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!