Our vegetable patch in the back yard needed an upgrade.
The patch was quite large and was on a slope. This meant we couldn’t really plant things in there without some plants attempting to conquer the whole box. Also, it was very hard to gain access to most of the box without getting mud everywhere.
So I decided to partition it in to 3 sections and level out each section individually. Each partition would correspond with an existing step in the retaining wall, so it would look nice and terraced.
The job also involved fixing up the terrible irrigation system I had installed in the past and also moving the power point I had installed when building the box many years ago. You can also see the separate wiring I have in place for the fairy lights (12v DC) which still needs some work.
I had a friend of mind give me a hand, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the whole thing. I ended up with just a handful. In any case, here they are.
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- The existing retaining wall was stepped to follow the slope of the land. This meant that the whole vege patch was on a slope, which looked terrible and wasn’t practical. You can see the new sleepers we were installing to partition the box in to 3.
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- I took this opportunity to dig out the existing irrigation system I had installed years ago and replace it with something that works better and covers the whole vege patch with enough water. The sprinkler heads were replaced too as the previous pop up ones were crap. I replaced with with gear-driven pop up sprinklers from USA. So much better than the local or Chinese crap we have.
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- You can see the terrible wiring I have for the fair lights. It was all clipped to the inside of the retaining wall and covered with dirt. One day I will fix that. But for now it isn’t dangerous or exposed (it’s only 12v DC).
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- Ew wiring! That red thing on the left is the only part of the wiring exposed to the elements. That is where it was soldered. So it was put in side a container and taped up to avoid exposing it to humidity. Everything is clipped close to the wall so we don’t accidentally hit it with a spade. The extra wiring slack may be needed in the future, but I plan to fix it up soon.
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- The new irrigation was run to the back fence inside a conduit to avoid puncturing it when digging in the future. The irrigation pipe was only soft 19mm poly pipe.
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- Digging.
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- More digging.
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- One of the terraces complete and back filled. I later got another tonne of dirt and filled in the rest.
Some pictures taken many months later, showing a few thing we have growing. Pics were taken just before winter so most of the plants were waiting for spring to be planted.
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