Sunday, February 24, 2013

beginnings

So, I've had a pretty fun and productive couple of weeks since my post about a new perspective. First things first, I found this shipping crate posing as a raised garden bed on eBay:


Raised garden bed from eBay, here.

It was only $40 plus delivery which I thought was pretty good for 1 square metre's worth of garden-bed goodness! Whilst I was waiting for it to arrive I gathered some inspirational reading material:


Inspirational reading - The Little Veggie Patch Co & Animal, Vegetable Miracle

Since I am a complete noob when it comes to veggie gardening I've done a LOT of reading. The Little Veggie Patch Co book has been great, but I did a whole lot of googling as well. How to make a no dig garden, what I should plant, when I should plant it, what I shouldn't plant it next to and what I should. Etc etc etc. It was all a little overwhelming so I made myself a little chart and plotted out planting/harvest times and compatibilities for all the things I was interested in growing. Yes that's a bit nerdy but that's the way I roll. I found the Gardenate website (despite being rather hokey in design) quite useful in summarising all that info in an easy to digest format.

Once the garden bed arrived it was time for a visit to Ceres to get all the necessary ingredients for a no-dig garden.  It was rather epic trying to get all this stuff into the car. Due to poor planning I ended up with the cow manure sitting on the front passenger seat and a boot strewn with debris from my desperate attempts to wedge a straw bale into the back of a '91 Corolla.


No-dig garden ingredients - pea straw, lucerne hay, cow manure and compost

Making a no-dig garden is kind of like making a giant lasagne. There seem to be a bunch of different ways to do it but the basic principle involves layering up different kinds of organic material to whatever height you desire, and over time the layers decompose to form a nutrient rich soil.


My 1 square metre of no-dig garden goodness, ready to go!

This is the finished result; not particularly exciting yet! I let it settle for about a week and planted some seeds this evening. Fingers crossed something will pop up in the coming weeks! Proof will be in the pudding. Or lasagne, I guess.

In the meantime I've been satisfying my desire for home grown produce by 'borrowing' figs from a tree growing over the fence in our back laneway:


Neighbourhood figs in endless supply right now!

xx Lara.

4 comments:

Jenny said...

Hey, that looks great! The crate is just right!
I picked up a copy of One Magic Square, by Lolo Houbein, from the Garden of St Erth, the other Diggers Club property (highly recommend a visit - so peaceful and magical, in the middle of a forest). Haven't read it yet, but I have vague plans...
Look forward to seeing your garden grow :-)

patchworkoncentralpark said...

Those figs look delicious! Lucky You!
Good luck with the garden!

Rabbit and the Duck said...

Hi Lara,
Thank you for this inspiring post! I am about to start my veggie garden and have been feeling SO overwhelmed with all the info out there and what to do. I LOVE your idea of a little chart, I'm going to put one together for my garden. I can't wait to see how your garden grows : )
Shannon x

Unknown said...

Looks great. It is something i would love to make, but have no space....just some aromatic herbs in the kitchen :(
Hope to see how all grows