We decided I would work on a raised bed to start with and plant the perimeter thus giving students in wheelchairs easy access. The site is roughly triangular and is raised with a brick retaining wall to about 1200mm. Existing plantings include Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia reginae), several citrus, a few native shrubs and clumps of Dianella.
My first consideration was the removal of any unwanted plants, to remove weeds and to improve the soil.
We would keep the citrus and rather large clump of Strelitzia and try to relocate most of the other plants.
I hand weeded the garden initially and then started on soil improvement.
The existing soil is light and somewhat hydrophobic (water repellent). I added cow manure, organic soil improver and a soil wetting agent and after a good soaking covered the area with sugar cane mulch and watered it again.
I came back just over a week later to find a bumper crop of new weeds obviously vitalised by their new and improved conditions but with the addition of one of my favorites – onion weed. This will be an ongoing battle for a while because onion weed is difficult to eradicate and the only way to tackle it, short of removing a 150mm layer of soil, is persistence.
The kids are all on holidays now and when they come back their new veggie patch will be ready to plant out and our soil preparation should get the new plants off to a good start.
Comments
Post has no comments.