Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

Hello, this is my first post on this site I have been reading /learning so much I thought it was about time I shared what we have been doing. We have an average size suburban backyard and we have built 3 wicking beds and a chicken coop. I have planted 2 beds with cherry tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, corn snow peas & baby spinach. The other bed has strawberries, rhubarb & a raspberry bush.
In the coop I have planted a a a peach, peacharine & espalier a nectarine tree along the back fence.

The blank canvas.



A month ago



We wont be getting chicken's until the new year as we are a going away next week for a couple of months, hubby & I are semi retired and we work each year for Viterra on the grain harvest, our son will be home holding the fort but he is in a wheelchair so the chooks are on hold for now.

I am not sure about fertilising the wicking beds being a closed system. I am wondering if putting worms into the beds if the castings & worm juice would fertilise the beds. Do I need to feed the worms??

Well done they look very neat, I just use organic fertiliser and a good seaweed extract. It is still a dirt garden with a water reservoir so do not over fertilise. Worms are good, introduce a worm hotel and chop your worm food up fine or use the blender. Also introduce organic matter through out the bed to get the worms moving around. I dig in sugar cane mulch and cut up food through out the bed. No onions or citrus peel.

Worm Hotel

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Love the timber wicking beds. What breed of chooks do you think you will go for?

p.s. welcome

My system has a compost bin/worm farm buried into each bed.
A bucket with the bottom cut out with a terracotta saucer as a lid.
I lift the lid and put scraps in.
The beds are full of top soil, cow manure,zeolite, ash, bio char and crusher dust.
Watered with compost tea and molasses
They are established over a heap of card board,palm fronds and garden waste, sticks,logs (basically hugelkultur)

Thank you for the comments, I'm not sure what breed to go for as yet, the coop is only small so I am undecided whether to have 3 bantams or 2 full size chooks. We do not eat a lot of eggs but that will no doubt change once we experience fresh eggs. What ever we get they need to relatively quite as we have neighbours close by.

When we get home the next stage is to install a 3,000ltr water tank and to build an aquaponics system.

I like the idea about the compost bin/worm farm buried into each bed, will definitely give that a go.
Cheers,

I absolutely love our Australorps and would recommend them, they are very friendly, non flighty and have great characters. they even put themselves back to bed. So much fun for the kids if you have them.

About time I updated, the raised bed were a little slow to start but after a bit of playing around with extra fertilizer things started to take off. We have had 2 additions to the family the girls have settled in well we get a dozen eggs a week .
We have 2 little dogs & they all get on well together, when I'm home the girls roam the back garden. Henrietta(light Sussex) even attemps to steal the dogs bones so I resorted to giving her a small bone and she is so happy running to a small dirt mound which is her place of safety then pecks away at the bone.

I have planted the winter veggies the spinach & chard are doing really well the broccoli is almost ready for picking. I have tomatoes that have have fruit about the size of golf balls but the nights are getting cold. I have decide to cover the beds with plastic to see how I go with raising the temp in the beds. The hassel will be accessing the garden beds as I'm use to just popping out to pick some spinach or asian greens. I will also have to play buzzy bee with a paint brush to fertilise some of the plants. It will be interesting to see how it works out and whether it is work the hassel.

I just love your garden beds! they look terrific!

Do you let your chooks run free? Ours just discovered freedom :-) But they are coming back.