All about how to build a raised garden bed for veggies and the like. Or at least my experience of it. I managed to acquire the small garden bed which looks like it's made from rainwater tank offcuts above from the local markets back in early June.
Lined with thick cardboard and then a layer of weed matting. Then I threw in two bags of Cypress mulch. It's a thick foundation to absorb the nutrients that will leach through from above.
After that, a layer of dirt, palm fronds and more dirt, which should be slightly springy due to the palm fronds creating pockets of air in the bed which is apparently good for the microbes.
And a layer of compost and potting mix.
And then finally a layer of sugar cane mulch. Where the bed was installed, there was an existing line running from the irrigation system connected to our rainwater tank. More on that in a future post, but suffice to say it was easy to attach some sprayer emitters so the bed can get watered.
The area of the garden where the bed is located doesn't get full sun, otherwise I would've been more adventurous with the choice of vegetables to plant. But as it gets some partial sun and some shade, it's good enough to grow herbs and some leafy greens. In here, we've put Thyme, Spinach, Rocket, Cos Lettuce, Mignonette Lettuce and Shallots. I was impatient after building the bed so I got the seedlings from a local gardening store. It's easy enough to grow some things from seed, and cheaper, and you'd probably end up with more seedlings than you know what to do with, but it does take time.
The idea of layering the garden bed into a so-called "lasagne" bed came from a segment on ABC's Gardening Australia by Leonie Norrington earlier this year (except she was doing it on a bigger scale in Darwin), so I should probably reference that as an inspiration here.
In part 2, I'll post the progress since we started in June.
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