Sprangles

Background

When we moved into our new house, the whole garden was pretty neat and well-maintained, except for one area: in front of the shed. It was just a sandy patch with some old bricks stacked up on it, which seemed odd since it meant you had to walk through sand to get to the shed.

We quickly decided that this was going to be a great spot for a vegetable garden. While Lana was away in Melbourne over Christmas and I was on leave for 6 weeks (the Summer of Stew) I put it all together.

Construction

We decided that the vegetable garden would be in two U-shapes, allowing for a pathway to the shed and two dead-end paths into the garden beds. The idea behind this design was maximum access to the garden beds without having to walk in the actual garden if possible. We also decided to raise the beds up quite high, since the higher they are the easier they are to work in (no more sore backs!) and a high garden bed has good drainage.

The sides are made out of 6″x2″ treated pine with 2″x2″ posts holding it up. Where the ground slopes down I used up some old bricks to build a foundation, so at the end nearest the lawn the vegetable garden is thigh-high, and only knee-high next to the shed.

Soil

Next came the back-breaking work — filling up the garden beds with good quality soil. In the end it took 7 trailer loads — about 5 tonnes — of the special vegetable-garden soil from Soils Ain’t Soils to fill up the beds. I also brought in a load of thick mulch to put over the top to help with water retention.

Paving

The previous owners of our house had left behind some pavers, and as luck would have it there was exactly the right amount to pave the crossroads between the new garden beds. Paving was fun, since it really finished the vegetable garden off visually. And now we don’t have to walk through sand to get to the shed!

Reticulation

Since this is a vegetable garden, I expect that there’ll be plenty of digging going on in it. For that reason I decided that the best way to do the reticulation would be to run lines around the edges of the beds and put small sprayers on risers around the edge. That way everything gets a good soaking in the garden, but there’s no pipes under the soil to accidentally puncture with the spade.

I put taps on both beds so that they can be turned off individually if need be (since our reticulation is on an automatic timer system). I also put filters on both lines, this ensures that any grit or sand that gets into the line doesn’t get through to the sprayers and clog them up.

Personalising

There was one little area of bare sand left over when we’d finished the garden beds, so I cemented it up. This provided a good opportunity to personalise the house too — Lana & I embossed our names in cement along with a timestamp. Someday archeologists will uncover this lump of cement and put it in a museum.

The Finished Product

It’s certainly much more pleasing to look at than the old sandy area that was here before, and was very satisfying as the first major change we made to our new home. We’re looking forward to many years of delicious vegetables!

The First Crop

The first crop of vegetables we got off the garden were very successful — delicious juicy corn, lots of cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage, capsicum, chilis and basil. The strawberries weren’t very successful so we moved them to another location, but on the whole it was a great success!

View all the Flickr photos of the vege garden.