This weekend I finished preparing the first garden bed. The chooks have been on it for a couple of weeks and they’ve cleared off the weeds, seeds and bugs. The approach I’m using to cultivate is known as ‘double-digging’, as used by the French Bio-intensive gardners and as described in the book How To Grow More Vegetables.

Essentially you dig out a narrow trench at one end of the bed, about 300mm wide. This soil goes in the wheelbarrow, and the soil at the bottom of the trench is loosened with a garden fork. Another trench is then dug and the soil goes in the first trench, and so on until you reach the end of the garden bed.

Here’s a picture half-way through digging the bed:

The result of double-digging is loose, friable soil to a depth of about two spades. This is great for my garden because I’m starting with solid clay, but if your soil is already in good condition there’s not much point double-digging. In this case ‘no dig’ techniques are better because there’s less disruption to the soil structure and worms, etc. I’m hoping a program of double-digging and adding lots of organic matter will increase the quality of my garden beds so that in a few years time they won’t need digging at all.

Finished digging:

The bed has been mulched with approx 50mm of barley straw and a thin layer of manure/mulch compost. The first crop of Tender Green beans, W.F. Massey peas and broad-beans have been planted and I’ll plant another 2 crops of each over the next month.

Here’s a good excuse for a trip to the beach — collecting seaweed to use as a garden fertilizer. Seaweed is rich in several micro-nutrients that are hard to get from other sources. The best way to use seaweed is to soak it in water for a couple of weeks and pour on the garden. Here’s a picture of the ‘brew’ :

The water has already gone quite brown, even though it’s only been soaking for a few days. It’s currently brewing in a 20L plastic bucket, but I’m keeping an eye out for a bigger container.

When I first moved in the garden was very overgrown. On one part of the boundary there was a 2 meter wide hedge. Considering the section is only 13 meters wide, that was a considerable chunk of wasted space. So, one of the first things I did was to chop down the hedge and build a retaining wall in its place. It’s been quite a big job, but it’s finally completed.

Here’s a series of pictures giving a rough ‘time-line’ (you can click on each image to see a bigger version):

The garden as it was when I moved in:

The hedge spread out over the lawn:

Building the wall:

The wall filled in and ready for something to be planted there:

And here’s the neighbours view of the wall :

I’m never a straight-forward person and there’s several interesting reasons for why I’m developing Gaura Urban Permaculture. I thought it might be good to articulate one or two of them.

If I wanted to take a spiritual tangent, then I’d claim I’m doing this because A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (the founder of the Hare Krishna movement) wanted his followers to establish self-sufficient rural communities; places where people can live simply and focus on spiritual life.

This is an aspect of Hare Krishna that’s always been calling me, and I’ve been dreaming about moving to a farm community for several years. My thinking has changed recently, because I’ve realized that it would be quite impractical for me to suddenly move to the country and expect to live off the land. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start! However, something practical that I can do now is to learn how to grow my own food and live simply in an urban environment.

Simple living and environmental consciousness are central aspects of the Hare Krishna philosophy. I’m hoping to make my contribution by practically demonstrating this philosophy.

I’m making copious amounts of compost at the moment. The Higher Taste restaurant is supplying two (or more) 20L buckets of scraps daily. I’m layering that with barley straw ($5/bale from a farmer near Palmerston North). It seems to be making a great compost, as the pile has heated up nicely and there’s no bad smells. I’ll turn the heap in a few weeks and then I’ll get a better idea of how the composting is going. Here’s a picture of the compost bins I built (you can click on it to get a bigger image):

I’ve also made a compost heap of mulched tree and hedge prunings mixed with horse manure from a local stables. This is quite slow to break down — the wood chips are much coarser than straw. At the moment it’s halfway between a mulch and a compost, which is quite useful around fruit trees. I’ll also dig a couple of inches in when I double dig the garden beds.

Making compost has been one of the first priorities in the garden. It’s absolutely essential for organic garden soil to have a good quantity of organic matter, and that’s what compost supplies. Humus, to be precise. The soil I’m starting with has a thin layer of topsoil that the grass grew in, and under that its clay. So before I plant anything, the first priority is looking after the soil.

Since Hare Krishna devotees don’t eat meat and eggs, you may wonder why I keep chickens. It’s obviously not for the eggs, and the chickens will never be killed for meat (when they die of natural causes, I’ll just bury them deep in the compost heap).

The reason for keeping chickens is that they are great workers to have in the garden. They eat all sorts of pest insects and weed seeds, and at the same time fertilize the garden bed with their manure. The chickens live in a “chicken tractor”, which is simply a movable coop. They sit on a garden bed for about two weeks, and then they’re moved to the next bed.

Here’s a picture of the tractor that I designed and built (the picture was taken before the chickens moved in - you can click on it to get a bigger image).

And one of the happy residents: