Preparation
I've been meaning to tell you how that second garden bed is coming along. The nice one meters by three on the sunny side of the granny flat. When last I mentioned it, I had got all the weeds out and added my soil ammendments (that's a fancy word for stuff you add to dirt to make it better dirt for growing plants). That was over a month ago.
I may as well tell you my basic steps for preparing an established garden bed. First is weeding, of course, followed by aerating the soil. These are interlinked tasks; if I have some deep rooted weeds or veggies to dig up, aeration happens at the same time. Otherwise it involes sticking the spade into the soil at regular intervals and giving it a big wiggle back and forth. This opens up pockets for air and soil ammendments to flow into.
Next I add compost, about one bag per square meter. Then I and a handfull of Dynamic Lifter - it's an organic fertiliser consisting of blood and bone, chicken manure, and seeweed. I may add lime, a powdered mineral that corrects acidic soil, raising the soil pH. Whether I do this depends a bit on the soil and the veggies. Some veggies like a slightly acidic or slightly basic soil. Also the clay soil of our region tends to be acidic. If I'm workong on improving clay-heavy soil I'll probably add some lime. Next I give the whole thing a good watering, and that's usually it for soil ammendments.
The next phase is the mulch. Please, do not forget the mulch! It does three important tasks for you in the garden. First, it reduces water evaporation, so you don't have to water as often. I mulch deeply where the sun is strongest; it saves me time and keeps my plants hydrated. Second, it feeds your soil. Mulch is a temporary thing. An ideal mulch in an annual veggie bed takes between six months and a year to break down, as soil microbes, earthworms, and other garden friends turn it into beautiful, rich soil. Third, it helps with weeds. It both supresses weeds and makes it easier to pull them up when they inevitably fight their way through the mulch.
The last step is a weird one, and not commonly done. I lay down chicken wire over top of everything. I cut it to fit with metal scissors and pin it down with weedcloth staples. This is exactly as much trouble as it sounds. But it's the only thing I've found that keeps the cats from pooping in my garden beds. And since one of "the cats" in question is my very own, I don't see this changing any time soon. So I have adapted.
There are a million ways to prepare a garden bed. This is just what's working for me at the moment. So much of it is down climate, soil type, and what materials are available. Not to mention overall gardening apporach, and the gardener's particular preferences. My aim is a mostly organic garden, with permaculture tendencies. Organic and permaculture principles are things I am reaching for, not things I even come close to practice perfectly. For instance, I don't buy organic compost because its so much more expensive. I hope to build up my home composting systems over time, but right now I don't produce nearly enough. Permaculture principles are something I still have a lot to learn about. But I draw inspiration from it where I can. I hope to every year move my gardening further in that direction.
This is what the garden bed looked like when I was done with all those steps:
With this particular bed, I started with my default apporach for soil ammendments, but found such hard clay soil that I gave it a little extra. I doubled the compost and added in generous handfulls of sheep pellets. One of the things I went back and forth on was whether to compromise my no-dig approach in an effort to get organic material into the clay sooner. The trade off being that digging up or tilling the soil damages the natural soil ecology - the fungal networks, and all the microbes and insect friends that are such powerful soil improvers when left along to do their thing. On the other hand the soil ecology I was starting off with was rather poor; I decided on a one-off digging approach. I dug in my soil ammendments to the depth of my spade, breaking up the compacted soil.
Those wooden boards are something new I'm trying. This bed is one meter wide, which is normally ideal for a raised bed; everything is within reach from one side or the other. The problem is, I can barely squeeze into the space between the wall and the garden bed, and once I've got plants stretching out in there, it's only going to get worse. I'm planning a trellis for the back side of that bed, and I don't see any way to harvest peas without climing onto the bed itself from time to time.
Stepping directly on the bed is something to avoid; it compacts the soil and plant roots don't like that. And so I made myself two tiny garden paths, enough to step on and reach every inch of my garden. Yes, I resent the space they take up in the already small garden bed, but I know they are going to make things easier for me later on. In fact I've already used them to make planting out seedlings far easier.
In this photo you can see I've already planted out two little sunflower seedlings, and one butternut squash. Off to the left of the sunflower seedlings is the wildnerness: the leg of this raised bed that I haven't dealth with yet. Pushed up against the cultivated area are volunteer silverbeet and parsley (which are currently being left to go to seed), a citronella, and a massive rose bush. You can also seee some of those sweet little forget-me-nots bending their flower stalks over to drop seeds in the garden bed. They attract beneficial insects, so I'm happy to let them self seed where they will.
This garden bed has progressed a good deal since the above picture; oh yes! More on that next time.
I may as well tell you my basic steps for preparing an established garden bed. First is weeding, of course, followed by aerating the soil. These are interlinked tasks; if I have some deep rooted weeds or veggies to dig up, aeration happens at the same time. Otherwise it involes sticking the spade into the soil at regular intervals and giving it a big wiggle back and forth. This opens up pockets for air and soil ammendments to flow into.
Next I add compost, about one bag per square meter. Then I and a handfull of Dynamic Lifter - it's an organic fertiliser consisting of blood and bone, chicken manure, and seeweed. I may add lime, a powdered mineral that corrects acidic soil, raising the soil pH. Whether I do this depends a bit on the soil and the veggies. Some veggies like a slightly acidic or slightly basic soil. Also the clay soil of our region tends to be acidic. If I'm workong on improving clay-heavy soil I'll probably add some lime. Next I give the whole thing a good watering, and that's usually it for soil ammendments.
The next phase is the mulch. Please, do not forget the mulch! It does three important tasks for you in the garden. First, it reduces water evaporation, so you don't have to water as often. I mulch deeply where the sun is strongest; it saves me time and keeps my plants hydrated. Second, it feeds your soil. Mulch is a temporary thing. An ideal mulch in an annual veggie bed takes between six months and a year to break down, as soil microbes, earthworms, and other garden friends turn it into beautiful, rich soil. Third, it helps with weeds. It both supresses weeds and makes it easier to pull them up when they inevitably fight their way through the mulch.
The last step is a weird one, and not commonly done. I lay down chicken wire over top of everything. I cut it to fit with metal scissors and pin it down with weedcloth staples. This is exactly as much trouble as it sounds. But it's the only thing I've found that keeps the cats from pooping in my garden beds. And since one of "the cats" in question is my very own, I don't see this changing any time soon. So I have adapted.
There are a million ways to prepare a garden bed. This is just what's working for me at the moment. So much of it is down climate, soil type, and what materials are available. Not to mention overall gardening apporach, and the gardener's particular preferences. My aim is a mostly organic garden, with permaculture tendencies. Organic and permaculture principles are things I am reaching for, not things I even come close to practice perfectly. For instance, I don't buy organic compost because its so much more expensive. I hope to build up my home composting systems over time, but right now I don't produce nearly enough. Permaculture principles are something I still have a lot to learn about. But I draw inspiration from it where I can. I hope to every year move my gardening further in that direction.
This is what the garden bed looked like when I was done with all those steps:
With this particular bed, I started with my default apporach for soil ammendments, but found such hard clay soil that I gave it a little extra. I doubled the compost and added in generous handfulls of sheep pellets. One of the things I went back and forth on was whether to compromise my no-dig approach in an effort to get organic material into the clay sooner. The trade off being that digging up or tilling the soil damages the natural soil ecology - the fungal networks, and all the microbes and insect friends that are such powerful soil improvers when left along to do their thing. On the other hand the soil ecology I was starting off with was rather poor; I decided on a one-off digging approach. I dug in my soil ammendments to the depth of my spade, breaking up the compacted soil.
Those wooden boards are something new I'm trying. This bed is one meter wide, which is normally ideal for a raised bed; everything is within reach from one side or the other. The problem is, I can barely squeeze into the space between the wall and the garden bed, and once I've got plants stretching out in there, it's only going to get worse. I'm planning a trellis for the back side of that bed, and I don't see any way to harvest peas without climing onto the bed itself from time to time.
Stepping directly on the bed is something to avoid; it compacts the soil and plant roots don't like that. And so I made myself two tiny garden paths, enough to step on and reach every inch of my garden. Yes, I resent the space they take up in the already small garden bed, but I know they are going to make things easier for me later on. In fact I've already used them to make planting out seedlings far easier.
In this photo you can see I've already planted out two little sunflower seedlings, and one butternut squash. Off to the left of the sunflower seedlings is the wildnerness: the leg of this raised bed that I haven't dealth with yet. Pushed up against the cultivated area are volunteer silverbeet and parsley (which are currently being left to go to seed), a citronella, and a massive rose bush. You can also seee some of those sweet little forget-me-nots bending their flower stalks over to drop seeds in the garden bed. They attract beneficial insects, so I'm happy to let them self seed where they will.
This garden bed has progressed a good deal since the above picture; oh yes! More on that next time.
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