It's now early August and I want to record a timeline of our wonderful garden here. We have two dwarf plum trees (the plums are dwarf, not the trees), two apricot trees, a peach tree, a cherry tree, about 10 metres of raspberry canes, two soft fruit bushes which I think are redcurrents and lots of wild strawberries. Our veggie garden consists of six beds which are 3.5 x 1.2 metres, four raised beds of 2.8 x 1.2 metres and one other of 80 cm x 4 metres.
So we started with just a concrete path and what was once a vegetable garden here is filled with cut down blackberry, nettle and weeds:
And of course a fence that needs replacing. These pictures where taken in early March.
So I started digging! I cleared it all by hand. It took months to finish it all, so I focused on one bed at a time.
I didn't take any pictures for a while, must have been too busy digging the weeds out! We used the concrete batons from the top of the dismantled fence to build paths between the garden beds, then I put some green plastic garden borders around the beds to hold the soil in.
One of the pictures above shows a bed I didn't finish until the middle of June when I finally planted six Aubergine orlando plants.
In May I convinced Willi that I needed lots more space for all the seedlings I'd grown. The first task was to build a long bed along the back fence. I planted runner beans on the edges, a gold rush zucchini in the middle, two butternut pumpkins and two halloween style pumpkins (can't get the seed packet to check the name, cat on my lap). I also had some watermelons on the sides, but they never grew any bigger.
But I wasn't satisfied with just that bed, I had another plan. I wanted to add four more beds opposite the six existing ones, and I wanted them to be raised. Well dear Willi got all clever and decided that first we needed to level out the soil on that side of the path. So farmer Viertl brought a tractor load of top soil over. We spread that out and rolled it out. Then We went to the local quarry and bought gravel for the paths and rocks for the edges to hold the soil in. Willi's next clever idea (I love him so much!) was that we should have a rockery for herbs at the end of each bed as well as stone steps. And he built the four beds for me. We collected some beautiful dark compost from the council in Krems which was only €10 per cubic metre. We ended up taking three trailer loads and I put it on the other garden beds too.
The compost:
Filling the beds, building the paths and steps:
And the end result with herbs and veggies planted:
The fence has been finished in the last picture above too.
Thanks for all your help guys!
