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)

Bring in the soil

Since we did not want to wait for a year or more to build and make soil, we decided it would be best to bring in 4 yards of compost/loam mix from Western Canada Compost. They have a great mix of organic matter, no bio solids (municipal sewage), and maintains good water retention.

Finally by June 10th we were able to plant our seedlings in the garden, now with our swale system in place and slowly filling in with gravel as more was dug out of the beds. In the background you can see the black buckets and tires where we were trying to grow potatoes for the first time.

While the swales were filling in with gravel, I sprinkled this product (which is really just clover seeds) around the edges of the swale to aid in holding the soil in place and fixing nitrogen at the same time. Some of it grew, but much of it was washed away in the heavy rains in June. Additionally, we broadcasted daikon radish seeds as a cover crop to help us deal with the compaction of our mainly clay soil.

Up next: How we built the wicking beds!

Concrete Cutting #2 & 3

Since our first intention was to cut the concrete and get rid of it, we cut it in 1-2' square pieces. Then permaculture entered our plans and everything changed. We rented the concrete saw for another day and got most of the cutting done before the saw broke and we had to take it back. Turned out that Home Depot forgot to put on the bolts to hold on the safety guard, they were surprised that it ran for 4 hours. They quickly told me that the rental would be no cost since it was their fault. I am sure I heard the neighbours sigh when they knew we would have to rent the saw for a 3rd time 2 weeks later!

Next came the fun part--moving the concrete, digging the beds, and swales! Here is the vision we had laid out in boards and fencing:

While Tim was prying up the concrete, I dug swales in the garden. Following a similar rainbow pattern to last year, we added made sure to add in keyholes so that there would be no need to walk on the soil and cause compaction.

Here you can see the two beds closest to the garden are laid out and Tim is working on the 3rd bed.

After digging the swales, keyholes, and approximately leveling them, I began laying in the weeping tile covered with fabric into the swales. By the time I finished all of the swales, Tim was just about finished moving the concrete from one of the beds.

While we were prying and digging, our plants were yelling out words of encouragement so that they could get in the ground before summer started.

Now what to fill our swales with? We planned to use wood mulch for adding carbon to the soil and we figured that it was easier to dig out than rock if we changed our mind on using swales. As usual, our plans changed due to our concrete situation!