Front Yard Veggie Patch Feeding the wicking beds a small harvest

Its mid Winter here in the patch so last weekend I knocked over a few jobs that needed doing before the weather starts to warm up.
The asparagus plants got a good trim & the beds were feed some home made compost & aged horse manure. Also planted out a few extra broccoli to see if we can squeeze in another crop before summer.




This weekend it will be a few beds out the back that get the same treatment. Also have some ginger & turmeric to harvest so am looking forward to that.
Cheers all.

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Wicking Beds Barrels for a water wise garden

As it is getting nearer to spring I thought I would post some Wicking clips for anyone interested in making up some new beds.. There will be more posted in the future as I havent filmed a complete clip while making a full size bed, only the barrels..

The whole idea behind the wicking system comes from a gentleman by the name of  Colin Austin...
http://waterright.com.au/wicking-bed-history.html
I came across it while we were in the tail end of a drought here in South East Queensland here in Australia & though it was one of the best ways to go to save water in a fairly large back yard veggie patch..
Wicking Barrels MK II..

The above clip is how we now make the Wicking barrels... They are a big improvement on the original design as the water holding capacity of the reservoir has doubled... As the existing barrels finish their crops they are slowly being swapped over to this design...

Wicking Beds...

I have ever only made clips after the fact with the beds so made up a bit of a sideshow clip to show how we made one of the earlier Wicking beds...

Wicking Bathtub...

This was a relative easy build with a free bath we collected from a member of a  local Free Cycle Group..  I must say the plants we had in there were probably a bit too large for the small reservoir in the bath...I think plants like small cropping herbs, leafy greens would probably do better than 5 foot tall lemongrass... Lesson learnt..

Wicking up IBCs (Intermediate bulk containers)...
These guys are a really easy build that could easily be done in a few hours if you were more organised than I...

Thats about it for now...
Have a great one all...
: )»

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More beds more plants »

Had a huge list of jobbies to finish yesterday but only finished ½ of them I think...
There was seed to sow in beds, seeds to sow into punnets, cuttings to take, some transplanting, seedlings to plant out, Chook pen to clean/re straw, some pots to organise for a Wetpot garden, wicking barrel to organise, set up a trellis for some climbing peas, sift some more Cracker dust to add to the beds, place & fill the bathtub bed & join the lime tree beds to make 1 larger one...

From the list we managed to,

- Sifted more cracker dust,
- Lime & put some bedding straw down in the Chook pen,

- B? started to clean out Bed #8 by transplanting some flowers to under the Lemon tree & a sage into Bed #3,
- The washing machine barrel had the Lemongrass removed, potted up for a family member... That was an hour long Battle I dont want to go through again... OH the Carnage !! B? planted out the barrel with some Lavender seedlings after the soil was freshened up with some home "cooked" goodies...
- Some seeds were planted out in punnets for the Wetpot garden...

- A new bed was made by joining both Lime beds together& filing it with 2 bags of horse manure, bag of composted horse manure, blood n bone, rock dust, the last of a soil delivery that was stored in the bath tub & the last ½ of a bag of "5 in 1" that was found under the house... 2 poles have been put in for a future trellis for some Tomatoes... Onions are planed for this bed along with a Garlic or 2...
- A wicking barrel was placed between the washing machine barrel & the Zucchini barrel at the end of Bed #1 along with some bits of mango trunk... This helped make a small retaining wall so we could fill the hollow between the new Lime bed & Bed #1 with some soil we have had stored... The grass removed from the new bed was placed in between the 2 beds & some "good bug" mix was sown behind the barrels...
Some compost tea (Thanks Praxxus) was also made & added to a few of the seedlings & some plants I feel are struggling... Will be interesting to see how they go as I have left a few as control  plants to see what the difference will be...
I will be a busy this week finishing off a few trellises, planting out some of the seeds & seedlings listed above... I think it is time to check some of the Compost barrels to see if any have finished cooking down so the compost can be bagged up & the bins refilled...


Just to finish up, we visited my parents on the weekend & had to grab a shot of dads Friends...

We counted 13 plants in pots grown from heads of fruit they have bought or "pups" from the past few years plants... The centre shot shows 2 pups forming below a fruit... You cane end up with 3 plants for the next season if all pups survive... The shot on the right was just to show how pretty the fruit is when young... Rather spectacular Me thinks... The 2 to the Right are our first 2 plants... I am hoping to have enough to do a little strip don the fence line with the neighbours...

Thats about it for now...
: )»

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New Beds

Made a start on the 2 small beds that are replacing the large Herb Bed....
The first bed is up & just needs to be "Wicked" out & its done... Will start the second on Tuesday if the school schedule allows for it... I also need to scrounge some pavers from under the stairs for the gap & design the bench/storage box as well..... Should have enough bits of timber around to knock one up, just need to find some wire mesh to rodent proof the base....
Will have to look into better fencing around the base of the Chooks Mango yard to stop the soil being spread far & wide as you can see from the picture.... I have some bits of tin I can wire to the base of the fence to stop the spread....
Thinking about putting up a Bamboo or Reed screen on the wire fence behind the Chook pen to shield it from the vacant land to the rear of our place.... The owners are trying to sell the block & I dont really want people Peeping in on our Girls & Garden....

Found a little Native Gecko in the bed as I was building it... I must of spooked the poor little fella & it dropped its tail... : (» 
It was relocated into a nearby Crape Myrtle tree where it could blend in well.... Im glad to see them slowly move into the yard & Veggie Patch to devour the bugs....







Have a great one all.....

: )»

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IBC Wicking Beds for renters

IBC Wicking Beds for renters...
We have some friends who are renting places with no garden space for veggies so it got me thinking how we could help them out... We came up with the idea of using the same food grade IBC containers we are using as Aquaponic beds & tanks as Wicking garden beds... By cutting them in ½ you can get 2 beds that are essentially large pots that you can grow quite a few Veggies & herbs in...

We were lucky enough to get 3 of them for $40 each... The only problem being that they contained "Liquid Boot A" which is a tar like concrete sealing compound that is used to seal concrete drinking water tanks, pipelines & concrete slabs for buildings... We could not remove the compound with a water blaster as it had dried to the tank so had to come up with another way to use them...  We decided on lining them with the 200um plastic to keep the soil from coming in contact with the residue in the IBCs... I think we could find others without the residue for under $100 which makes them cheaper than the colorbond alternatives you can purchase from hardware stores & suitable for renters who are not allowed to dig a garden for a veggie patch...
: )»

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