A tour of our garden

When we moved into our quarter-acre property over 20 years ago, we attempted to grow cabbages, Brussels sprouts and cauliflowers for ourselves in the back yard to the east of the house. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very successful experiment as the whole crop was wiped out nearly overnight by some pests.

Since then, there's been nothing but grass and weeds growing there. Then, this summer, the topic of growing in a poly tunnel came up. Shortly after, we'd ordered a decent-looking 3m by 6m tunnel for around €250. It took us a while to get it ready for planting (more posts on this to follow) but finally we had various spaces to grow things:

• Three 1m by 1.4m raised beds along the long, south wall
• Space for up to four grow bags along the north wall (only using 3)
• A staging area with several shelves (a cheap, tall mini-greenhouse with the cover left off)
• Extra floor space for various large (20cm plus) container-grown plants (plus tools and such)

I ended up assuming responsibility for growing things in the tunnel. So far, in the two months from early August when I sowed the first seeds to now (the start of October), things have mostly gone pretty well. I realised early on, though, that we wouldn't be able to grow very much in the limited space of the tunnel—neither in terms of quantity of produce nor in terms of producing all the varieties of food we might like to eat. We would need some outside space to grow large plants like kale that could provide food over winter. At first I considered large containers, but in the end decided that we'd need a proper outdoor bed sooner or later.

By this time, the only resources we had to hand were over a tonne of bought-in topsoil left over from building the raised beds in the tunnel (we deliberately got more than we needed), a 55-gallon drum of compost that had been sitting in the end of the garden for quite a few years and a newer compost "dalek" that was only partly filled. I wanted to go with raised beds for easier access, better drainage and to help stop the encroachment of weeds from the surrounding ground, but didn't want to go to the expense of building with timber. After a bit of brainstorming and researching on the Internet, I decided on using sandbags for the walls of the bed. I ordered around €50's worth, but ended up only using half of them. The bed's vital statistics are:

• around 3' by 12' inside area
• dug underground to a spade's depth
• two sandbags high (around 8")

I used a kind of mix of Hügelkultur and lasagne gardening ideas to construct the layers, finishing up with about an inch and a half of eggshell-heavy compost. I'll get back to talking about these topics in later posts, but for now I'll keep this post focused on giving a brief tour of the garden. With the first outside bed completed, we have an extra 36 square feet for planting, which is around the same as the raised beds inside.

The main reason I went with the Hügelkultur idea was that the one other resource that we had plenty of was rotten wood. We used to have Griselinia hedges around the fence, but I'm sure that many Irish people will know that these hedges died en masse throughout the country in the last severe winter that we had a few years ago. We mostly just left the skeletons there since then—even if they were a bit unsightly they still worked as a hedge to some degree (blocking the view and providing a bit of protection from the winds)—so I had a ready supply of rotted wood that suits the Hügelkultur method.

I'm mentioning the Hügelkultur method here because around the same time that I was thinking of a permanent (or semi-permanent, since I could always move the bags if I wanted) outside bed, I was also thinking about building a bed specifically for growing comfrey. Besides all the good things that I'd read about comfrey, I'd also read various warnings about how invasive it could be if left unchecked. Besides the apparent benefits of the mound method (which is how I'll probably refer to Hügelkultur from now on since I don't have any umlauts on my keyboard, and it's kind of awkward) for building a cheap, hassle-free bed that can last several years at least, I also went with the mound as my strategy for preventing the comfrey plants from "escaping".

I haven't actually measured my comfrey bed since I completed it, but I reckon it's about 8' long, 3' wide and maybe 2.5' to 3' tall. At the moment, since it's the wrong time of year to plant comfrey on it I've sown a mix of clovers and white mustard on it as a green manure or cover crop.

The final stop in this short tour of the garden is my "Straw Bale Garden". I came across this idea by accident when I was researching how to use straw in the garden. I'd intended to get a few small bales to use as a mulch on both beds and pathways and as a handy (and cheap!) brown material to add to "lasagne" beds and to the compost heap (to balance out too many greens from the kitchen). I also thought about using bales as retaining walls for a raised bed but decided it wasn't practical. I did come across the idea of growing stuff directly on the bales as espoused by Joel Karsten. I ended up buying his book (ISBN 978-1-59186-550-6). As yet, I don't have anything planted there as I'm waiting for seedlings to grow rather than sowing directly. Otherwise, they're pretty much ready for growing things in:

• Seven bales, each measuring 1' by 3' (and 1.5' high)
• Arranged like a lower-case 'n' with the two "legs" going north-south,
• An espalier strung across both north-south legs
• Weed-suppressing membrane and wood chips inside

It's easier to show this than to explain it, so I'll follow up later with some pictures. This post has been quite a bit longer than I would normally want for this blog, so if you've read this far then thank you! I'll try to limit myself to more "bite-sized" posts in future. I promise.