Putting the fence up

Having doggies who love to dig, I put a fence around the patch. My first door was a flimsy netting one and later after a doggie "break-in" (they love that blood and bone!) I put a wooden framed door on using an old wooden palette and netting reinforcement.

This took me a full day from 10am to about 8pm, but in just ONE DAY I had converted a pointless patch of lawn into a garden ready for planting! While the beds were settling I planted things into a handful of mushroom compost placed in little holes on top of the bed.

Mark out the vegetable beds

I marked out four veggie beds to be used for a four-year crop rotation and took the dirt from the paths and threw it on the four beds. I then covered the beds with more blood and bone and chopped lucerne hay for fresh organic matter. I used old railway sleepers to border the garden and anchor the fencing I added later that day.

Using sawdust from the removal of a dead tree stump, I covered the dividing paths (after putting thick sheets of newspaper on the paths to supress weeds). It adds organic matter to the soil and snails and slugs don't like it!

Then remove the lawn

I raked the surface of the lawn and kept the lawn for composting.

Then I put blood and bone, cow manure, gypsum (soil has a bit of clay) and potash over the top few inches of dirt and mixed it in. It was raining so I don't have many photos of what I did next ....

First dig up the lawn

25 square metres of lawn to dig - I did it the "easy way" with a mini-rotary hoe to dig up the surface layer. It cost very little to hire for the day and it was finished in a few hours. Especially with some help ... actually a lot of help ... :)

At the beginning

At last! A patch of lawn unused and exposed to sunlight. A dream come true! Here I stand, shovel in hand with a rotary hoe to dig up the land :) Plus a big pile of manure, lucerne hay, blood and bone, potash, gypsum and mushroom compost :)