Covered beds

We haven't covered any of the raised beds before, but I decided this year to cover a couple of them and see if it make a difference to what we are able to grow, particularly capsicums. The price of capsicums over winter is crazy so I want to grow lots of my own this summer and then slice and freeze them, but we haven't had much luck with them turning red while growing out in the open. I hope the greenhouse effect will help with that, as the green ones aren't as sweet.

More beds built

Even though it was almost too hot to work yesterday (I put on SPF30 before heading out the door, but forgot about my back and now have a sunburnt strip just above the waistband of my shorts - ouch), my husband and I got out there in the garden and finally finished levelling it. Today we got two more raised beds made and filled. That brings the total plantable area of our vegetable garden to 16 square metres, which should be plenty for two people. And that's not counting all the tubs of tomatoes and peppers, the fruit trees dotted around our whole property, or the plastic bags with potatoes growing in them.

Here's how things look today:

 

I know you can't see all the beds properly, so here's the layout that I use in my Excel spreadsheet. Yes, I am project-managing my garden using Excel. And no, I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Just as a reminder of how far we've come, here is how the garden looked in August 2008:

Here's how it looked in September 2008, after a hard day's work and vast amounts of help from our friends Fi and Rich:

And here's how it looked a year ago, as we attempted a traditional garden:

I can't help but be pleased with the order we imposed on the jungle that was there originally, and how much easier gardening is this year compared to the row-style gardening we were doing a year ago. Okay, so it's been a lot of work setting up all the raised beds, and not particularly cheap either, but now that we have that done we should be good to go for the next few years with only the addition of compost to keep the beds fertile. No more muddy feet, as we now have lovely paths between the beds, and no weeding to speak of either.

As far as results go, it's a bit early to judge for most things but I can tell you that the strawberries are doing very well indeed. We gather a couple of handfuls every day at the moment, and everyone who's tasted them has commented on how they "taste like proper strawberries!" compared to the bland watery supermarket offerings. Next year I'll be doing two square metres of strawberry plants rather than just one.

Garden bed layout

It occurred to me that I haven't updated the layout of the garden beds since we finished constructing them. Here's how it's laid out now:


The pale green beds are mine and the blue ones are my husband's to lay out as he chooses (although I have earmarked three of his squares for my tomatoes). He isn't as committed to the Square Foot Garden way as I am, although he's happy to go along with it for as long as it's working.

There is a tall fence along the right-hand side, and a low picket fence along the bottom. We have set up trellises on the fence edges of the bottom two beds (Beds 1 and 4), and on the bottom edge of Bed 5, to support tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans. These trellises are north-east facing so they get plenty of sunshine.

The pink square at the top right is currently just a weed patch. I hope to plant some bee-attracting flowers over there to keep the fuzzy little pollinators in our garden. We already have a family of bumble bees living in the compost heap but it's good to encourage all kinds of honey bees as well. They are always welcome in our garden (unlike wasps, which seem utterly pointless as well as nasty).

There's also a tall fence along the top edge of the layout, which casts quite a lot of shadow over the garden. I'm hoping that our potatoes thrive in their bags with a nice mixture of shade and sunshine, but if they don't do well then we'll carry them to some more suitable location.

Here's roughly what's in, or planned for, each bed:
Bed 1 - tomatoes, basil, various lettuce types, marigolds
Bed 2 - garlic, leeks, onions, strawberries
Bed 3 - not sure what is planned for this one. Right now it has broccoli and spinach.
Bed 4 - not sure what is planned for this one. Right now it has broccoli, marigolds, and some dead broad beans (the frost got them). I'm swiping three squares for tomatoes, and will plant some butter beans to replace the dead ones.
Bed 5 - not sure what is planned for this one. It has some carrots that are hopefully coming up (this bed has straw and chicken compost in it, and we fear that a lot of the little seedlings are actually weeds that were imported with the compost) and there will be cucumbers planted against the trellis.
Bed 6 - sweetcorn, pole beans, lettuce, raspberries

As well as the raised beds, we'll have lots of tubs with tomatoes and peppers, a row of Roma tomatoes against the edge of the back lawn, and a tub of herbs. We have loads of rosemary already, planted last year and still thriving, and some coriander, so I'll add a couple of others like thyme and parsley. It's always good to have fresh herbs.

Making the most of a sunny day

We've had some mixed weather recently, with a very cold snap and a lot of rain, so I haven't been out in the garden much. However, today was a beautiful warm sunny day so we took advantage of that and got some work done.

I've finally planted out the potatoes into their plastic bags. This is the first time we've tried this technique, but if it works then harvesting the potatoes will be very easy indeed. I forgot to take a photo of them when I was outside earlier, but right now they just look like a row of plastic bags full of compost - not very exciting really!


The strawberries are coming along quite nicely, and I can see the beginnings of berries on a few of them. These will have to stay covered up with wire netting to keep the birds off.



The silverbeet is thriving, as is Skry's broccoli. I don't know what he's going to do with it all if every plant is ready to eat at the same time! And I've got plenty of lettuce on the go and have been eating that regularly. It's so easy just to go out into the garden with a bowl and a pair of scissors and snip off all the leaves I need for that meal.


You can see that we haven't finished landscaping the garden yet. There is one corner which is still thick with weeds, and we haven't done anything about covering the weed matting. The irrigation system hasn't been finished either, but at least we've made a start on it. Hopefully we'll get the whole thing sorted out before Christmas and it'll all be fairly easy from then on.

I've got to say that Square Foot Gardening seems to be a real labour-saving technique. The only tools that I need are a trowel and a pair of scissors. I've pulled a few weed seedlings from the raised beds from time to time, but way fewer than we pulled from the ground last year. They're also easier to pull out because the soil is so loose, and of course it's easier to spot them early because I know exactly where I should find plants in each square of the grid. If something is not where my spreadsheet says it should be, out it comes!

Germinating like crazy

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but that does not indicate a lack of progress. The weather isn't settled enough to plant much outside yet, but in the conservatory I have many little seeds germinating quite happily. Here's what I have growing indoors:

• tomatoes (Better Boy, Early Girl, Green Zebra, Moneymaker)
• peppers (California Wonder, Yellow Banana, Purple Beauty, Chocolate Beauty)
• sweetcorn
• lettuce
• cucumber
• and a variety of flowers, including gilia, cornflower, larkspur, swan plants, and many others that I've currently forgotten.

There are seed potatoes waiting for the current wet weather to pass before I plant them in bags outside:

• Purple Heart
• Ilam Hardy
• Red Rascal
• Agria
  

Planted outside are some slightly hardier crops:

• red onions
• leeks
• spring onions
• radishes
• lettuce
• strawberries
• raspberries
• broccoli
• spinach
• silverbeet

Those last two belong to my husband, who has his own beds to look after this year. I am taking the very organised pre-planned approach, and he's taking the approach of, "Plant what seems like a good idea at the time, wherever it fits," so it'll be interesting to see which of us produces better food!

I also spent about $80 setting out the start of our irrigation system. It'll cost us maybe the same again to finish it, but that should make things a lot easier for us this summer. The system won't cover all the plants but it'll cover the raised beds and leave the neighbours with a lot less to water for us if we go away for a weekend here and there!

Of course, not all the vegetables will fit in the raised beds, not by a long shot. I'm going to need at least eight tubs for some of the tomatoes and all the peppers. We had no luck with peppers last year because it wasn't quite warm enough for them, so I'm going to keep those in the conservatory and see if that improves things. Just need to find the space for them first!

It's starting to come together

A couple of weeks ago we managed to acquire 46 concrete pavers on TradeMe, for the total price of $200 (which was a great bargain - most of them are seconds, but that hardly matters in a veggie garden). They're going to make a lovely path between the raised beds.


They're not in their final location just yet, because the ground needs to be levelled a bit in places and then the gaps will be filled with stones and pebbles (I would prefer bark, but I lost that battle) to finish it off. Right now the pavers are just holding the weed mat in place, because it can get very windy at times.

My husband built some more raised beds for me, and I have been gradually buying material to fill them with. It's a real nuisance lugging heavy bags of compost and peat moss from the shops every time we go out, but I'm getting there slowly. The purchase of a small trolley last weekend has made things a lot easier!

A friend donated three raspberry canes to our cause and those are now in situ against the tall fence (they're not really visible in the photo, but they're there alright). This fence gets plenty of sun but also shade in the morning, so I'm hoping the raspberries will enjoy their location. My friend already gave us raspberry canes a few months ago but they were mistreated, overgrown by weeds, and ultimately met their demise, so I have promised to do better with these ones!

Another bed laid out

Baby steps, but I'm getting there - I pulled up loads more weeds today, raked the ground level, and assembled another raised bed. We have nothing to fill it, but at least it's in the right spot now!


This bed is one that we bought pre-sawn and ready to assemble. It cost $129, which probably wasn't worth it compared to how cheaply we bought the materials for the other two (I think they cost something like $20 for the wood and $5 for the screws), but it certainly was very easy to slot together. It's going to take a lot of material to fill, though, and I can't see me being able or willing to buy enough individual bags of compost and peat to do the job. I think we need to find a bulk supplier somewhere...

Making a start on the veggie beds

I made a real start on the back garden veggie beds today. It's still only early August, but the weather has been just glorious, warm and sunny, so it's perfect for gardening.


We only had a few bags of compost to hand so I just filled one bed with Mel's Mix and the other one is still empty. The 2m x 1m bed took three 40 litre bags of compost, half a big bag of peat, and half a bag of vermiculite to fill nearly to the top, and I've still got to top it up to the brim once I buy more supplies. It was hard work lugging all the bags around, but at least I only need to do it once for each bed! After that they'll just need topped up with a little compost every time new plants go in there, which should be easy to manage.

The rest of the garden still looks a mess, but already we can see how fantastic it's going to look when it's all done up properly. We've got another three beds planned for this area, and some free space in the back corner that might be used for an asparagus bed. Haven't quite decided yet.

Finished the flower bed

I finished the flower bed today, with the addition of a bag of pig compost and a grid layout made with garden twine. I think it looks great! And the soil is just so gorgeous, light and nutritious.




Well, I say "finished", but there is one more thing to do and that is to tack a chicken wire fence around the edge. With three of our own chickens plus countless neighbourhood cats looking for a litter box, I think that soil will be just too tempting. But for the moment there is nothing growing in that bed, and there won't be for a few weeks, so I've put down a temporary barrier of left-over fencing. It should flummox the cats, anyway!

Our first raised bed

Here's the first raised bed. It's made with fence palings screwed together, about six inches high, four feet deep, and five feet wide (approximate measurements), and filled with compost, peat moss, and vermiculite. Underneath the soil mix is a layer of weed mat to keep the grass and weeds at bay. Hope it works!

This bed is destined for flowers, which is why it's in the front garden rather than the veggie garden. It's in the gap between the chicken run and the garage. After being in the house nearly a year, I think there's nothing much going to come up in that area that I'll miss. The only thing apart from grass that grows there is a whole lot of Solomon's Seal, which I don't particularly like anyway. It'll be interesting to see if the weed mat can keep that particular plant at bay - the roots seem to be all over the place under the grass.

The bed needs to be topped up with compost and have a grid made on it (with string or wood laths or whatever else comes to hand), and then I'll be ready to start planting things out as soon as the weather warms up enough. Oh, and I need to wrap some chicken wire around it to keep our three little birds on the outside rather than scratching up the inside!

How many beds?

How many raised beds should we have? Our back garden is fairly spacious, maybe 7 metres wide by six metres deep, with a 1 x 4m chunk taken out of it for the compost pile. We also have a large front garden with a lot of bed space, but the beds are fairly irregular and have trees and shrubs here and there, so I don't think that will work for large containers. Having said that, there is one patch of bare grass beside the chicken coop which would fit a 2m x 1m bed and allow plenty of sunlight at the plants.

This is the layout that I'm currently considering for the back garden. Each 2m x 1m bed will be divided up into nine 33cm squares, allowing for 18 different plantings per bed.

The bottom edges of beds 2, 3, and 5 will have trellises to support tall plants (most likely tomatoes) and allow them to get sunlight without shading the rest of the bed.

Beds 1 and 4 will be partially shaded for most of the day, because of the tall fence and trees which belong to our neighbour. I expect we can put something like lettuces in there and protect them from the worst heat of the summer.

How to build our containers?

There is a garden centre down the street from us selling lovely pre-made wooden containers, two metres long and one metre deep, and about 50cm high. They come apart for storage and easily slot together once the garden is ready for them. They cost $129 each, but for the convenience and neat appearance I think we should get a couple. My husband thinks we can make our own but I think they'll just end up looking slightly crap (like the "compost heap" I can see through the window right now, which is a pile of dead leaves surrounded by decrepit pallets and rotting sections of picket fence). I'd much rather pay for something that looks like a professional put it together!

Having said that, Mel's book says that for all but the long root vegetables a six inch depth of soil is all that's required, so those pre-made containers are deeper than we need for most of the garden. Mitre10 sell fence palings for $5 each which could easily be nailed together to make a low container, but they're also treated and I don't know what they've been treated with. It wouldn't be good to have chemicals leaching into the soil, then into the vegetables, then into our mouths. I've emailed Mitre10 to ask them how the wood is treated, so we'll wait and see what (if anything) they come back with.