You Have To Start Somewhere.

Garden as though you will live FOREVER!                            – William Kent

This is the very start of my project! Currently it is an unwatered, unused and unloved area of the garden. I already have a veggie patch but it gets a bit too much winter shade and annuals are a little slow so I looked for a new spot.

The area I have chosen is an old tennis court so by nature it is a very hard surface of red sandy soil which will need a bit of TLC to get plants growing. With this in mind and limited handy man skills and resources I have decided to use no-dig garden beds. I have chooks, 1 horse and 1 poddy calf so I will use their manure and locally sourced hay to build the layers of my garden.

As you can see I have big plans for this area and as it is approximately 34m x 14m I am not going to tackle it all at once. I have cut the plan into three parts and aim to have the 1st section done and planted over the next month.

Now I have the plans marked out for my new no-dig beds I will start with a layer of newspaper. Not only is this an easy blue print to follow and alter but it will help to suppress the grass as it is going to be tough to stop it from creeping into my beds.

Next is the layer of lawn clippings. I have to dust off the push mover to collect some lawn clippings and layer that onto of the newspaper. This green layer will bring much needed nitrate to the bed as it breaks down. This is followed by a layer of lucern hay which is a legume so also good source of nutrients.

Now its time for the animals to pay their rent! I have the luxury of a box trailer and over the next week or so I will be busy raking and shovelling up the brown gold and layering this with barley straw until I get a good height on my beds. In my area there is a lot of barley straw that I can source from farmers, it works well as the bales I want are the old weather damaged ones that no one else wants! The downside to using this product is that is does still tend to have viable seed, so just be prepared to do a little weeding; but that too can be used as mulch!

The last two layer are compost and then a final layer of straw. I will be using the dirt out of the cattle yards as my compost. It is aged dirt that has high organic matter and nutrients as a result of cattle being feed in the yards in years gone by.

Now… actions speak louder than words so I am off to start the manual work and will be updating the blog at the end of the month!

Happy gardening!