Last year I decided very late in the season to do a vegetable garden, and only bought one punnet of seedlings per plant, and only had two pallets. I ended up with half a corn, 3 butterbeans, 16 pumpkins and a 40cm beetroot. Well I’m one year older and wiser now so I’m totally prepared.
Okay not totally prepared, but I found a whole heap of free stuff on gumtree / roadsides / my boyfriend’s shed and as a result I have a game plan. I also formed a friendly relationship with The Seed Collection and GreenSeed Tasmania so not only did I buy triple the seedlings, I’m starting my own seeds, too. Plus I counted down until Spring like a 6 year old waiting for Christmas (or you know, like me waiting for Christmas..).
First thing I did was pick a patch of my garden. When I say patch I mean the biggest corner I could find and dig up. Here it is
When it came time, my boyfriend came around with two garden hoes and we had at it. Well, he had at it and I smoothed it with a shovel and raked as we went. Three long days and aches in muscles we didn’t know we had, we ended up with a nice patch of dirt to work with.
Ain’t he a doll? Now anyway, to the upcycling part. My local Archery club was giving away some besser blocks last year, which I had big ideas for, went and collected, and sat them in the corner to gather dust and spiders for the next 7 months. I have used them as edging and am going to place bee friendly herbs, succulents and annuals in the holes. This means there will be a blog post soon about gardening in small, heated concrete holes. Yay.
After that, I placed a broken bench that I reinforced up the back, because I like to sit outside and watch the grass grow sometimes. That was in the rubbish pile at my Nan’s house, and I stole it. Oh well. I had a rusty garden arch lying about so I took the bottom off it and placed it over the top. On one side ready to climb it is Star Jasmine, and a climbing rose on the other. It’s going to be wrapped with fairy lights too, romantic.
Then I added wooden beds, made up of broken palettes the hardware store gives away if you ask them enough times. The only thing I had to purchase for this garden layout is nails. This is how it turned out.
So this goes to show that if you collect enough junk, over time, you can create a totally useful space for free.
I am going to have some galvanised garden beds on the outside, one for my pumpkins and two for my herb garden. I can’t wait to keep you all updated!
Go you, great start. When I had a very small veg bed, I learnt that I got more produce by growing 'up'! I grew for instance, climbing french beans. and some heritage peas that grew to 6ft, using arches. Hope this idea helps.
Thanks!! Luckily I've got another patch to convert as well but that's only small so there will definitely be a lot of 'up' plants housed there. 😉
You've made a great start. I'll be interested to see how the herbs go in the concrete blocks. A nice way of upcycling something & making it pretty & edible.
Thank you! I'll have posts up next month about gardening in the blocks. I will seal some but I'll leave the others as they are to see if it can be done!
it was a brilliant opportunity to visit this sort of site and I am cheerful to know. much obliged to you such a great amount for allowing us to have this open door.. hegn til haven