Day 1 - permaculture garden begins

Yesterday we started our permaculture garden. I was going to do the trench thing mentioned in this article - www.permaculture.org.au

But when we started digging we realised that it took on a very similar shape to our existing timber boxes, so we used those as the garden borders instead. Here's what I did:

1. mowed all the grass and weeds in the area
2. turned the soil over (it's actually not as bad as I thought it was) 
3. tipped a bag of horse poo and  sort of spread it around the garden bed
4. topped with newspaper and then a really thick layer of mulch. 

The reason I put the cardboard on top of the poo is that it could contain grass and weed seeds that I don't want in my garden.

 I'm going to let these beds sit and do their thing for a few weeks until the cardboard and poo start to decompose.

In the bed I actually wanted to plant (in zone 3) I did steps 1- 3 but instead of topping it with mulch I added all the lovely rich compost soil from my compose heap. I was actually surprised by how quickly the leaves and food scraps had turned into lovely soil.

In zone three I planted corn and cucumber, then topped with mulch. Once the corn establishes a bit more I will plant something around the base of it. I also want to plant beetroot and garlic in here, but will wait to see how much room the cucumber and corn take up.