Thursday, November 18, 2010

Building a No Dig Garden - In Stages

 We had been given some old timber and we had an area of dead grass and we want to keep expanding our productive area and so decided it was time for another garden. We laid the timber out to work out the best location and once that was worked out the timber was trimmed.
We needed to leave enough room for a path to the compost bin and gas meter and so decided on a garden  size that would be about 3 square metres.
 After being bolted together the frame was placed back on the grass, and then sections of grass were dug out to make it level.
 We then scraped off the top few centimeters of grass and put down newspaper, this time also putting it under the timber frame to try and block the grass growing through. We then watered the paper and placed a layer of sandy soil which needed to be removed next to the rainwater tank.This too was watered.



Then we put on a layer of compost, complete with worms and watered that in, and finally a layer of sheep manure which was given a final soak. We will let it settle for a few days before planting anything.

Here is the finished product, we are really pleased to have used recycled and mostly home produced products to get this garden established, Now we will have the fun of choosing what to plant in there.

5 comments:

  1. Great garden bed. Any idea what you are going to grow?

    Gav

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  2. I tried this, but the ground must be too hard as the plants did not form roots deeper than the soil/compost I place on top. In the beds where I had double dug, used rotted manure and compost, I had three times the yield.

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  3. Looks great!
    A good barrow full of organic matter helps below soil level and a thick mulch on top after rain will lock in moisture and stimulate worm activity.
    Go for it!
    Rob

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  4. Thanks for your comments, I have been reading your inspiring blogs for a while now, so thanks for all your hard work! We did have lots of organic matter in the compost layer that we put in, and we will be mulching today, these do make such a difference. We will be planting Strawberries, Chives, Leeks and Japanese Turnips.

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  5. We are on sandy soil here as we are very close to the coast. My guess would be that the harder your soil the deeper the layers need to be and perhaps you may need to wait longer before using the garden.

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