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Making a Wooden Worm Garden

20/3/2017

I have wanted a worm garden for decades but never got around to getting one. I was always afraid that if I forgot to keep the worms damp they would all die in the hot weather.

I had looked at the plastic worm gardens available in hardware stores but was never really taken with them. They were made out of plastic, and I was always worried that a dog could knock them over and it would be 'goodbye worms'.

Well I just found a great video on You Tube that showed me how to make a wooden worm farm. That sounds pretty good to me. It is natural material. It will insulate the worms in hot weather, and because it is heavier, would be more difficult to knock over by a snuffling dog.

It is so easy that I could make it myself, but I think it would be a good project for my Garden Gnome to do. It is simple, so he should get it done pretty soon, I hope.

Enjoy!

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Growing Veggies in a Raised Garden

9/3/2017

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My Garden Gnome, or Mr Elf, whichever you prefer, has been giving our back yard a makeover.

First. Clearing the area of matted couch grass gone wild.

Second. Lots of digging. My Garden Gnome is good at digging, even though he has a sore back.

My Garden Gnome digging in the garden

Third. Design the yard. Draft it all on AutoCAD, a computer program Mr Gnome was an expert on in the past.

There was three times this much soil to screen.

Fourth. Screening two cubic metres of soil from an earlier project to take out all the weeds and all the stones in the soil.

Building a garden bed

Fifth. Build some raised garden beds. Engineering skills were called into action, lots of sleepers bought, and many trips to that famous all purpose handyman store, Bunnings. Pretty jazzy design isn't it? This is the fourth bed. They are all different designs.

Covering the base the garden bed with lucerne hay

Sixth. Filling the bed. We started off with a layer of lucerne hay. This is bed No.2. It needed to be this shape to fit beside out chicken's shed. Garden Gnome is also pretty good at moving wheelbarrows full of soil. Heavy work there!

We added chicken manure from our chicken sheds, cow manure, soaked coir to retain the moisture, some compost, and lots of other goodies along the way.

Zucchinis taking over the garden bed

Growing veggies
I had some potatoes with eyes that had been hanging around for just too long, so they were first in the bed. Next came some carrot seed, and zucchini. Well the zucchini plants were tiny when we planted them, but, you know what? They grew and grew, and grew. They ended up with leaves twice the size of my head. The leaves covered the carrots so we didn't get any carrots. The potatoes grew and grew too. We have harvested zucchinis and potatoes.

I have decided that I don't like the leaves of the zucchini. They are very prickly and they spread everywhere. So maybe next year, they will not be invited back, although it was lovely to eat fresh, organic veggies without much work.

I also planted some spaghetti squash in there too, but they didn't stand a hope with the aggressive zucchini. Oh well, now I know.

That's the story of Bed No.1.

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Spring is the Time for Flowers

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I love growing flowers in my garden and sometimes make Flower Essences from them. They have great healing properties. Chickens adorn my backyard and give me much pleasure too.

My garden is free range like my chickens, there is no order here. All plants get along happily together.

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