A new gardening experiment

Last year, I grew a vegetable garden with mixed success. More than in part, this was due to my location's rocky soils. This year I read a book that got me interested again, it is "square foot gardening" by Mel Bartholemew. While this is an English book, there are parts of his gardening philosophy I find particularly attractive, so I decided to make two gardens of this style for my wife and I.


There are two solutions to stony soil. The first is to dig out the garden bed and place a barrier around it...

Then you take the soil and sieve out all the stones...
Leaving a fine soil left.

Sounds a lot easier than it is!

Thus the appeal of "no-dig" gardening





Take a bag of composted cow manure, a bail of lucerne hay and a bail of cane trash...

Spread half of the manure in a layer, then the lucerne, then the cane trash as a final mulch, wetting down each time.

This bed needs a few weeks before it can be planted in, and won't be able to handle root vegetables for a while - but the total construction time was less than two hours.

Which garden will be the most fruitful? Only time will tell, but the native dirt bed is fertilised and ready for planting...


Yes, the author of "The Square Foot Garden" is a retired engineer.

Can anyone guess why I like his design?