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.