Community Garden Dandenong – Continued

Our raised beds are 2.4 metres x 1-metre-wide and 60 cm high, built out of environmentally friendly hard wood.  Never use wood that has been treated by chemicals such as arsenic or that you don’t know where it has come from.  We also put on the edge of each bed a seat which is great for putting tools but even better sitting on especially for elderly gardeners.

Barrowing soil is heavy work and luckily we had lots of strong helpers.  We had filled one bed on the previous Friday and with five strong chaps we finished filling the other five beds by the end of the day.

Only the best soil

The soil we purchased was especially made up for growing vegetables, some sand, some clay, plus mushroom compost (contains lots of calcium) which is good for acidic soils as it raises the pH, cow manure and some charcoal.  Charcoal from the fire is great for improving the size and colour of fruit and vegetables.  Just remember its pH is alkaline so acid loving plants such as lemons do not like it.

With all this rain we have recently had, the beds are
bursting full of goodness waiting for us to plant.

Rabbit proof fence

But we cannot plant until we have established the rabbit proof fence, yes, our site has bunnies who would love to eat our vegetables.  After consultation it was decided that we would bury our rabbit proof wire about 500 mm deep.

Our next blog will be about digging our ditch and how we install the fence.