GARDENING - Raising another Raised bed! Expanding the Veggie Garden! Another little harvest!
Good day everyone! Zak here from Cape Town, South Africa.
I have been expanding the garden again! Some time ago, I built a raised bed out of concrete posts that were being thrown away at a building site near me. I have "thing" for upcycling and building out of rubble so I claimed them and built the structure as pictured below.
Heavy stuff... but rewarding!
The idea is that you do not need to go to the hardware store and gardening depot and spend thousands of Rands (or Hundreds of Dollars) on Building materials.
I have been doing my own composting and while this bed does contain a lot of my own compost, I don't make enough to establish such a deep bed from scratch and I also lack one ability - I cannot MAKE dirt! Haha!
I could collect bags of dirt from all around but that would be time consuming as I would need to water and weed it out for weeks before using the dirt.
Of course, if this were an emergency, I would just build bed after bed with whatever sand and deal with it later!
Anyway, let's get into the update!
Filling up
I had a base of Sticks and self-made compost with some dirt at the bottom from the last update.
I then added some reddish buildger's sand because there is still a lot of volume to go. This is not clay soil not is it too much like sea sand. It is sand that comes from an agricultural area up the coast and inland from where I live. Builder's use this sand to plaster.
This was spread out.
I then added potting soil.
And some more potting soil!
I gave the above a good mix with the fork and then added a bag of compost.
Nice and dark! Looking good!
I then gave this a good mix as well. Some of the sand surfaced and all three layers were well mixed together.
I have to tuck in the filling all over the place, but I knew I would need to wet it to make the filling fill the gaps between the stone to clog it up. Water, organic materials and roots will hold this dirt and compost together. If something runs out I can scoop it up and put it inside again.
I also got myself some Mulch for the other beds.
I have not worked with this stuff before. I have been reading up on the obvious benefits of mulch, but had had no idea how good this one would be. So I tried it out!
With a little container, I went to work!
The little raised herb garden got filled in between the plants.
The lower level now contains Marigolds, a Watermelon, Bell Pepper, Parsley and Radish. Along with two cucurbit type plants I have not yet identified but am letting grow to see what happens!
This is partial cover so you can see the difference.
And a full cover...
I gave the tomatoes some love as well. So I am just waiting for these tomatoes to finish with their fruits and then I will be removing them and planing something new here.
Here is the Watermelon plant that @lex-zaiya gave me for my birthday last year. It has taken a long time to get till here but seems to be doing well.
Another harvest of delicious garden tomatoes!
I had to pick two of them green because their stem had snapped in the wind. They should ripen in room temperature.
And there you have it! The garden is growing and being populated more and more and I am loving these results!
I need to start germinating more seeds! Perhaps that will be my next post...
Until then.
Cheers!
@zakludick
Great garden work Zak! You are getting some green fingers.
😁😁 Slowly but surely!
I'm amazed how your garden seems to have gone from a patch of bare earth to what it is now in just a couple of months. You've even got some grass and weeds on the path - perfect for composting (or rotting down in a black sack if they're weeds that'll re-establish themselves after being pulled up). Good work !
So I have a whole lot of Common Parslane growing on the footpath. One of our South African locals (@fermentedphil) pointed out to me that this indigenous weed is edible!
From then on, I have stopped weeding this one out. I still pluck out other things I know as weeds. But when some paslane pops up in between my other plants, I don't view it in a negative light.
A lot of my pots with my home made compost and garden soil mix (unsurprisingly) popped up with a bunch of parslane and I am just letting them grow. I am waiting for the chutney recipe so I can try THAT out!
A lot of weeds are actually beneficial for the ground. Common dandelions apparently restore nutrients to the topsoil with its deep taproot, and clover and similar plants are nitrogen fixing plants! Neat stuff if kept in balance.
Sad that purslane only grows in the summer because apparently it makes a tamatie bredie or any stew 100 times better. I don’t know about you but I prefer a stew or bredie in the winter!
I will post that chutney recipe tonight! Keep an eye out for it or I will tag you!
Feel free to tag! Hahaha!
I have been keeping the clovers going in between the tomato plants. Its not something I pull out!
There we go! It is amazing to see how nature helps herself out! We thought we were the clever ones, but I like the Afrikaans saying: "jy is dom van slimgeid". haha We humans are so stupid because of our own smartness.
Jy kan maar Afrikaans gooi nes jy wil. Ek is n Ludick 😉. My pa se naam is Johan. 🤣🤣🤣
Daarsy, ek wou sê dit klink Afrikaans haha!
You did a great job! A bed like that can work miracles. We were thinking of making one for carrots as it looks like the soil we have is not suitable as carrots need more sandy soil.
I see that tomato on the left side is not doing great.
None of the tomatoes plants are doing that well. I made the mistake of watering the plants and getting the leaves wet and causing a splash. So now I have learned that the tomatoes do not like this as it leads to blight etc.
But I did get a good little harvest of tomatoes out of them and the next set of tomatoes will do better.
I will be doing tomatoes in a different location though to give the blight time to die out. Instead, once the tomatoes are done with their current crop of fruits, I will remove them (not compost them) and plant legumes in that space.
This apparently is part of a crop rotation technique that will put nitrogen back into the soil and the legumes are not susceptible to the same diseases as the tomato.
Of course, I look forward to putting that into practice!
So I learn a lot!
Awesome post buddy. This looks awesome! There is nothing as good as the feeling of gaining that autonomy to do things yourself and to grow your own food.
Next step is to make enough compost!
And the step beyond that is to make dirt!
I am not sure what constitutes dirt or soil or ground as everyone has their own idea behind it.
But let is say that “dirt” is that very fine material you find normally on top of the soil (something like top soil). I found a way to kind of make this! All you need is some homemade compost, a small container and some “weeds”. After the weeds have established and grew in that container for a couple of weeks, you will find that the compost you added to the container is (1) full of roots, but (2) between all the roots you get that fine “dirt” or soil we generally refer to as dirt.
This was just an interesting finding I made one random day emptying a container in which a cutting did not survive and weeds took over.
Best of it all, all the weeds and roots from that container goes to the compost bin and the cycle repeats itself!
I see! That is very interesting.
I cannot however make the sand particles myself. Much like minecraft, dirt is a finite resource. 🤣🤣🤣
Oh yes, sand is another ball game! I used it in my garden for a while, mixing 50% sand 50% compost, made the best soil. But I want to garden totally for free so buying sand kind of defeated the purpose. Now I only use compost and it in fact works better!
Indeed. Well, I think I shall experiment until I have the right amount of dirt and thereafter just add compost to it as needed.
Best of luck! It is the best experimentation or at least the most fun one!
it's so thrilling to watch this garden grow! Especially now that we've got to the point where we can harvest. I need to find out the best way to pick Basil though without causing damage to the plant. Cooking with fresh herbs is just magical. There's just no comparison to the dried store-bought stuff.
I'm so proud of our home and garden. I feel like it's really starting to reflect who we are. Thank you for working so hard to make it so beautiful.
Aww. Thanks babe ❤
Indeed. We are people who build, who grow and who creates a harvest from our labours.
You need to separate the basils from the other plants. Do not let the basil plants have flowers or else that will end their lives.
I have been trimming off the flowers off all but two of the basil plants. I want to test out harvesting seeds.
Why should I remove the basil from parsley, rosemary and bell pepper? I am keen to learn.
I do use an app that a friend reccomended that shows what NOT to plant near specific plants.
This is the app. So Bell Peppers are meant to be a good companion plant of Basil. Cucumbers and Basil are not good for one another.