Saturday, October 17, 2009

In the words of ABBA....

Here I go again...my my!

In April 2008 we started on our first area. This remains the main all year round production garden with planned raised beds and gravel pathways. This is also where we house our 6 chickens.

That same December we cleared another area down the side of our house which is a summer patch as in winter it gets very little sun.

This past week we started working on the 3rd area. Below is a picture of what our front garden looked like when we started the first area...but as the White Stinkwood grew to more lofty heights, this towering giant of a tree and the shade it casts gradually killed the lawn. Add to that "big white dog" and children with their bikes it started to turn into more of a desert.



Superman and I have been pondering this problem for a while. How to make sure that our front garden looks neat but where we can have some flowers as well as use it for more food production.

The result is more raised beds for flowers with veggies planted in between.

We will plant our permanent vegetables like rhubarb and asparagus here too.

So Superman, Robin and the Incredible Hulk got stuck in on Monday with digging up the root mat, loosening the soil, sieving all the earth, making wooden borders and creating gravel pathways. We did get a labourer friend in to help us too.

Now we need to add lots of manure, compost and topsoil to make it a viable option.



Thereafter we have one last job to tackle...removing of the non-indigenous trees along the wall of our property and replacing them with fruit trees.

3 comments:

Joel said...

Hi there,

Firstly I love reading your blog!

I couldn't help but share a source I've just found this past week for compost.

Friends of ours have long been driving from Somerset West to Grawbou!!! just to buy compost from these people and they have just opened a depot up the road from me along the N2 in Somerset West next to monkey town, they're called Agri Organics.

You have to bring a bakkie and buy a minimum of a half a cubic metre but it's so worth it.

I can email you the quotes they send me if you like.

Cheers for now,
Joel!

The Webbers living a life at the beach said...

That looks great! Well done all! Oh and I love your banner! I can;t owrk out how to make one like that:(
(Whacky, DTE)

Urban Homestead South Africa said...

Thank you Joel. We make our own compost and have a friend up the road who gives us manure. We normally buy our compost, if the need arises, from Master Organics in Ottery. But I will remember your comment should we need more compost. Thanks again!

Whacky - I couldn't do it either so I asked my computer literate daughter to do it for me!!!!