Tag: Raised beds

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Barbie's garden Design Do it yourself Gardening Home page features

Design beginnings for the back

Hi Chris, I was busy again this weekend – I don’t know where this energy comes from!! The bags of compost arrived from Nonke – all 30 of them!! They are super heavy and I had to scheme how I was going to bring each one to the back garden. I worked out a 3-phase plan to get each bag into the wheel barrow, whew! I managed to get 15 bags (one at a time!) to the back. I filled the raised beds.

[one_half]30 bags of compost![/one_half]

[one_half_last]4 bags per raised bed[/one_half_last]

I also created a work of art with the plants I bought at the Nonke Plants Open Day. Here are the lavender – yes, more lavender – and the ground-cover grasses.

[one_half]Lavendula stoechas-Lavender Lace[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Lavendula-Raspberry Ruffles and Festuca glauca[/one_half_last]

Now the fun starts!! I am glad the weather played along. I have to say, that this was really hard work and my body was full of aches and pains the next morning.

[one_half]Now let’s begin[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Let’s start small[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Nod of approval[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Starting with a pathway[/one_half_last]

[one_half]Keep it straight![/one_half]

[one_half_last]First landscape design complete![/one_half_last]

[one_half]Looks fabulous![/one_half]

[one_half_last]I’m super happy with results![/one_half_last]

I hope you enjoyed and approve of my first designed pathway. I like doing small projects now so I can see my garden develop. Next will be the lawn patch. I’ll keep you posted! I can’t wait for next weekend!

I must keep the chickens off the pathway – I have a feather duster stuck in the ground next to it!  So amazing how great this works!

Have a great week!

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Barbie's garden Design Do it yourself Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

Finished the bed building

It has been back-breaking business, but I have finally finished building the raised beds for the back garden this weekend. The chickens enjoyed the company and the new play area! I have filled the first bed with all the good and rich organic material. I have a friend that has horses and had straw bales for me! It is out-of-season, so they were more pricey than normal. But they are the best “brown” organic material to get hold of and they make for a neat covering.

Hannes and I played around with light painting so we could add an unusual photo as well for you!

Now I can concentrate on composting! I have learnt alot about this in my Organic Gardening Course I’ve been doing, so my next post will be on what I have learnt so far!

Happy gardening xxx

[one_half]3 beds all in a row![/one_half]

[one_half_last]Nightcrawlers![/one_half_last]

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Barbie's garden Do it yourself Gardening Home page features

Building my raised bed garden

I finally had a burst of energy this week and a bee in my bonnet to get my back garden started. It looks like we will not start with the backyard fencing until next year, so my interest turned to the designing of my back garden raised bed area. I had all my measurements  and my wooden slat sizes sketched out and I went to the Pole Yard to buy my 16 slats and the 76 x 76 wood for the legs. Grabbing my bright orange overall – yes, I have my own one – I got straight to work!! I have to say here that it was the inspiring Tanya Visser from The Gardener Magazine DVD series that got me motivated to build this on my own. Thanks Tanya!! Girl Power!!

I started with one raised bed to get the feel of size and effort! It took me nearly three hours to assemble and place it in the garden! I will be building another two. Well, the photos speak for themselves and all I can say is that I did it all by myself – with a bit of coaching from my hubby!

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Whew! Ok, so I have now finished the one side. I still need to make another side and then combine the two sides together. This is where I need to get my hubby involved (well, he is taking the photo’s of me too, by the way!). It is quite a big box at 1.5m x 1.5m. Check how big it is!

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The legs were a bit too long, so I chopped them down by half so I did not have to dig such big holes – whew! The ground is not quite level so I had to make sure the sides were all horizontal. The chickens love it when I bring out the shovel! They had a ball. I was finished!

But a job well done! I know that I can cope and that my vision of building 2 more is not so daunting!

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Now, for the next stage of building the soil that needs to go into these raised beds. My soil is very clayey, so I have to create my own rich, composted soil. I have been researching Sheet Mulching so I will be sharing with you my next task of creating this lovely soil from scratch. But that will be the next blog post.

Happy gardening
xxx