normal methods and you can stagger the planting to make sure you have good supplies throughout the growing season. We'll see about that.

But what no-one tells you is that peat moss is very heavy, for some reason I always thought it was light and fluffy, and when you have to carry 600 litres of it plus 600 litres of mixed compost and 600 litres of vermiculite with a bad back, then you certainly know about it.

Anyway it's done now and thank God I only have to do it once.

My wife and I mixed the 600 litres of water retaining vermiculite with the peat moss and blended composts in each individual box not caring to lift them all again.

Even then it was heavy work and took around three hours.

We filled the centre single height box with an assortment of flowers, which will be visible from the patio, including marigolds at each corner as they should attract insects which will feast on any predators who've got their beady eyes on my veg.

Then I placed the cane grids on the top of the four remaining veg beds and I can now begin to think about what I can plant. Will I buy already germinated plug plants for speed or grow from seeds or both? More about that next week.