FOURTH AVE DIY

There has always been a small (well, not _that_ small) pile of garden clippings/waste in the corner of the garden; an almost-compost pile which the grass had grown over. It looked quite ugly just slumped down there in the corner against the fence.

Manda and I toyed with the idea of getting a man in to just take it all away, but then common sense (and the insanely prohibitive cost of such a thing) kicked in and we decided to do something way more constructive with it. Build a vege garden.

Here are the steps we took to get there:

Step one

Buy a spade and a garden fork. This was an easy and cheap purchase from Pak n Save of all places while we were cruising the aisles. Sure these aren’t the Rolls-Royces of garden cutlery but they’ll do the trick till we can afford to upgrade.

Step two

Procrastinate. A lot.

Step three

Mark out a spot for the garden. This was a fairly simple step. The last thing we wanted to do was move all this (now almost completely decomposed) garden trash too far from the source. This led us to pretty much marking out a rectangular section of garden around the pile of waste.

Step four

Level out the pile of garden scraps. This is where the spade and fork come in. It took us about 45 mins to weed out all the tall grass and inorganic debris and level it out into the shape of the garden bed to come.

Step five

Add some blood & bone fertiliser to the existing compost. This helps prepare with soil for planting, etc. This is as simple as adding 4-5 cups/handfuls per square metre of soil.

Step six

Border the garden bed with railway sleepers because they look awesome and will then match the herb bed by the back steps. We haven’t quite got to this step yet, but it too should be quite simple. The place we’re going to get our sleepers from in Onehunga will deliver and place them where we want so there will be very little to do other than nail it all together by us.

Step seven

Plant and be happy.

The garden looks a whole lot neater now that that pile of trash is gone. And I feel a lot better about using it for good and not evil!

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