New Raised Bed Gardens

We have now removed a lot more pavers and replaced them with mulch and here are two more raised bed, no - dig gardens that have been built with the pavers. We have used the cuttings from the garden and the out of date fruit and vegetables given to us  along with the free mulch from Mulchnet to build the layers in these beds. As it is really hot at the moment we will wait until the weather cools down to plant anything.

Extending Raised Beds

 The two raised beds that we built out of recycled cement slabs have been so successful that we decided to extend them. The first step was to lift up the next four slabs to make the walls.



These beds show the amount of soil that we have created using waste materials such as grass clippings, newspaper, egg cartons, vegetable scraps and clippings, newspaper, and coffee grounds.  The bottom layer is the original sandy soil and the dark layer is the soil that we have created which is full of worms.



Once the slabs had been lifted into place we placed cardboard and paper on the bottom and then tree clippings and then filled the bed with mulch. We then transplanted the coffee plant that has been struggling along with some kale and planted them in a small amount of mushroom compost. The final step will be to extend the drip irrigation system to include the extension.



Here are the two raised beds, both extended and filled with mulch, we are pleased with the result.  Doing this saved double handling the mulch as this mulch was part of the final remains of the 18 cubic metres of mulch that was dropped off last week and needed to be moved off the driveway.

New Raised No Dig Garden - Completed

I think I may have over-planted this garden in my enthusiasm to get it started! We moved the frame that we collected off the verge last week into the garden so that we can use it as a frame for the peas and beans that I planted. Also planted, squash, lettuce, capsicum and coriander. I guess it is one way of finding out which plants will like this spot.

 I also added compost and mulch before planting and then watered them in.I needed to use some of the old mulch from the front and was really pleased to see how many worms there were in it and how much the chips had broken down into soil. That does demonstrate that for it to work well it needs to be deep, which is not the case everywhere in the garden as yet.

New Raised No - Dig Garden - Stage One

Here is the great compost that we were able to use in our new garden bed  as one of the layers. If you look closely you can see that it is full of worms so this will really help with the breakdown of all the layers that we have placed in the new bed and turn it into wonderful soil for the plants.

Here you can see the layer of leaves that we collected from around the garden, underneath that we had layers of twigs and branches. The boxes on top are filled with newspapers collected from a neighbour and they are being soaked in water from the rainwater tank. once they were soaked through we tore them into strips and made them into the next layer, along with soaked egg cartons that I collect from a local canteen.

 

There is no existing soil underneath the large concrete slabs that we have lifted up to make the walls of this new garden, it is just sand.  By reusing these as a wall we hope to create a garden at a good height and replace an area that was not used very effectively with an easy access kitchen garden.

 

  

 This area was just being used to keep a table and the growth of so many weeds alerted us to the fact that since we had removed the old roof there was sufficient light to grow other plants. The kitchen window is to the right so it will be a really close garden. we will still put the shade sail up in summer as the are can get hot, but hope to be able to grow lettuces etc as in summer they usually bolt to seed in the heat.

 

We used all sorts of items for layers including weeds, twigs, paper, cardboard, coffee grounds, compost, newspapers and grass clippings. The next step is to get some manure, mulch and annual planst as we expect it to drop as it transforms into soil.