Now for the fun task of putting all the raw materials together!
While the original plan was to fill the entire nature strip (while abiding by the council rules), spouse pulled the reigns and the area was reduced for the time being. The up side of the current area is that the boys can still kick the footy.
It is just like making a a posh french cake – lots of layers. The basic recipe for my no dig vegie patch is;
- A layer of cardboard (or 10 sheets of newspaper) slightly overlapped to shade out the weeds
- interesting to note that I didn’t have sufficient cardboard for the reduced area and had to resort to newspaper for about 4 square metres
- A decent soaking with the hose (a good job for the boys)
- A layer of chicken manure 5-10mm thick, well moistened with the hose
- A layer of straw, well moistened with the hose
- Then another layer of manure and straw at least four times
Two thirds through the job. Plenty of manure and straw remaining but the cardboard is all but gone
By the time you have finished the beds are quite high but it doesn’t take long for the straw to break down and the beds to reduce by half the height.
I was lucky enough to have just over a cubic metre of soil left which I had delivered to top up another garden bed so I utilised this to make rows of soil by raking a path into my straw/manure beds. This meant I could plant some seeds immediately.
The process took a couple of afternoons over two weekends. Thanks to Rod from work who offered to help on the second weekend.
