One man's trash is another's treasure!

A few weeks ago I ran into the wife of the owner of a local sawmill (they "farm wood" to make palettes) and enquired whether they sell slats to the public. She wanted to know what I wanted to do with them and after explaining about the raised veggie beds she suggested I drive through and have a look on their "scrap pile" as she thought I might find some useable pieces there. I was welcome to take anything I wanted free of charge she said as they regularly burnt these piles when it rained. She also told me that I could have as much sawdust as well as composted sawdust as I wanted. My interest was peaked ;-) So last week The King of Avalon left me his little workhorse and The Princes and I drove through to the mill, this is what met our eyes...

The scrap pile

The sawdust

We were bowled over, what TREASURE!!! We did six trips in total and this is what we have constructed so far...

A fence, well okay fence posts, but it is a sign of something great to come...

The Veggie Patch Gate

And a quarter of the raised beds

The gate was proudly designed and made by The Princes (it was constructed in the garage one evening and presented to me the next morning as I was asleep by the time it had been completed). All it's cost us is fuel to haul the wood, nails, hinges and quite a bit of time and energy. The latter The Princes were quite motivated to contribute, I'm so proud and excited!

I have the new Veggie Patch planned!

It was fun and easy using the free trial offered by GrowVeg! However the hard works starts now transforming this:

into this:

I can't believe that I am able to fit so many raised beds in (we might indeed be able to feed the family!)! It's a whopping 30.10m x 10.30 m and I've kept most paths just wide enough (50cm) to accommodate the wheelbarrow's feet. My main concern was having enough potatoes, carrots, onions and sweet corn (and lots of salad greens of course) - the idea is to stagger the planting so that we continually have a crop throughout the season (it's called succession planting).

I don't think we have collected enough black wattle to build the twelve 1,8m x 1,8m compost bins (one for every month) never mind anything else. Problem is the growing season for some veg starts NOW (e.g. garlic & early potatoes) with most other in mid August (after the last frost) - time is short and the (willing) workers few!!! Removing the grass & building raised beds are the first priority - we have clay soil (very poor drainage) and this is the solution. We'll also be digging a "L-shaped" trench in the vacant space (top & left) to lead excess water away. In the long run raised beds are also easier to maintain and thus worth the expense and effort. I was hoping to use wattle for them (see below),

but to save time and labour we might have to resort to buying some of those slats which still have bark on the one side  for the really urgent ones (they're a little cheaper than perfect planks)...

Looks good, hey? Hope you're inspired too... :-)

The plans (for now)...

We need to start off by building Wattle fences. Black Wattle is an invader tree from Australia and it's stealing all our water and the indigenous trees' space. So the green- and frugal plan is not to buy any wood but to harvest our own from the commonage (areas that are not privately owned) instead. I would like to build a new chicken coop and run, fence in the new veggie patch (to protect it from the animals) as well as possibly the orchard so that it's also chicken-friendly (and will keep the dogs out while the chooks are "free-ranging"). We're thinking of even building raised veggie beds from Wattle. Raised beds with bark paths (cheap and easy to source from the local saw mills) will work best as the area I've decide on for the new and improved veggie patch has clay soil and can become water logged (drainage definitely needs to be planned).

The site of the new veggie patch

Then I dream of drip irrigation from the reservoir and more fruit- and nut trees in the orchard. Oh, and I really, really want a worm farm. I have been offered worms but need to get my head around the containers to use...

Let the planting begin!

On Sunday morning we woke up to frost and temps still below 10 degrees at 9am! It was too cold to start fiddling in the soil. I started thinking how we were going to protect these poor vulnerable seedlings once planted. I came up with a few ideas but finally was offered the shade cloth that is half draped over the water reservoir (porta pool) to protect the Bass that Prince 2 had thrown in there after a successful fishing expedition (apparently they're hibernating at the bottom & don't need it). After midday The King joined me and we set about planting our precious crop - it was exhilarating! Prince 1 even decided to join us and it wasn't long before the other two also got involved. After removing some grass sods to enable the little gate to open more easily we decided to finally remove the stunted naartjie tree (something I've meaning to do for ages). It has been given a second chance in a pot.