Garden Construction?

[Zeedman]

We only get about eight to ten feet of rain a year so we aren't in a particularly wet area.

Only??? The record annual precipitation in my area was 43", and the ground was so wet that I never got my rural garden planted. Well-drained soil would dry more easily, especially on a slope... but that you can garden at all with that much rain is astonishing.

Yup, the metal stakes will go into the holes in the concrete blocks to hold the whole wall together. Even though the soil stacks really nicely, it's still good to have the blocks held together with the metal. It's just dry stacked concrete blocks so the metal will hold it together. Also, since it's dry stacked (not mortared together) any water will leak right out.

I get that if the wall is not permanent, you wouldn't want to use concrete. Still, it might be a good idea to fill in the holes around the rods with gravel or sand, to stabilize the wall structure.

really, when you are in that kind of a climate you can do some small scale gardening on the ground level, but with so many tropical fruit tree and other species i'd go with those and aim for a food forest. trying to always keep back the surrounding growth from shading a garden area would be a ton of work. why fight nature to that extent?

That was my first thought also, especially with the wide range of fruit that can grow in your climate. A fruit forest would stabilize the soil. During the time I spent in the Philippines, I observed that you can get a heavy & nearly continuous yield from papayas, and from bananas (which are a vegetable when eaten green).

 

[Niele da Kine]

We've got loads of 'edible landscaping' already, this new garden under construction is hopefully gonna be a salad garden while it's terracing the hillside. We can't grow trees on that slope because they'd interfere with the solar array on the nearby roof. Electricity runs about forty four cents a kilowatt hour so we have a 20kW photovoltaic system up on the roof making power for the house. We don't want to interfere with that.

There's a monster avocado tree (unknown variety but two pound creamy avos), bananas (mostly Chinese dwarf along with a few apple bananas), lime, lemon, orange, D'anjou pear, Florida Prince Peach, Pettingill apple, mulberry, pineapples, coffee, tea, bay leaf, cotton (Bleak Hall sea island white), assorted herbs, etc. A lot of it was already here before we moved in but I'm generally adding in new plants here and there as I can get them. 'Landscaping' usually involves adding in something edible. I do need a coconut tree somewhere, tho.

For now, though, it's stacking concrete blocks and building a garden area. After visiting the dentist this morning and a quick trip to the feed store to see if any bunny feed has come in, then I can stack some more concrete blocks. I found more big concrete blocks where they'd been stashed a couple years ago so the whole concrete garden wall got taken apart and restarted. It will be better with the lower two layers being the wider type of concrete blocks.

 

[Zeedman]

Wow, you are growing an incredible collection of fruits. I look forward to seeing some photos to drool over (I'm mentally drooling already.

 

[Niele da Kine]

I've had to work at the shop for the past several days so garden construction hasn't progressed very far. The weed mat is starting to be installed, though, so that's sorta progress. I've gotta get it done soon since there's other projects that also need to be done like building the little sheepies their sheep shed. Hopefully tomorrow will be a good garden building day.