Burners' Backyards: Veggies, Gardening, Landscape & Design

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Progress! Final leveling of the gravel before the planters are planted. Also have to drill some drain holes in the edging, a job for this afternoon.

Planters due late this week, early next then fit the irrigation piping, fill with rubble, hay, garden soil and mulch and plant them out. Sourced the trees and veges...





Note the cat with no fucks to give about the wet stuff.



Will set a wee woodrack next to the chiminea (which hasn't been used for a long long time)

Borrowed cousin's (he with the red mini track toy) concrete mixer. It needs some repairs to the frame and the bowl has a rust hole. I fixed it temporarily for my use. Cousin said gee thanks. Not sure if I can use gorilla tape to fix the rusty frame bits though.

Told my wife the engine crane is too heavy to move now so we can just put a hanging basket in the hook. She was not a fan.



All in all worked out ok. Tractor was used for about half the work. Discovered that the weed matting will move even under 50mm of gravel when the tractor drives on top! Bastard! Had to move about 4 or 5t of gravel by hand. Ah well, done now.

Bit more excavating to do on the grass side and then wait until spring for some good grass growing weather.
 

Elbo

pesky scooter kids git off ma lawn
Finished building two raised beds which I'll cover using a poly tunnel to protect from cabbage moths and fruit fly.
Opted for treated pine mostly due to cost. From all reports it sounds like CCA leaching into the soil isn't a huge risk, particularly if not planting root vegetables. However, just to be on the safe side, I'm lining them with builders plastic before filling them.
The beds are 2.4m x 1m with a 50cm path in-between. A 4m length of conduit will form a nice tunnel over the whole lot, high enough in the middle to make it comfortable working under the netting.



Also, something I saw my neighbour using to grow snow peas, was this polystyrene box with a teepee trellis formed our of sticks and small gauge wire. He gave me the seedlings, so I thought I'd try the same method. Easily covered or moved if necessary.

 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
@Elbo I am going to suck it and see about the cover but if needed same idea as yours. Tobe honest i am more concerned about cheryl and russel flying in and causing harm.
 

Elbo

pesky scooter kids git off ma lawn
@Elbo I am going to suck it and see about the cover but if needed same idea as yours. Tobe honest i am more concerned about cheryl and russel flying in and causing harm.
We lost all our apricots to fruit fly, and plums to parrots, last year, so I'm not taking any chances! Cockatoos are circling too, the bastards! The dogs have already been digging in the new beds, so it may need covering all the time.

Our mandarins are starting to turn orange now. I noticed a few aphids and leaf miners on there, so will have to keep an eye on that, but planting more flowers now to try and attract more natural predators.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Raised beds in, micro irrigation done and beds planted. Some herbs to go in with the avocado and a good solid mulching tomorrow. General tidy up as well. Need to drag some of the lumps out of the gravel from the tractor loading the beds. One hose in the fel is leaking at the crimp so will need to replace that too, still the tractor saved a lot of back ache. Now I need to paint the shade sail posts to match...



Trees: dwarf avocado, apple, mandarin and orange
Veges: Lettuce (cos and iceberg), spring onions, capsicum, brown onions, sage, broccoli, bok choi, sweet potato, snow peas and some exotics...

Need to cover the exotics so they cannot be seen from the sky, must be to keep birds away.
 

Calvin27

Eats Squid
Is there a specific reason for planters generally being around 2x1m? Is there any reason I shouldn't do a longer stretch or a more narrow one?

I'm thinking of making one about 600w and 3.5m long along a boundary. Will have access to N and W sun.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Just ease of access around and across. 2m wide works if you access from each side. Length depends how far you want to walk to get around it. When I was thinking of using corrugated iron beds I was getting 3x1.2 and putting them next to the shed tank. Behind the house went for something a little more aesthetically pleasing.
 

Elbo

pesky scooter kids git off ma lawn
Is there a specific reason for planters generally being around 2x1m? Is there any reason I shouldn't do a longer stretch or a more narrow one?
Another reason is a lot of sleepers come in at 2.4m, so you can make a roughly 2x1m bed without spending ages cutting everything piece of wood you have.
The depth of my raised beds is basically so I can reach into the middle from both sides, and the length is determined by the size of the paths we wanted on each end
One other thing to consider is that depending on the position, depth and material used, the narrower the bed, the more exposed the soil is to fluctuating temperatures. Also if you have dogs, make it high enough that they can't fertilise your capsicums every couple of hours :(
 

cammas

Seamstress
Bit of a dig but appropriate for this thread, as per some of my posts recently I thought I would share some of the work I’ve been doing in the garden instead of riding my bikes.

So my property has an easement on one side due to pipe running up there, what we didn’t know was that there was an inspection pit in the garden as the previous knob owner had buried it then put in Pittosporums on top of it. After 7 years of living there Western water need to access it and they were quite good about it, apologising for having to pull it up, it actually a blessing as what we didn’t notice the garden was built up over the colorbond fence. One thing though they removed most of the hedge leaving one straggly bit so it was time for a make over.

I dug half out by hand and then my neighbour brought over a machine to dig out the rest, I then dug through it removing all the builders plastic that was used as weedmat that broken up by the digging. I then lined the edge of the driveway with sleepers due to the step down and paved a small section for the bins. Whilst I had turned the soil I chucked 1/2 a metre of compost down then covered it in weed mat then put a metre of marble salt rock down, planted some Magnolias to hedge along the fence and some ground cover in the open parts while leaving access to the pit, not that it stopped the farkers from crushing some during the last inspection. I also redid the fence as where the dirt was pushing against it was bent so I put in fresh concrete on the posts whilst realigning them plus I staggered the fence down instead of it sloping down to tidy up the appearance.

I have a love hate relationship with gardening, hate getting started on it but then like the final product and push to get it done to see the results. I still have some fences to do to hide and contain the bins, plus the front fence but here is a crappy before shot and some after shots. Next section is the other side of the driveway where most of it poisoned by my lovely neighbour which I am part way through.

386022


386023


386027


386028

386029
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Had a fuckwit moment tonight with the compost bin. Putting vege scraps in the filling side and managed to bump the sliding door on the growing side. As I spun the bin active compost spewed out on my feet and the paving. Shit. Scraped it up and put it back. Compost looks really good AND lots and lots of tiny worms. The few left on the ground went into the beds.
 

Mr Crudley

Glock in your sock
I have a love hate relationship with gardening, hate getting started on it but then like the final product and push to get it done to see the results. I still have some fences to do to hide and contain the bins, plus the front fence but here is a crappy before shot and some after shots. Next section is the other side of the driveway where most of it poisoned by my lovely neighbour which I am part way through.
I hear you. It does look good once you get there but it is fair slog of effort to get it all done.

Mrs gets bit carried away with gardening, so the smaller things to do end up with some scope creep and can take on bigger than Jesus epic proportions. This does sponge up riding time and I have entertained it for a while now but there has to be an end point....Errrr..... right.
How can I keep up with other stupid, time wasting pursuits if gardening is front and centre :D

I can't think of how many plant shop and Bunnings visits I have done in the past year.
 
Top