No Dig Vegie Patch

We've finally done it! The no dig garden in my imagination for so long has finally become an actual thing in real life! Like most things, I learned a lot by researching on the internet and in books, but I topped off that learning by actually DOING it. I've now realised a few things I'd do differently next time, but like they say - live n learn!

Our good friends Ruth & Maddie putting Melissa's (horse's!) poo on top of the wet newspaper.
We made the edging for the no dig garden out of corrugated iron & hardwood from a local reclaimed building supply centre.
The only new thing is the screws to hold it altogether!

Let the planting begin!
We had bought some bales of hay and straw for Geoff's 40th earlier in the year, and they've been slowly rotting in the backyard ever since, waiting for us to clear the weeds and get our no dig garden ready. They're now nicely gross, ready to decompose further and provide beautiful nutrients for our plants to hopefully thrive in!



The chooks went a wee bit crazy with excitement at the opportunity to consume vast quantities of bugs from under where the bales of hay had been sitting for some months. Woo hoo! Bugs into eggs - can't complain about that!



Let there be a worm farm - in the middle of the garden!
Thanks Toni for paying for a permaculture design course so I could scab some good ideas off you! :)
The idea is that you cover the PVC pipe with a tile so it's nice and dark inside, you place food scraps in the pipe from time to time, and the little wormies crawl through the holes that are under soil level, get the food, and go back into the soil to do their "business", adding the fertiliser right where it's needed, without any need for me - a la worm-a-phobe - to have to actually touch or look at them! :)

Lookin good

Geoff, D & M built a trellis out of bamboo from our friend's backyard, for our sugar snap peas to climb up. 

A work of art :)

Baby sugar snap pea plant, ready to climb up up and away!

Success! (With the addition of some finer plastic trellis attached to the bamboo.)
Lesson learned: it would have been better to put the trellis on the north-facing side of the garden, rather than the east-facing.
Notice how the peas on the northern (right hand) side of the trellis are growing more quickly cuz they get more sunlight?
Live n Learn - it's all good :)
As Albert Einstein said: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried..."

I thought this was our first red strawberry, but was informed that there HAVE been others.
At least they've been enjoyed! :)