August 2002

In August was we started transforming the weed patch in the backyard into a sustainable garden.  As you can see

from these top two photos, there was an innumerable amounts of weeds in the yard, that were smothering the small,

wilting fruit trees that they surrounded. Other than the weeds, the only other item of interest in the yard, is the shed.

The main weeds I had to contend with were couch on the southern side of the yard, and the horrid, creeping sucker,

buttercup, throughout the rest of the  yard. Both of these noxious weeds were intermingling in a happy companionship

in the middle of the yard

We decided to tackle the rampant weed issue by building raised garden beds,rectangular in shape, made from old

red gum sleepers. On top of the beds we place a chook tractor, for roughly 3 weeks on each bed.  The chooks make

short work of any weeds that may have taken hold on the beds as well as fertilising with their manure.

John bought a large quantity of sleepers at $10 each, and we then dug trenches around the edge of the bed for the

sleepers to be placed in, and held in place with star pickets (roughly $50 worth)  We chose to use star pickets as they

are 'temporary.' And as an ongoing project, we may decide the original design is impractical.  The first bed is directly

behind the shed, and had a quantity of compost, elm leaves and debris from the front yard mulched into the damp clay soil.

The second bed was then constructed and a layer of pine chips were placed around the paths between the beds.

Several of the fruit trees were moved during the building of the new beds. The trees that were moved were the peach, apple and mandarin.