We positioned this new garden bed, hopefully the first of about 6 or more raised garden beds, along the same EW linear axis as the house to try to get the best of the winter sun. Not sure how it will go in the summer - we may need to provide some shade but we’ll see how it all pans out.
I got Benj to chainsaw some of the trees from one of the piles (from the original clearing for the house) to the right lengths to give us a nice workable sized bed. It's about 4m long and 1.5m wide. I then banded the logs together with metal roofing straps. Next I prepared the site. This really just amounted to scraping a bit of the barely existent soil into a flattish bed with shallow trenches for the logs to sit in. The usual rock removal was required and then we were ready to fill it!
It took about 14 wheelbarrow loads to fill. I started off with three loads of compost which although is not fully broken down, is teeming with earthworms and should hopefully be broken down fully by the time the plants roots get down to that bottom layer. Then some of Joe’s clay soil mixed with the bought in sandy soil and some gypsum for good measure. Then finally a mushroom compost/sandy soil mix of about 3:1.
I had a great little helper for the whole process. He was very excited about the earthworms and insisted on transporting as many of them as he could find from the compost heap to the garden bed in his own little wheelbarrow.
And when we were finally done… it began to rain!!! Perfect for the final prep of the bed!
Now we just need to add veggies!
Look at all those wonderful earthworms!
Checking to see the earthworms moved in ok.
Balancing act.
Spreading the soil.
What a team.
It's raining!
Finished and waiting for veggie plants!
No comments:
Post a Comment