The bed measures 10 x 15 feet. All the advice I'd read said to not start too big (not more than 20 x 20 ft) as a lot of material is necessary to set up a permaculture garden. I'm sure glad I took this advice! I installed the garden in the backyard where out current row-by-row, rotter-tilled garden sits. The permaculture bed sits two-thirds in the old garden and one third on the lawn. My mom is skeptical about this working out so she's going to keep working her garden the way she's been and I'll concentrate on permaculture. We'll see how the two compare. My long-range plan is to install a permaculture garden every year until the old garden and most of the back lawn is taken over. By then I'm confident mom will be converted to permaculture.
I used what's called a keyhole design as the path in the center is shaped like a key hole. Here the garden is measured out and I'm building up the end in the lawn to have things level.
In this next photo, you can see the newspapers and manure plus the start of the straw.
Here's what all went into this baby in order of layering:
- 5 wheelbarrows manure
- a 3-ft-high stack of newspapers spread all over
- 12 wheelbarrows of manure
- 5 and a half bales of straw and hay
- 50 5-gal pails of compost
- 2 bales of straw
- 17 5-gal pails of sawdust for the path
The newspaper part was a little tricky as once I started spreading them out the wind picked up. Thank goodness I had read to have the hose near by and I sprayed things down every few minutes and this worked perfect to keep the whole thing from blowing away.
Here's what the finished project looks like:
My little permaculture helper, Sugar
Resident garter snake checks out the new scene
Tuza and Jupiter like the new digs
Now all I have to do is plant it! There's only a few things I'm going to put in before winter and when I get that done I'll tell you about it. Next post will be about the gray water pond I put in. Chow for now and happy gardening!
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