Garden Kitchen construction update.

Some serious work was done last weekend - materials were gathered and volunteers hooked in to get the base of the pizza oven filled and our crazy recycled cement paving put in place around our oven base and poles and levels set ready to fill in to make the kitchen floor. Thanks to Andrew for taking charge and directing all the crew.

There is plenty more to do so we will be there this weekend if anyone wants to come along and help.

The raised bed experiment.................

Inspired by our community garden and a book called "One Magic Square"  by Lolo Houbein. I decided to build a 1 meter square vegi garden in my back yard and see just how much it could produce.

 This solved a few problems 1 while I have been doing lots of vegi gardening at the community garden I wasn't actually doing it in my own back yard...this was because of a few reasons. My wife likes a nice neat garden and vegi patches often don't fit that description, I have dog that always seems to find the vegi patch more of a lounge room e.g. a place to lay in the sun on top of nice soft soil, and I have chickens that I regularly get let out to free rang the back yard.

30/6/2011

So my solution was to make a small neat but productive vegi patch that would be in a handy spot, in full sun away from the neighbours tree roots that sucked the life out my previous vegi patches and up a bit higher to make it easy to get to for me... but harder for the dog & chickens to get to.

So after investigating various materials I decided to go for a raised bed build from recycled hard wood which I simply sanded with a grinder fitted with a flap disk to quickly smooth the surface off and removed any sharp splintery bits and it gave the wood a nice look.

I didn't bother treating the wood figuring that as its hard wood it will probably last longer than my need for this particular structure.

I simply cut to size and drilled and bolted it all together (that way I can take it apart if needed) basically a wooden box sitting on the grass.

I used heavy uprights posts in the corners letting them stand higher so I could use them as a frame to throw shade cloth or plastic to protect the seedling or make an instant mini green house.

I also added a flat edge at the top as place to sit on or put your tools etc on while tending the vegies.

Once constructed I used the usual no did method to fill up the 1 meter square box and pocket planted straight into some hand fulls of compost. so stay tuned .....

My chickens happily free ranging - they haven't noticed the vegi patch yet as its out of there view.

So far so good the vegies are going good & no weeds or pests !