On March 3rd 2010 we (Dan and now Amanda from VEG) moved into a new abode in Yarraville. The small-to-medium backyard was a mess of overgrown kikuyu grass concealing broken bottles and a lot of snails. But it got good fairly good sun, was very accessible from the kitchen, and already had a very healthy grapefruit tree in the middle. We like to grow as many of our vegies as we can, so we were keen to get some edible gardens in ASAP…
Step One: Planting Seeds (March 13)
We started by getting some seeds germinating so that when the gardens were ready we’d have something to plant in them. Given that colder weather was fast approaching, it was also important to get things in the ground so they could put some bulk on using the last of the summer warmth…
Amanda has these cool little pot makers which let you make small pots for seeds out of newspaper. When the seedling is ready to transplant, you just pop the pot and all into the garden. The newspaper fast breaks down and the seedling roots grow right through it – fantastic!
Step Two: The Front Vegie Patch (April 3 & 4)
As you can see, this area had a fence separating us from the garden…
The fence gone, we set about digging down through the rampant kikuyu grass where it met the path edges.
We then built the bed to a height of 60cm using untreated cypress pine which is naturally ground-durable and ethically sourced and milled from old farm windbreaks by a family-owned sawmill. It’s heavy but lovely to work with and smells great.
We put it in place on top of a sheet of black plastic. With this bed we were taking no chances with the kikuyu grass! On top of the plastic went a layer of bluestone for drainage and just to take up some space (vegies only need 30-40cm of good soil)
This was followed by a layer of geotextile fabric to allow water to drain out without soil falling down between the bluestone. We don’t usually use this unless we need to keep a drainage layer clean.
The next step was filling it with soil – we used the same premium garden blend mixed with mushroom compost we use for our customers – the best we’ve found in Melbourne.
Some different organic soil amendments were added to ensure plenty of nutrients and minerals for optimum growth and healthy, plants. Here Amanda’s applying blood and bone, which has a bit of everything in it and ample nitrogen. We will also add worm castings for good biology, dynamic lifter for a bit more nitrogen, then basalt rock dust and seasol for minerals.
And it was time for the fun bit – planting! We’ll add more pictures over the next few months as it grows. It is a small area (80cm x 2m) but will produce an amazing amount of salad greens and kitchen herbs – we’ll struggle to keep up with the lettuce, parsley and silverbeet.
Viola! Great to see that despite only being a few metres from the south side of the house it’s still getting mid-day sun. Grow lettuces grow!
Step Three: The Rear Vegie Patches (April 4 & 5)
Behold the rear garden area/kikuyu forest. Now the front garden was a great start, but we needed more. We needed a larger garden bed or three to grow larger quantities of cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli in winter and corn, tomatoes and eggplant in summer…
…we call these main crop beds and we started by borrowing a friend’s whipper snipper to level the area, then marked out some different possibilities and figured out which one we liked best.
Then we repeated the process of digging the grass out from along the path edges…
…before starting to sheet-mulch the whole area with cardboard (all plastic tape carefully removed) soaked in water first so it would mold to the shape of the land.
We went thick. Like at least three layers with 30cm overlaps…
We discovered more snails in the process – here Amanda’s eying one off.
We then formed up one bed to fit about half the area with room for a path down the middle. A bit more interesting than just two rectangles and nice to place your paths in the most intuitive and direct place. This bed is 40cm high. It’s directly south of our large grapefruit, so we’ll plant more shade tolerant plants in the northern half and those that like more sun in the southern half…
After going and fetching more cardboard and thickening the layers we started adding soil and some dead fig branches down the bottom. They’ll slowly break down and feed the soil…
We found this kitsch ornamental fountain/bird bath someone had thrown out in hard rubbish down the road so we though we’d pop it in the hard-to-reach centre of the bed. We propped it up with a few bluestones.
Once we leveled the bed there was a gap between the base of the bed and the ground at one end (because the original ground wasn’t quite level). This is a bonus as it allows a gap for water to exit. Here Dan’s sealing off the gap with a thin strip of geotextile fabric to stop the soil from spilling out the gap…
Along with amendments we added a good dose of water – a good idea even if you’re not planting straight away as it feeds the beneficial soil microbes who start cycling nutrients and forming the soil into micro then macro-aggregates and lots of other good stuff! (microorganisms are a permaculturist’s best friend).
A bit of detail work cutting the odd-angled corner pieces…
…add then some pine wood chips for the pathway…
…and the last of the soil into the new bed.
And there we have it – ready for planting! Amanda thinks the plaster Greek boys sticking out of the soil look like zombies coming back from the dead but I think they look just lovely…
We’ll keep adding a photo each month over the next year as the garden grows so stay tuned. Even though we’d thought through the dimensions it felt surprisingly large – we expect to be able to produce a good deal of fresh home-grown organic produce. I can hardly wait a few weeks before we can begin feasting! Hopefully this has shown that in a couple of days an unproductive backyard can be transformed into something that not only produces a good deal of food but looks and feels a lot better too (we did this in a fairly leisurely fashion over three days interspersed with Easter chocolate, a swim at Williamstown beach, and extremely frequent smoko breaks!).
