This is the basics of building a no dig garden.
These types of gardens are handy if you are limited on space, don't have the tools or inclination to work over the ground you currently have, or the ground is unsuitable.
The easiest way by far, is to buy one of those raised garden beds available from most large gardening shops. This saves you a lot of time.
However some brands can be quite expensive. And if you build your own you have the luxury of customising it to the space you have available.
You will need:
- treated wood (cut to lengths needed, two long and two short pieces if you are building a rectangle)
Nails
Weed mat
Soil (we'll cover that later)
Posts if you are growing climbing herbs
Chicken wire fencing, once again, for climbing herbs
Lay out your wood in the rough shape it will go together. This prevents trying to find it all later. Lay one short piece and one long piece into a 90 degree right angle, or the first corner. Nail the two pieces together. You can also screw it together with a drill if you like. Do the same with the remaining four corners,
A quick note about sizes. Each person will have different requirements when it comes to their garden, so I won't give suggested measurements. What I will say is you want your garden to be at least 30-40cm high. Otherwise there is not enough space for the roots to spread out.
After the shell of your garden is complete, lay down your weed matting. This prevents all your hard work going out the window. You can usually cut the mat with scissors, so lay your matting out and cut as needed.
Now for your soil. Good quality soil (for gardening anyways) is a mixture of compost, soil or earth, fertiliser and manure. My no dig garden is 1.2m by 0.9m, and is 30cm high. This means I have a surface area of 1.08m, and need enough to fill up to that 30cm line.
Once I place the weed matting into the raised garden, I'll put down enough soil (this can be soil from a gardening centre, your backyard, potting mix, whatever is cheap and available to you) to fill it halfway. To this, I'll add enough manure (chicken or cow works best for herbs, or so I've found) to fill it to 3/4 full. Then I'll add some compost. Compost from the shops are rather expensive, but you don't need much. One bag should do you fine. Alternatively you can make your own compost. That will have to be another post though, as its quite an exhaustive topic! Fill until there is about 5cm or so of space left till the top.
Now let this sit. Don't plant anything!! You need to give the soil mix time to get to know one another, adjust to local temperatures, etc, etc. Really you just need to give the soil time to compact and the manure time to breakdown. Give it at least a week.
After its rested, go ahead and plant your herbs. Be sure to label them if you are not familiar with the appearance of the herbs!! When they have sprouted, lay a layer of mulch at least 5cm thick around them. Be sure to leave a hole in the mulch around the plants. It should be 5cm in radius from each plant. This way the plant doesn't rot from moisture.
Water your plants in. Happy gardening!
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