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 !