Garden Bed Update - August 2011

I had mixed success from the garden beds last year, but I think this year will be a lot better as the organic materials from the previous year have had time to decompose and be devoured by the army of worms that lay within.

This time last year, I had put the garden beds in place and filled them with layers of lucerne hay, chicken manure, soil and sugar cane mulch. While I allowed for about 3 months before planting, I think there was still too much nitrogen in the soil for the chilli plants to really flourish in the intense biological conditions.

The above is the one garden bed out of the six that I haven't topped up since last year. Despite layering all the ingredients to the brim of the garden beds, it has sunk heavily to the point that it's now less than 50% full.

The rest of the beds have been topped up with compost that's been in my compost tumbler, dynamic lifter, 6 bags of soil and finally more sugar cane mulch.

When I pull back the top layer of sugar cane mulch from the topped up garden beds I can generally find a magnitude of worms, which to me means they love to feed on the wet sugar cane mulch. I hope that the conditions for the chilli plants this year results in a bumper crop which will in turn be converted to some seriously hot sauce!