In-Ground Wicking Vegetable Bed

Written by AdministratorMonday, 18 October 2010 19:29 - Last Updated Tuesday, 04 September 2012 20:11

The wicking beds that I have constructed so far were above ground, which made themcomparatively easy to construct. I just used treated pine veggie beds, lined them with the plasticsheet, put in the filler tube, wood chips and growing medium and whammo! Instant wicking bed!

While this is a good thing to do and is covered in some detail elsewhere on the site, I wanted tosee if the current bed system, where I grow most of my vegetables in the back yard, could beconverted across to a wicking bed style of thing. That way I would have my main vegetableculture area converted to the water efficient wicking bed system. I have 13 beds each one beingabout 1 metre x 2 metres – the size of my chook tractor – that I use for my main area ofvegetable production. The above ground wicking beds are used for perennials like asparagusand rhubarb as well as some special stuff like cotton and sunflowers, but my main productionarea remained a conventional type.

The chook tractor spends two weeks on each bed twice as year and this idea hit me at aboutthe same time that the chooks were moving to a new bed, so what better time to start thannow? The first and most back breaking job was to dig out all of the soil from the experimentalbed down to about 500mm. So that I didn’t give the lawn too much of a hard time (I know, Iknow!) I put down a tarpaulin of about 4 metres squared to shovel the dirt onto. This done Icould start.

I dug down on the first attempt to the depth of a spade spit (1 spit = the length of the spadeblade = 290mm). While I don’t dig the veggie beds any more, I let the chooks and the worms doit so the soil was reasonably friable and “easy” to dig ie it only half killed me rather than goingfor the whole 100%. On a number of occasions through the digging exercise I had cause toruminate on Dr Phil’s immortal words “What........were you thinkin’?”. Part way through whiledigging against the western edge of the bed I found archaeological evidence of a previousveggie patch, the remains of a wooden sleeper I had previously used as an edging for the patchbefore the bed system. Fortunately it was fairly rotten and some gentle persuasion with an axetalked it into moving with comparative ease.

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In-Ground Wicking Vegetable Bed

Written by AdministratorMonday, 18 October 2010 19:29 - Last Updated Tuesday, 04 September 2012 20:11

Once down to the one spit level and having shifted a remarkable amount of good, fertile soil, itwas then just a case of digging down a further 200mm. Although at this level the soil wassomewhat more compact and resulted in additional entertainment for me, especially aftermoving all of the original dirt. Two aches for every muscle!

Once the hole was down far enough it was time to fit the plastic inside it up to about the 200mmabove the bottom mark. You should always check that you have all the gear before you startone of these projects, but typically I forgot. Luck was with me however and I had just enoughplastic sheeting left over from the previous two wicking beds to be able to line the pit. With thepit lined I fitted in the filler tubing of 50mm agricultural drainage pipe (there was plenty of thatleft) and filled the hole in to a depth of 200mm with the same type of wood chips that I used forthe above ground beds.

I then filled in the bed with the remaining soil to the top of the timber surround and evenmounded it up a little. This still left a considerable amount of dirt left on the tarp, good soil that Ididn’t want to waste. If you go down this route I suggest you work out where you are going toput the excess soil so it doesn’t get wasted before you start to dig! I was lucky, we werereplanting some trees in the front yard and I was able to use the excess soil (a good 5 or sowheelbarrow loads of the stuff) to make up a bed to plant the fruit trees in.

All I had to do then was mulch the bed in our normal way and plant out veggie seedlings and ofcourse fill up the wicking bed reservoir. I filled the reservoir out of one of the rainwater tanksbehind the garage just by gravity. It is now all complete and ready to go. By nature I am fairly cautious and I will wait and see if there is any difference in the performancebetween the new wicking bed and the standard veggie beds. While there was not much costinvolved in setting it up as a wicking bed, it was a crap load  of work for me so I would have tobe thinking that it is worthwhile before I go and convert the rest of the 13 beds (OH, my achingback!) to wicking beds. Watch this space!

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