My vegie garden and backyard

hi Lisanne

I like what your doing with the veggie garden. I've done one just recently myself.
its a similar size to the ones you're doing (1m x 2m) but i've made them raised and out of corrigated iron. I have a bad back and have found that having it raised (about 820mm) my back never complains when i spend time tending to the veggies. maybe you could look into doing one or two of them raised, its really good for things like lettuce, carrots, spinach or anything that doesn't grow to high (over 700mm).

Na the paths are spot on
You only need enough space to move and step
I'd be looking at doing espaliered bloody everything later on and the lemon and especially the lime are a great idea. Have you seen the price of limes! Get some stone fruit in too as the garden and budget matures and you will be glad you did

Drop treated pine poles or better still is galv tube. Then you will need to wire run every 400mm.

As for the veggie gardens, well I don't get the whole concept of having newspaper down? I mean the plants get nothing from it. and it just might make you feel better about doing it. and in that case if it makes someone feel better then by all means do it. A no dig garden is a good idea Lisanne but using tent pegs?? chuck that idea and get some simple pegs of timber cut or star pickets, they will go much deeper in the soil and offer far better strength for a raised bed It's a new area, star pickets are everywhere

if you got some star pickets in and they were tall later on you might be able to us them with a bit of shade cloth over head if you had something that was getting burnt from the sun. ( some veggie etc)

Some friends of ours used all their excess bricks to build a frame work for raised veggie beds. No mortar, just the bricks. I was a bit surprised at first but it's worked well and means they can alter the beds as it suits them.

I was going to get some thing to make ours but we still have quite a few bricks over even after Dh used a good few to do a 5 m temp path so I'm now considering doing this as well.

Veggie patch will have to wait until I finish the first front garden bit though.

Whilst I think you can avoid the cement, IMO you probably can't avoid bonding the bricks together.

However you could use construction adhesive as shown in http://www.ehow.com/how_5266272_build-g ... ement.html .

The pipe hanger strap is a perforated galvanised strap which you can get from Bunnies in the plumbing section (lots of people use it for tieing inflow pipes to water tanks). The simple purpose of the hanging strap is to create an even gap between the bricks, and because it's non-compressible, stops the building adhesive from extruding out from between the brick and there not being enough goop between the bricks for bonding.

So materials are pretty cheap...some gravel etc to level out the base, construction adhesive for bricks, perforated straps, and an adhesive gun.

If you have a spider phobia you may want to cap the bricks...spiders will love the holes in the top of the bricks...

As far as star pickets go, you can get different sizes from Bunnies from about 300 mm up in 300 mm increments...a piece of advice based on bitter experience, by the star picket caps whilst you are there...

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Two reasons...the ends of the pickets get bashed around a bit and the jagged bits of metal can grab your lower legs...and the caps will protect you from picket ends at eye level.

Serving suggestion only...

Cheers, Mike

I've only seen the veggie garden once but i think its 4 or 5 bricks high. no bonding.

Don't like the look of that hole. Seems the bunnies are busy doing some serious digging. If you laid chicken wire as a base before adding the soil to your raised veggie garden it might deter them but then of course after a while the wire would rust/ deteriorate. But at least it would maybe stop the bunnies digging up into your patch.

Keep it to 300 mm increments to get standard size timbers...so 1.2 x 1.8...chippy will be able to knock it pretty quickly. As an idea:

Redgum Sleepers...1.8 m x 200 mm high x 50 mm about $15 per length
Redgum Sleepers...1.8 m x 200 mm high x 75 mm about $21 per length
Treated Pine Sleeper...1.8 m x 200 mm high x 50 mm about $11 per length
Treated Pine Sleeper...1.8 m x 200 mm high x 50 mm about $16 per length

Add 10% for wastage...probably $50 - $75 for hardware, screws, gal brackets.

You can work on the per metre price based on that...I'm sure people can give you prices local to home.

Oh and be prepared now for the philosophical debate of treated pine versus non-treated....

they look relaly good TDL. I have swung between them, doing temp straw bale walls and maybe brick walls. can't decide. We also have some other friends who have those metal ones and asked them what they thought of them and they think they are terrific. it all comes down to cost, gardens space and whether you want the flexibility of changing the bed size.

No they aren't . Can't think why but I ahve actually seen them on display. the reason why they aren't sharp escapes me atm. I think they have a rolled over edge or something. Maybe just blunted so they aren't razor sharp. if it worries you then you can buy cheap hosing slice it open and fit it over the top edge. as a capping. We used to have a raised veggie bed done with half pine (treated) logs. Was fine until the buffalo lawn and some some Kikuyu started invading at the corners.


If you plan on very raised beds then don't make them wider than you can reach. Unless you fancy always having to climb up into them to get your veggies.