Side Garden Project - Planning and Building Raised Garden Beds
Hello friends,
After we had taken down the old aviary/berry cage, it was time to get to work turning this space into garden beds.
The first task was to weed the area, tidy up the fence line, and move two concrete pavers. Once I pulled out all the weeds and then tidied the fence line by putting old pieces of wood up against it for protection, hubby and I maneuvered the pavers into the space next door, where I have my worm farm located.
With all that done I ordered macrocarpa sleepers from our local garden centre for creating the new garden beds. The sleepers are 1.8 m long, which was the exact size we needed for that space.
The next step was to first put up some old trellises for our raspberry bushes, so we could train them along the fence line. We then create 90 cm wide beds using the macrocarpa sleepers, with 50 cm pathways in between for easy access to the garden beds. It was a lot of hard work considering there was a lot of river pebbles in the area. We transferred those river pebbles into the pathways between the garden beds when we were finished.
Once all the beds were in place, hubby did the hard work of digging over the garden beds and adding compost. The first bed closest to the garden shed was set aside for the strawberry plants I had put into pots in the glasshouse before the aviary was removed.
The next garden bed was set aside for my natural dyeing plants including Madder, Woad, St John's Wort, Tomentil, and Lemon Sorrel, which I had squeezed in another garden bed down the side of the house. While transferring the plants I was able to harvest some of the madder roots for natural dyeing. I have enough space leftover now to put more natural dyeing plants in the other half of the garden bed this spring.
Garden beds 3 and 4 are currently empty, and they still need to have compost added, before being prepared to a fine tilth for spring.
My plan is to grow Linen and Japanese indigo plants in bed 3: I have my own homegrown flax linen seeds in storage from last year, and I bought Japanese indigo seeds from Growing Textiles last autumn with the intention to grow my own indigo plants for natural dyeing, and also for indigo seed production.
In bed 4 I want to start my own breeding experiments with dahlias. I've wanted to do my own plant breeding for ages, and I now have the space to start this. I have dahlia seeds set aside from last year's plants to do this. I'm very excited about this project and can't wait to get started in spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Foraging for Alder Cones
Hello friends,
Today's adventure was a neighborhood walk to a nearby stand of Alder trees (Alnus glutinosa) on public land, so I could forage some female Alder cones to use in natural dyeing later on in the year.
With my trusty wicker basket in hand, I wandered off down the street...
It didn't take me long to arrive at the stand of Alder trees I was hoping would contain many fallen Alder cones.
And I was in luck, thankfully. After weeks and weeks of hot, dry weather with little to no wind, Dunedin's weather has reverted back to cooler temperatures, rain showers, and gusts today. The grass on public land was absolutely littered in good quality Alder cones, so I got to work.
It didn't take me long to fill up my basket with cones, I barely made a dent in the thousands scattered all over the grass.
And after a quick peek across the road to notice a stand of Eucalyptus trees also on public land, I made a note on my phone to come back and forage for those next week, and then headed off back home via a local park. It's a pretty, small park with lots of deciduous trees that will have a brilliant display of autumnal colors in a month or so. I'll have go back in early April to take some photos.
But to my surprise, I was shocked to see a mother duck, and her four very small ducklings outside a home that backs onto the park. It is very late in summer now for such small ducklings. They were very cute, and it was nice seeing them so close. But I left the park soon after, so that the mother duck wouldn't have to worry about my presence anymore.
I scurried back home between rain showers, and then laid out the Alder cones to dry out. I'll store them away once I'm sure they're completely dry, and later on in the year I'll post my next adventure of dyeing with them.
Have a wonderful day,
Julie-Ann
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