Pepper Pots

For a long while now I’ve been thinking of making a garden.  The other weekend I had the boys to myself for the whole morning and that was the catalyst to do something about it!

First of all, we started with a plan.  Well, a rough plan, kind of in my head.

This transferred to a back of a cocktail napkin kind of plan, and back of an envelope kind of budget to do it.

Off to Bunnings…

As always, I thought I would use treated pine palings to build it.  They’re light, cheap and easy to work with.   As always – I got the boys to hit them with a coat of paint first.  30 minutes in the sun and they were dry.

Then we swung them over, painted the other side, had a cup of tea and a piece of my wife’s delicious apple cake, and we were ready to put it all together.

I simply screwed the four corners together using screws suitable for treated pine.

Then I had a box (similar to the Sandpit frame).

This time I made 2 boxes, and stacked them to make the edges of the garden higher.  I used scrap bits of timber to hold the edges together.

Then, I placed the boxes in the section of ground we boys had grubbed out earlier, and we filled it with potting mix.

Some pavers up the middle to allow for stepping stones, and we were nearly done!!

After that – we got the boys to do some careful planting in neat rows.   We planted all sorts of things, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, two types of beans, corn, carrots, spring onions, radish, lettuce and capsicum.

We watered the whole lot in with seaweed fertliser.

Last of all, I finished off with a fence around the outside, and a makeshift gate to keep chooks and littlest boys out unless we meant to go in there.

Edit I finished up by putting a sprinkler system in there – I hooked this up to the tank and we had a cheap renewable source of water for our garden!

The guinepig and chicken droppings make good fertliser too – the plants seem to be thriving on it!

4 weeks later, and we’ve had our first pickings of beans from the garden.  The lads were so excited they ate them straight away!   I had to encourage them not to go in and pick the leaves and eat them!

Enjoy!

J