Bed 3 of 4

Here it was June 12th, 2011 and we were still working on these wicking beds just waiting to plant our seedlings. Many choice words were exchanged about these beds, but we did get some great muscles from all the digging, prying, and shoveling! We made sure to take some time out to have some fun too.

We did not do a great job of documenting the first two wicking beds, but remembered to by the 3rd bed and got even better on bed 4. Here is the story of bed 3... Many of the pieces of 3rd and 4th bed were not cut all the way through which meant a great upper body workout. While chipping out the concrete pieces, we needed to protect our window and patio door from flying pieces. (If you are a neighbour, now you know why we had hanging plastic for a few days!)

After all of the pieces were freed, the bed was dug out, and the gravel sifted, We lined the bed with pond liner, put in weeping tile and rocks to fill the bottom. Here you can see the pipe that we used to add water to the bed:

Laying landscape fabric over the weeping tile.

After soil was added and our seedlings were finally planted, we tested out the overflow area. This picture shows the water draining out of bed 3 into the swale that is connected with main garden. Works great!

Here is the with 3 of 4 beds complete!

Now we were seriously considering if we should finish bed 4 or just leave it alone...