My New Garden Bed

My new garden bed is finally ready to planted into. Hooray!!!! Lot's of excitement here (as much from my 3 year old as anyone lol). It's just been an empty frame for about 6 months or so.

We have made this bed a no-dig bed using compost from a supplier in town. It cost us $75 for a cubic metre - basically a small size trailer full. With the price of vegies I'm hoping that it'll pay for itself eventually. Not that it matters. I'm committed to growing as many of our vegies as I can manage more for health reasons than anything else. Not to mention freshness and taste. :-)

And it's turning out to be a very therapeutic hobby for me too. Can't say as I'd ever imagined myself gardening for fun (in the past I've always found it a drag - just done enough so our house doesn't look derelict). Now that I'm home more, I think it's easier to enjoy a few minutes here and there in the garden. :-)







This is what the finished bed looks like. The squares are basically a foot squared in size, as suggested with square foot gardening. It's not exactly a traditional "square foot garden" though. They recommend keeping beds to a maximum of 4x4 squares. We already had the actual garden bed built and it ended up being 7x8 squares, so I've simply marked off a row in each direction through the middle to use for a path. I think the reason for keeping beds small is so that you don't step on the compost and compact it too much. So I'm hoping having a path through the middle, I can still achieve a similar thing. Unfortunately that will take up some of my garden though. But it's easier for now to work with what we've got.

I didn't really follow any formula in filling it. I did line the bottom with cardboard boxes a while ago and also dumped some old hay and grass clippings in there. Then we just filled it in with the compost. Might have been a cheaper way to do it but at least it's done and I can use it now. Fingers crossed my own compost will be ready when it comes time to replant.