After spending my weekdays in the office there is nothing I enjoy more than spending time in the garden on the weekend.  I will start with what we actually did last weekend.

We finally finished building this raised garden bed.  There are now 4 beds complete and we eventually plan to have 9 of them.  The cardboard is a large carton that was the packaging from the refrigerator we bought last year.  We always keep any large pieces of cardboard as it makes a great base for the beds and is very effective at smothering the underlying grass before eventually breaking down.  I will cover the remainder of the base with some more cardboard before gradually filling the bed with a combination of fallen leaves, mulch, compost and grass clippings which will, over time, become rich soil.  It will all be sourced from our block.

We also created a bed for the asparagus.  Since asparagus grows very vigorously and spreads, we wanted to make sure that we are able to contain it.  The Duke dug a trench and buried some offcuts of Colorbond steel to a depth of 320mm to form the border of the asparagus bed.  Here is the work in progress.

This is what it looked like once we had finished and planted the asparagus.

The lettuce seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago have not put in an appearance so yesterday I bought some seedlings and planted them in between the corn which is growing nicely.

The other thing we did today was to start to tidy up around the citrus trees.  Here is the lime tree with a new border of rocks and some mulch.  You can the orange tree behind it and grapefruit to the far right which have been bordered with rocks and now I just need to finish weeding them and put the mulch down.

We decided to border the other orange tree and the lemon tree in one large area.  The Duke collected up the rocks from down the back near the water tanks.  We have an abundance of volcanic rocks on the property so it is good to be able to use them.

I have planted more seeds – most expired by several years – so will see how they go.  Lettuce, radish, chilli, tomato and bok choy all went in today.  I am determined to grow more of our own food and am hopeful of greater success now that the vegetable patch is completely fenced.