Today I’m running you through the 3 essential preparations for a new vegie bed.
Before we crack on, let’s check that you are ready set to hit this:
- have you chosen the best location,
- sorted drainage,
- set up shelter
- and done soil tests?
If you’ve ticked all those boxes and are ready to go, then great stuff – let’s get into it!
Mark out the beds
Vegie gardens don’t have to be rectangle! Focus on making the most of your space rather than having them be a particular shape. Rectangles come into their own in large gardens + open areas, but for small or irregular shaped spaces, they’re the least efficient. As for raised beds – read my thoughts here before going to the expense and effort, chances are, you’ll do better without them.
Your goals are to:
- max out on cropping ie make the most of the space you have
- work out where you need access (just enough + only where it’s needed)
- eliminate wasted space – you know, those odd weedy strips that don’t get used. I call these ‘dead spaces.’
A simple mock up with a hose or rope, brings clarity, and then trialling the paths confirms your choice!
The blue lines in the photo above, show the edges of the surrounding gardens. These are my starting point, for you it might be a building or a fence or a hedge. Using the outside edges, as your starting point – helps eliminate wasted space.
So – starting from the blue lines, I’ve left space for a 300m-ish path and laid the hose along as I go marking both the path and the new garden, which has ended up as a tear drop type shape.
Its too wide in a few spots, for me to easily reach the centre from the path (I don’t want to stand on the bed!) so I need a few little “jetties” or keyhole paths for access.
To work them out, I kneel and reach out in a pretending-to-garden-way. The 2 little paths I decided on, are drawn in yellow, and boom!, my goals are achieved – maximum use of space, access where its needed and no dead space. The great thing about mulched paths is that they are easily changed later.
Test your paths for workability. I like to leave the mock up in place for a few days to ponder it a bit more.
Find heaps more details + ideas in my Edible Backyard book, pgs 68 – 83.
Clear the ground
Most weeds don’t need clearing before building beds – rye grass, plantain, clover for example – build a no dig bed right on top and it smothers them.
Determined weeds like couch or convulvulus, however, demand an extra step. Ideally, you chose an area without hard core weeds, but where there is absolutely no other option, smothering with black plastic is the way to go.
Slash the weeds right back, then cover the area with black plastic, and weight the edges. Leave the cover in place until there are no more shoots coming forth. Pernicious weeds can persist for a long time – go the course and wait until no more shoots arise.
Waiting sucks – I know, but just hunker down and do it. You’ll be plenty glad later when you aren’t managing those weeds amongst your vegies, nor eating herbicide residue if you decide spraying is a handy dandy shortcut (yeah, nah).
While you wait patiently for the weeds to melt back into the soil, grow your vegies + herbs in containers. (Are you sure there’s no where else to put your garden?!)
Aerate clay soil
This last mission, is for clay soils alone. If you’re on sand, stand down – you have more than enough air already! Clay however, needs it. What a difference when you crank open those tight soils.
Using a fork or forksta or broadfork, slide it into the soil as far as it can go, and then pull it back towards you – Marco shows you how in the video above. Repeat this action all over the bed, working from one end to the other without standing on your newly liberated soil. Repeat once a season, until your soil is sorted and the worms + biology are doing the aerating for you.
