soil | organised castle

Our vegetable garden area has been a work in progress for several years and continues to be so. However, I feel as though we have taken a giant leap forward today.

We had a load of soil delivered yesterday.

This was the view of the area yesterday.

The three beds in the foreground have been established for some time and the top one currently has lettuce and bok choy and the bottom one has beans and bok choy while the middle one is empty after having cleared out the remnants of tomato and cucumber plants. This bed needs topping up with additional soil. In the background towards the chicken coop is a clump of sweet potato growing in a small cut-down rainwater tank. Of course, it has overflowed and is growing across the ground towards the fence.

The lower two beds in the background have a small amount of leaf litter and mulch but are yet to be used. At the top of the second row is the sixth raised bed partially built. We still need to finish cutting the iron to size and attach the sides.

We started early today and moved the soil to fill the completed beds. This is all that was left this afternoon when we had finished.

Then it was time to add the sides to the final bed. Remember the sweet potato I pointed out in the earlier photo? We dug it all up and harvested a bucketful of decent sized sweet potatoes. There were lots of small ones but we have sacrificed them for the long-term plan. I planted several pieces of vine that had significant root growth as well as numerous potatoes that were shooting. These all went into the bottom bed. The remainder of the soil from where the sweet potatoes were growing went into the base of the last bed. We then salvaged several wheelbarrow loads of leaf mulch from behind the rainwater tank and finally added the garden soil.

Here are the 6 raised beds filled with soil and I have planted some cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and kale seedlings that we bought last weekend. There is still plenty of space so I am planning to plant some seeds as well.

The other thing I did today was to trim and tidy up the basil which has gone completely rampant. I even found some new plants so I potted some and planted others in the garden bed. I have tied the clumps of basil up to the fence to stop them spreading all over the ground. The basil are in the foreground of the photo below.

Tomorrow, I am hoping to dig another garden bed along the fenceline as it heads towards the front of our property. The plan is to plant flowers in that bed. I have bought sweet pea seeds and intend to grow them using the fence as a trellis. but more about that another day.

We have finally had some of the glorious winter weather for which south-east Queensland is renowned – clear, sunny days and crisp, cool nights.

The majority of yesterday and today has been spent in the garden. I have previously shown you the 3 raised vegetable garden beds. One was planted out with seeds a couple of weeks ago. I planted 2 bean seeds together in each hole and they all germinated so I transplanted the extras. I am not sure whether they will survive the process but it never hurts to try.

We moved some lemon tree prunings which had been in this tank and filled it with soil from one of the old garden beds which is now redundant. The soil is fabulous and it would be a shame to waste it. We mixed it with some mulch (from the poinciana stump which we had ground last year) and also some mushroom compost. In the centre you can also see some bok choy seedlings. The bok choy seeds came up so thickly that I have thinned heaps of them and will thin them out again as they get a bit bigger. I could not bear to just throw the thinnings away so they were all transplanted. Some went into this old esky filled with soil and mulch.

I put some others in between the potato plants in the other raised bed. The bok choy will be well and truly finished before the potatoes take over.

The carrots, onions and beetroot have also germinated and are growing but are probably too small to identify in this photo. You can, however, see the beans and bok choy.

A few weeks ago I bought some organic garlic ready to sprout and plant. It has been languishing in a bag on the floor of the pantry but today was the day to plant it out. Firstly, we had to finish preparing the third raised bed. It was about 1/3 full of leaf litter, mushroom compost and shredded arrowroot leaves. Today we added some grass clippings after The Duke had mowed the lawn area area the vegie patch, more mushroom compost, lots of mulch and soil as previously described. Then it was time to plant the garlic. We peeled off the papery outer layer, separated the cloves and planted them in rows with the sprouting tip pointing upwards. You can see all of the shredded outer layers on the ground beside the bed. It really did look like something had been massacred. The bed is 2.4m x 1.2m and it is entirely planted with rows of garlic. If this is even moderately successful I should never have to buy garlic again!

I cleared some old cherry tomato plants out of another round tank, topped up the soil and mulch and planted these golden sweet potato plants that had been in a pot for ages since my brother-in-law gave them to us.

This is the old garden bed where we have been digging up the soil to re-use. There is still plenty left.

The pile of mulch which resulted from the grinding of the tree stump last year has been put to good use in the garden beds. We still have more that we can take from here to build up the next round of garden beds.

It is gratifying to be able to use and reuse everything from our own property in the gardens. Leaf litter, compost, mulch, soil and grass clippings all go into creating the next lot of vegetables for us to eat. Chickens, chickens manure and eggs are also part of the cycle. Trees provide fallen timber for firewood which in turn leaves ash that we put back into the compost heap or garden bed. Permaculture in action really is the circle of life.