Mowing the Lawn vs No Dig Garden

I love to mow. I feel like Xena the Warrior Princess when I start up the engine with a confident yank. I suspect passers-by are secretly admiring my muscles when they see me start up the Masport. And afterwards, sitting in the backyard it occurs to me that admiring the short, tidy stubble is unreasonably satisfying. But, mowing in a symmetrical pattern and trimming nearby branches with zeal can lead to pedantic obsession. When you start having your cup of tea by the front door to avoid the back lawn you're desperate to mow, it's time to take stock.  When the weekly urge to mow the grass begins to grow into a deepening neurosis, you know it's time to....
Build a No-Dig Garden!!!

The only preparation is to have these things at the ready:

1. A barnyard* of poos (chook, cow, sheep, horse)
2. One big bale of hale
3. A stack of old newspapers
4. 10 or more handfuls worth of Blood and Bone

*The collective noun.

Two bags of each poo type for a strip of 4x1m leaves plenty of leftovers .

And it's all smooth sailing from there:

A more cost-efficient way to source the poo would be to head for the hills.... or a farm which would have this stuff in bountiful supply and probably at mates' rates. However, if you prefer to snuggle to the bosom of the nature-lovin city lady that is CERES, they're 10 bucks a pop at the resident nursery. 

Use some exact way of measuring out the space, e.g. taking one big stride to indicate a metre. Then, once you've worked out the area, pour three bags of black gold (sheep, cow and chook x1 each) to cover the grass (goodbye lawn, you trimmable temptress).

Lay newspapers thick (a good few week's worth of Saturday's Age should cover it). Then make them wet and soggy with the hose. 

Get yer gloves on for this bit. Bucket of Blood and Bone - handfuls of the stuff sprinkled over the top.

Cover with thick layer of hay ( I used the cheap grassy stuff, not fancy chickpea mulch). Sing 'Lay, Lady, Lay' to yourself while you do this. Replace the word 'brass' with 'grass'.

This bit gets exciting. Lay a bag of horse poo on top. This stuff we got from a farm out east. PACKED with fatty looking worms, which I didn't notice. But some resident ladies did.

 Disappoint the chooks by covering up the loot with more hay. And give it all a big soaking with the hose.

Then let it cook for a month or two. before seedlings go in. Peter Cundall and my mum reckon dolomite is also essential. They're probably right.

Stealing the Lawn Back

That's it. I'm stealing the yard back from the lawn. Nothing against him personally - I'm the first to lay down atop a flat cushion of cropped kikuyu or the belly-friendly buffalo. There is, however, a limit to how much aesthetic joy a square stretch of green grass can bring. And with double doors of glass dividing our living area from the backyard view, the opportunity to create a bit of depth and character doth present itself. (elicits Shakespeare, even!).


...(yer, i might be a wanker).




So here's a little salute to being the boss of the lawn and to making a mini-garden -

Had the urge to build. Bought a stack of bricks from a nice lady for 10 bucks.
THEN! dug the lawn up with a mattock. Two wonderful things about that:
1. Now I know what a mattock is.
2. I nearly felt like a proper farmer throwing that thing over my shoulder.

An otherwise waste of sunshine on a patch alongside the back fence!
So far I've just filled it with soil, poo and mushroom compost.
Quiz: how many garden safety hazards can you spot?

Good job, lads.
 

Aw, isn't it a fine and beautiful thing....

The beginnings of a backyard vegie jungle.

Good, Clean Fun

It's been a long time brewing. But finally I have a garden just about busy enough to work in and write about. It's a little less wild and eclectic than the old place (see, I'm already calling it 'the OLD place').


 So, I don't have the good fortune of pre-loved garden to coax and mend like before. There is not much evidence of any gardening inkling in this backyard. The few things I could ascertain about the previous tenant of this place were that  a.) s/he owned a frustrated dog (the only evidence of this: a bare cracked patchy lawn, fossilised dog poos, a well-worn path around the edge of the yard) and that  b.) s/he must've been the indoors type). But there are great things about starting with nothing. No, wait, starting with blagh. Turning blagh into something is almost more rewarding than having a pre-loved garden to start from. 


We're four months on since arriving here and there is now some thick, patchless lawn; lush, fruiting nectarine tree; two composting bins (sigh); pots of herbs and flowers; a wheelbarrow (partly positioned for aesthetic value - see pic below ), bags of poo (possibly also of some aesthetic value.....see pic below) and 2 long rectangular vegie boxes full of yummy things. 


Despite my aversion to symmetry in gardens,  I've settled quite happily with my two giant rectangles of vegie box joy. With full sunlight reaching only one half of the (rectangle-shaped yard) and the limited time/resources available, it was easier to forge ahead with boxes rather than trying to err...locate bendable wooden planks to make more adventurous shapes.  


Today was a day like I used to have. Hours of pottering - thanks largely to two glorious events: a delivery this week of TEN BAGS OF POO to my driveway. And the historic successful harvesting of Rochford Garlic: Generation 2!


 And what more could we want after a sticky sunny day of planting, feeding and mulching? A night of stormy rain. aw cripes.

The Making of a Vegie Box

First, the purchasing of wooden planks (a delicate business).

Wooden plank transporter.

The official 'Before' shot.

Getting an idea about size and position. 

Tools.

Ningers overseeing the whole operation.

Pointy wooden stakes. In absence of vampires, use these to anchor the planks. 

Choose one. Jo is :
A. giving birth,
B. providing a space to park one's bike, or
C. drilling bits of wood together

A complicated looking contraption...

Jo likes drilling.

The lazy way to kill the grass: layers of wet cardboard.

Cow poo administration. 

Getting busted showing a bit of crack, again.

Jerram does the hard bits: shovelling one and a half cubic metres of soil delivered to our door! 

Topping up the box with soil. 

Mister Handsome Pants waters it all in. 

A grass, cardboard, cow poo, soil, water sandwich.

Garnish with a little pea straw.

And finish with a bit of doggy yoga.

The compulsory "After" shot. Ta daaah!!!!!

Gettin Jiggy with the Coloured Pencils and Felt-Tip

What better way to spend an afternoon than to map your garden with a set of kids' coloured pencils and a felt-tip pen?