Waste No Space

I've mentioned in a couple of posts that the back of the garden is a steep slope, it's about 4 meters square and for quite a while was true 'set aside' land left to the weeds to slug it out for dominance, on the odd occasion madness would grip me and I'd attack it with the strimmer before wearily conceding defeat whilst wondering how much strimmer line I needed to buy before attacking it next time.

Now I'm lucky enough to have a south facing garden and this area gets full sun for the majority of the day, it seemed a real shame to leave it to the weeds especially when I wanted to grow more veg - so I hatched a patient plan, one that wouldn't require miles of strimmer line! Early last year I gathered up all the empty compost bags I could find and covered the areas I wanted to put the raised beds (and my miniature wild flower meadow), weighting them down with a collection of bricks, rocks and surprisingly useful old metal washing line posts I'd taken an angle-grinder to when I built the decking , I left things well alone for a good nine months.

When I eventually lifted the sacks I had pristine earth, weed free and good to go with the minimum of effort, utilising wood left over form the old fence we'd replaced I built raised beds and then managed to fill two of them with compost from what I'd thought was a very small compost heap - still surprised how much it yielded.

View from the top

The result is a little rough and ready but it's allowed me to get a crop of veg in and a couple of tasty meals worth already, the next step is to make the area more productive and less purely functional, I have a glut of plants needing a home and figure flowers around the veg will probably be a good thing and help with the aesthetic!

View from the bottom

A Place to Enjoy the Garden - Day3

The prospect of finishing was a great motivator, giving the neighbours a reasonable lie in (it was Sunday after all & I like to imagine I'm a considerate soul) I was out to complete the deck area by mid morning.

On the fly I modified my original design for the L shaped raised beds on the top deck, as this was placed directly onto the deck boards I didn't want soil in direct contact with the wood causing rot and seeping out of the cracks so I narrowed them slightly so that I could slot in a couple of troughs I had to hand and filled over the gaps with more decking giving a surface on which to place pots.

Top Raised bed in place.

The raised beds to the left where a somewhat trickier affair - whilst the construction was simple, getting them into place without ruining the plants I had growing up the fence, along with the snug fit I had between the deck & fence resulted in quite a few lesser used & colourful words from the English language punctuating the air. My old friend hindsight was sat on my shoulder throughout whispering in my ear ' this really would have been easier if you'd done it before putting the decking in place!'.

The final change to the design was to drop the idea of the raised beds forming a gateway at the foot of the decking, whilst the design had looked fine on screen, in reality it would have resulted in a postage stamp of a lawn & I do like to have a bit of grass underfoot now & again; instead I splashed out on two short lengths of half log fence to close-off the decking area.

View from the Deck.

The final task was the tidy up,  I used the turf taken up at the start to partially fill the raised beds covering with a layer of old newspaper to supress the weeds before compost was added to fill the remainder and my few token potted plants where strategically placed - my first major construction project was done, I could sit on my deck in the late afternoon sun and consider the next challenge.

The completed Project.

The Decking Goes Down - Day2

At the start of Day 2 I was up early valiantly ignoring the groans of protest that my body was making to continue getting the decking down. The deck plan had upper & lower sections, first to go down was the lower deck, I built a basic framework to support the decking planks and then it was a simple job to lay down each plank, drill pilot holes and screw into place - it struck me when fixing roughly plank 15 into place that you didn't really see much decking in gardens until after cable free electric screwdriver/drills came into popular circulation - I'd hate to build one of these with a normal screwdriver!

Lower Deck in Place.

Next to go down was the upper deck support frame & planks, I was fully into the swing of it by this point, making rapid progress and feeling like a seasoned professional, before I knew it the upper deck was done & it was only mid afternoon.

Upper Deck Complete.

Ignoring the impulse to enjoy a cold beer and marvel at my craftmanship I cracked on with the first raised bed - a containing wall to the lower deck.

Raised Bed 1 of 5 Done.

With the bed in place I could resist the impluse no more, cracking open a beer I sat on my partialy completed project & surveyed my domain - all was looking good & with luck tomorrow would see completion.