Raised Bed Gardening

You made your bed, now lay in it.

So we're fortunate enough to have a fully fenced backyard. However, it is rather boring and empty. I wanted to fill the entire backyard with raised beds, but Shannon wants a nice lawn. After reminding Shannon of her place in the patriarchal dominance hierarchy, I agreed not to build raised beds everywhere, but was allowed to build them along the fence, which I have agreed to do.

So the first one I built was at the back of the kitchen window. There were a couple of pesky shrubs there so I dug them up.

Then I built a rock wall and layed cardboard over the weeds. Then Shannon and I filled the bed with some sandy soil that was left in a pile beside the house.

I then topped it up with compost and put a few bricks in there till I could get hold of some pavers. There is a tap on the wall so I'm going to screw a bracket into the fence near the footpath to hold a garden hose and hook it up to the tap.

The final step was covering the compost in some hay that I got from a neighbor down the street. I have access to an unlimited supply of horse manure as well, so that comes in really handy. The hay has grass seed in it so I will have to pull a few weeds every now and again, but it will serve as a good moisture retention layer for the bed, and eventually break down and improve the soil profile. It looks rather messy in this photo but it has since shrunk down to be nice and flat. 

I then moved onto the boundary beds. I remembered that I had a few sheets of corrugated iron stored in the back of the hay shed. I took the ute down the back, hooked a wire through the sheets and connected it to the tow bar and dragged it 300m back to the house. I'm so glad I bought a 4x4. It may be a beat up old POS but that 4x4 capability is priceless. 

Once I dragged the sheets into the yard, I cut them up with my new Ozito Angle Grinder. I'm honestly not that impressed with the battery life whilst using this tool, but in saying that, I don't own another angle grinder to compare it to. I cut about 1.5 sheets before the battery ran flat. The sheets are about 5m long. It certainly pays to buy good quality cutting discs. I got twice the cutting duration out of the good quality Makita discs as i did the cheap no name brand.

I then belted in the Star Pickets, or Waratah's, as our special New Zealand brethren call them. The spacing of the bed is 70cm. Just enough to reach the furthest side without throwing a disc. 

To finish the beds, I drilled through the Star Pickets and Teck Screwed the iron onto them with the Ozito Impact Driver (which performed flawlessly). I then half filled the first bed with horse manure, and when I get around to it, I'll top it up with premium compost and spread a layer of mulch on top. 

Finally I buzzed off the Star Pickets at the height of the iron and tied in a few joins with some wire. Two beds have been done and I've got another 3 or so to go, but I think I'll have to source some more iron. I decided to leave the tree there. It's not fruit bearing, but the leaves will be good mulch for the beds. I might attach a bird house to it.

The beds look a bit shabby now, but once they're filled and topped off with mulch, you wont be able to notice the joins. I was lucky to have metal fence posts to screw the back sections into. I still want to fill the yard with more beds. Guess I'll have to provide more back massages until I achieve a concession.