A Heart-Shaped Bed

Whether you see it as a kind-of-homage to Kurt Cobain's Heart Shaped Box, or an attempt to bring more love into our garden, or simply the most suitable shape to fill a space, a heart-shaped bed was our next addition. We needed to plant six more beetroot- and six more tomato starts - this would be their home. It took a good while to dig the bed out. Between breaking up super-hard clay and cutting away old hard roots, it seemed never-ending - but, after a good while of manual labour, we could start preparing the soil.


Once our usual compost and Gold Dust had been mixed with the clay-rich-soil, the new occupants moved in. We would have to put up some bamboo to support the tomatoes at some point - but that can wait for now. We framed the bed with some white stones we got from the nursery in order to make it stand out. Tree bark and some of our stones were used to join the bed into rest of the garden.

Although the sun had already left us, the finished
product still stood out very well.

Painting with Sunflowers

Apart from the few baby sunflowers we had planted in our vegetable beds, we still had a small army of ready-to-plant ones waiting in trays. After scanning the unused sunny areas in our garden, it was clear that they would find their new home behind the wall that runs along our watermelon patch. Although the soil was - again - rich in clay, this spot gets a nice amount of sun throughout the day. After the tedious task of digging six holes, each about 30 cm's deep, we started mixing in the Gold Dust and compost. 

Saya getting in there with her fashionable-lady-
gardening-gloves.

Once the soil seemed like something could actually grow in it, we deemed it ready and started removing the babies from the trays. Saya carefully planted them, two in each hole. Once everyone had settled in, we watered the bed and rounded the bed off with some bamboo.

Mimilu added the final touches, which were Teddy-bear sunflower seeds being planted in the remaining open areas of the beds. We were told these don't need to be tray-planted first, and can be planted directly into the soil. So now, all that remains is to wait until we have our own row of sunflowers colouring in the old, blank wall behind the watermelon-patch.

The First Two Beds

After much of the initial cleaning, raking, hacking and sawing, just to get some sun into our soon-to-be garden, it was time to equip the garden pick and start digging it up. We started digging away with great zest. This was however rather short-lived as we are definitely not very used to manual labour! But we soldiered on. Then the next troubling realisation came to light: The soil was actually very rich in clay!

My sister was the only one who had known this from her previous gardening work in this very spot many years ago. This is where the Gold Dust came into play, which she had luckily bought. Apparently it helps to break down the clay, but there was a lot of hard work ahead before we could actually use it. The next while was spent crushing massive clumps of clay and clearing weeds and arbitrary roots. The rake was actually quite handy for breaking up the clay. Our old hedge-trimmers served in cutting off the fat roots we couldn't pull out. This whole process took quite some time.

Once it started looking like there was some chance of a plant actually growing here, the started mixing in the organic compost we had gotten from the nursery. Planting-time was drawing near!

After much mixing, it was finally time to start planting. My sister and I had gotten quite a few baby-plants from the nursery which included cucumbers, beetroot, rocket, lettuce and eggplant. One by one our two little beds were getting some colour as we started planting them. The beetroot, rocket, eggplant and lettuce were placed in two rows while the cucumbers formed their own single file (apparently they take over and need quite a bit of space!).

Once the planting was done, we sprinkled the Gold Dust around the starts and in the empty areas of the bed. Now all that was left was watering them - and just like that we were on our way. We used our last bit of energy to pull up a few forgotten logs, bricks and stones to make a little rim around the beds.

After all of this, it was quite an amazing feeling just standing back and admiring the finished product. Not a bad first day at all!

Our first two beds