wow! it's really happening!

well ... i am chuffed, ecstatic and over the moon .... it's happening.  our wasted gorgeous expanse of backyard is really starting to transform .... it's not a wish, a hope or any of that .... it is really happening.

so .... back in my Contour .... it's a catching thing! post .... i referred to our great plans for the shape of things to come in our backyard .... here is a refresher on what it was gonna look like.

the whole idea here was that we had defined the flow of water across the block ... identifying this meant that we could capture and re-use that water, naturally.

so the next thing was to get all our supplies together.

1. cardboard.  and heaps of it.  sourced from grocery stores and the like, but a lot of the stuff at the grocers has a waxy finish on it and would take longer to break down .... but we found that the stack under the back entry of the local liquor store was the IDEAL source <g>.  cost .... nada!
2.  mulch.  well aren't we lucky that we've just had a council mulch day?  we have a nice big big pile in the front yard thank you!  cost ..... zilch!

3.  straw.  well, we had to buy this .... could've sourced it a tad cheaper down in the flat lands .... but would've eaten up more than that in the cost of petrol to go and get it .... so we just bought it local.  two bales for $22.  not bad!
4.  chook poo.  well.  hubby was on a mission and he went around some of the area farms and was able to get me 10 bags for $2 each.  woohoo!  potent stuff too .... needs to air out and be thinly used.

so.  time to get going!  first thing is to lay out the carboard in the pattern we want.  logs that have been cut from trees in our yard will make the borders of the beds.  this all goes well.  bed is about a meter wide, which will make for easy access on either side.

first thing to go down is straw.  honestly .... should've used mulch.  but i wanted to use these beds fairly quickly.  and i knew that using straw vs mulch would provide for quicker decomposition.  so a nice thick layer of straw goes on the beds.  this is followed by the chicken poo.

note that we have let the carboard hang out the edges of the bed excessivly.  the area's between the beds will eventuallly be filled with a pine bark mulch .... yet to come.  in the picture to the left note the tripod behind the bed.  this is a very deep area that i will be planting beans in shortly to get the nitrogen fixing stuff happening.  this area gets excellent sun during the day, so i really needed to exploit it.  the tree in the tire is a tangello.

you can see from the next photo that i actually have a rich soil down on one end of the bed.  this is because this is where the asparagus will get planted (two are being transplanted, two are new crowns i have purchased).  it needs a good deep rooting (10 cm) and would be completely overwhelmed by the chicken poo .... so i am using a rich soil from another part of our yard for this.  this will need another 4-5 wheelbarrows of soil before it is ready to take the crowns.

and finally .... another layer of straw.  this will bed the whole thing in very nicely.  the picture to the right shows it half covered so you can see where it is all going.  because of the potency of the chook poo it will need to sit for several weeks before i can consider planting.

I am thrilled to report that we have been having torrential downpours the past few days which have done a few things that are very special.

• the rain will be helping to magnificently kick start the decomposition process and means that i should be able to start planting in the next week or so.
• the contour thing has worked!  i have watched the meandering trail of water as it trickles down .... straight to our back bed!  whoohoo.

after this beds in, we will need to add a layer of good compost / soil and cover with straw.  it is in this straw that we will make little holes, fill with lovely soil and plant out my seedlings.

we have had a great addition to our backyard  .... hubbies home made bbq barrel.  it worked a treat for us when we used it this past weekend!  note the models to the right.

and the other is that the front bed continues to get more and more planted out.  the past few days i added some lovely baby spinach.  yumm!!!!  note that i have used the method that makes a whole in the straw, fills with a bit of manure and soil and then beds the plants in.

 i am so looking forward to what we will be eating from our garden kitchen come springtime!

next job .... off the the liquor store ... need more cardboard!  <g>

contour .... it's a catching thing!

i bet some of you are wonderin' where we are at with regard to our backyard "permie" transformation, huh?  well ... i said that we expected some morphing to happen .... and that perhaps initial thoughts and designs would change?  well,  that is an understatement!

a view of the milkwood veg patch

after our day out at Milkwood Farm, i was really struck by what they had done with the veggie patch  out  behind the wool shed.   it is a bit hard to see from the pic at the right, they have built this thing to capture the rain run off by building their beds on contour with the land and thus capturing the water when it rains.  the flow of the hill that this is on comes from the top right of the pic and thus any rain run off is caught and held in the beds .... veggies lovin' that!

the other thing i was really struck with was their ability to use local or recycled materials.  it is pretty obvious from the pic that they have used local timber for both their bed walls as well as the wood chip path between the beds.  it has also enabled a much more fluid line and less structure in the garden beds .... which makes them flexible long term and easy to modify and change if needed.

just seeing this has been a real boost to scott and i.  we've been stuck in wondering how and where we were going to get the materials for the raised beds to get the back garden done.  it's been a bit daunting to think of having to build this huge structure that seemed so permanent and inflexible.  seeing their veggie patch .... and how low cost and easy it was to do, really encouraged us.

the other thing was learning that no land is ever flat .... there is always some contour to work with.  which made us have to rethink the lay of the backyard and if we could take what we had thought was a pretty flat piece of land and find any contour on it to exploit the rainfall.  in my belly i knew we could .... so we came home invigorated to figure out how to best utilise the natural resources we had.

the first thing was ditching the structured bed.  yes, we knew that with a raised bed you had the opportunity for further reach and bigger beds .... but if we committed to beds no wider than 1m .... then we could easily make them without borders and build them up that way.  reducing the need for buying or sourcing additional materials! 

so with that came the need to put the chickens to even more work.  we have expanded their backyard grazing area even more, to collect more of their glorious poo and benefit from the scratching.  from the picture on the left you can see where we have moved the fencing and the old line from where they were.  a pretty dramatic shift!  and needless to say, the chickens are loving it!  this means that within a week or two we will be able to throw down the cardboard, hay, compost and manure to make our first serious winter beds.  and i have seedlings that i'm growing now that i can't wait to put in these beds!

the next issue was contour.  have a look at this picture and you'll probably see that yes, indeed, we do have some land fall on the property.  the water runs from the top left down towards the middle of the yard.  we had to figure out a configuration on that contour that would allow us to capture the bulk of the run off through the yard.

so ... here is the first try of what we thinking we'll do.  the blue lines represent the flow of water on the property.  i have noticed over the past few years that after a major down pour or a few days rain, that the middle of the yard seems to turn into a bit of a bog ... or at the very least is where we have the greenest grass!  so this is where the rain is traveling.   the green area's represent the potential beds.  the large one in the modified "C" shape needs to be more of semi-circle shape, but you get the idea.  if those ends are just a bit more open then we'll be able to capture more of the rain water and it will get fed through the beds in the middle as well.  it's the hope anyway!

and .... as we are learning, everything is about trying something and seeing if it works.  if this doesn't completely do the job .... then we'll try something else for the next spring.  one thing that we are going to try is to build up our soil via the food forest.  you can't really see it very well .... but on the left hand side of the picture .... running almost the entire length of our backyard, along the fence line, is where we would like to have a food forest.  challenge is that that about 3 cm under the grass it is a rock .... so we are going to  move the chickens over there, pile in old mulch clippings, food scraps and hay for the chooks to scratch and poo in and are hoping that this will go along way to building up and improving the soil.  we have cut down about 6 trees from the side ... so more sun is getting in ... but we'll have to see how it all works .... i am still a bit skeptical, yet willing to give it a go <g>.

in the meantime .... our chickens are very happy.  they are loving their new grass and we are loving the scratching and fertilizing ..... thank you very much girls for all the hard work!