Make Thy Bed

Yes, yes, I know. The garden buffs among the readership will be calling out to me,"Why on earth are you doing that? Don't you realise that you are spreading the seeds of weeds by sifting your soil like that? Leave the ground as nature intended it, silly!"

Yep. They may be right.

What I see is a number of different weed enemies, most of which I am trying to remove in their entirety, but I cannot give any guarantee that there isn't some of their tiny seeds remaining in the soil, ready to leap out of their husks and smother our plants!

Bed "A" -  KARAKA

Some months ago, we prepared a clay/rock/sand bed, loaded it with compost and planted a number of seedlings. That was Bed "A"- referred to as the Karaka Bed. It is 9m² in size,  measuring approximately 3 metres by 3 metres.

Crops of tomatoes, beans, capsicums and cucumbers were grown and harvested in small quantities. This has subsequently been cleaned out, re-composted and mulched, and sown with various types of spinach and beetroot seeds. We have surrounded the planting areas with green plastic barricade netting as a precaution against inquisitive digging dogs!  

Bed "B" - POHUTUKAWA

Shortly after that, we constructed Bed "B",which we called, if memory serves, Pohutukawa, measuring 12m² approximately 4 metres by 3 metres. This bed was sown with beetroot, spinach, parsley and leeks. The spinach and parsley was OK, but the leeks and beets left a lot to be desired.  On the suspicion that the soil is of poor quality, we have sampled the Pohutukawa bed and sent the sample away for analysis by an agricultural soils laboratory.

The grand plan at the time was to build about six beds. Well, this one, Bed "C" under construction is called Rimu and it measures 20m², approximately 7.7 metres by 2.7 metres. 

Bed "C" under construction - RIMU

The retaining wall of 185mm T&G boards were measured, cut and bolted together in a rectangle recessed about 150mm below the level of the surrounding grassy ground. The soil has been roto-tilled to a depth of about 300mm. The soil composition varies considerably from the left-hand (containing more clay, pebbles and rocks) to the right-hand side (which is more "soil-ly", richer and "organic").

The long job of sifting gets underway

We are now at the stage where the rocks, stones, pebbles, roots and other vermin must be eradicated to give us a smooth lean planting medium. Whilst the process is labour-intensive and time-consuming, sieving the sand spadeful by spadeful is very efficient and, I should imagine, beneficial in the long run. Once this has been cleaned out, we can look at importing and blending in some good compost, roughly in the ratio of 1 part compost to 3 parts soil over a depth of about 250mm.