Before we moved in there was a half-hearted attempt at a raised garden in the bottom corner of the garden that got not much sun at all year round. i should have taken a phone before i pulled all the tall weeds out, needless to say it didn’t inspire anyone to plant anything. it was 2.4m by 1.5m with double sleepers at the front.
The 1.5m out meant it was right under the edge/swing of the clothes line so growing anything tall-ish was out of the question , so i knocked it back to 1m and took the top soil into the garden.
I then moved that spare sleeper up so to make another 2.4m section.
on hand i have about 50ltrs of my compost, 10ltrs of compost from the house gutters and @ 40ltrs of clay.
So i’m going to devide the gardens up into 3 + 3 and plant specific to the amount of sun they will get.
at the fence line you see here there’s vertically none, at the top of the new extension there will be almost full sun.
so left to right i’ll have bed 1,2,3,4,5,6
the top soil is also full of rocks so i found out that lettuce, kale and cabbage all like just a little top soild then a clay base, they are short rooted so they like the stability.
so bed 1 will be “climbing” cucumbers and tomatoes, bed 2 , “climbing” zucchini and cherry tomatoes, bed 3 is the clay and also as i find rocks i throw them into that bed, this will be lettuce, kale , green cabbage and pumpkin set to grow over the bed into the garden
bed 4,5,6 now loosing some sun i’ve yet to decide.
below is before and after , then the 6 beds
i laid the wood last, its actually 3 layers of wood, scrap wood underneath to build it up to soil level then a few good pieces on top, just enough to walk down to tend and pick the plants.
So all up between the greenhouse and the outdoor i can have a really good play at trying to grow something, i have never really had much success before , EVER, so here’s hoping.
i made the beds by digging out the soil of bed 6 into bed 5 and putting the compost and gutter donw the putting the soil back, then bed totally into bed 6, and same for compost in bed 5, bed 4 into bed 5, half of 6 into 4, skip bed 3, bed 2 into 1, bed 1 into 2, half bed 2 back to 1.
for bed 3 i had already dug the topsoil out into bed 4, so i laid down the clay, compost and then some topsoil from bed 4 into 3. lettuce etc still like top soil, just not as deep as tomatoes.
I then just evened all the beds out.
so i planted today, birds have always been an issue so i cut the bottom off drink bottle so the seedlings have some protection, also its still down to 8 degrees C here so it does help retain some heat longer for the plant.
a minute after i planted and protected a bird showed up !! to have a look.
