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...

Finally the wicking bed construction!

This is the moment you have all been waiting for...how we built the wicking beds out of concrete!

Step #1: Offer to provide drinks and food to a great friend with strong arms, good endurance, and a great analytical mind in exchange for their help. Meet Pam!

When we were not digging, sifting, and hauling soil, we talked about those things and planned out the wicking beds. Here are Tim and Pam marking out the pond liner to line the 4 beds with:

We did not document the first 2 beds very well, but here you can see the pond liner, rocks and weeping tile filled with water. Because none of us thought ahead to how we could connect the 2 beds, we had to improvise a bit. I am digging the drainage swale at the end of the beds that connects with the garden.

Collectively, we decided that it would be best to not connect the 2 beds if we wanted to grow food in the beds this year. The growing season here is 100 days if we are lucky, so no more delays could happen! Here is what we came up with for drainage:

We wrapped a cinder block in landscape fabric to allow water to drain out of the first bed into the gravel drainage area between the 2 beds. If the overflow water gets too high, it will go over top of the vertical concrete piece that separates the gravel and garden swale. FYI: none of us are engineers, so this is our best guess at what will happen. Either way, the excess water will infiltrate back into the ground and not be lost to evaporation.

After lining the beds with landscape fabric and adding the beautiful soil--our first two beds were planted on June 12!

Only 2 more beds to go! Time for a food break first though :) (Refer to step #1)