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.

Planning ahead

Here in New Zealand it is the middle of winter, which makes it difficult for me to actually do any gardening, but I sure can dream.

A few days ago I purchased a copy of Mel Bartholomew's book, Square Foot Gardening. This is THE reference book for those who are interested in the square foot approach, since Mel was the man who invented it (or at least polished and packaged it into something anybody can follow). Having taken note of the recipe for the soil he recommends for filling the containers (one third vermiculite, one third peat moss, one third compost), I set out to find some suppliers. The only place that I could find nearby selling vermiculite had it at $69 per 100 litre bag. Ouch! Luckily I managed to track down a supplier just outside town, Egmont Commercial, who will also sell to the public. Their 100 litre bags of vermiculite worked out at about $33 each, which is considerably cheaper. I also picked up a large bale of peat moss (about $27 for 150l) and a roll of weed mat.

The garden is far too wet and cold to start building any container beds yet, but I can gradually buy everything I need and then we'll be ready to go in a couple of months.

Welcome to Grid Gardening

So here's the thing. I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and I want to try Square Foot Gardening, but we use the metric system here. No square feet for me! But I'm going to use the same concepts anyway and just convert my grid to slightly different measurements :)

The concepts of Square Foot Gardening are simple:

• build above-ground containers
• fill them with a special soil mix
• create a grid on top, breaking each container into one-foot-square mini plots
• fill each mini plot with as many plants as it can support

Sounds simple, doesn't it?