We’re finally starting to make some progress in our garden.
Admittedly it still looks a complete mess and anyone except us would probably not see much of a difference, but for us it at least means that we’ve completed the first step.
When we recently shared our garden fence makeover with you, you probably noticed that we’d been doing quite a bit of digging in front of the fence, too.
From a distance it actually didn’t look too bad, but as with most things, close up was a completely different story. The little raised bed was falling to pieces and most of the plants were either weeds or dead.
Part of the plan for our new garden is to take down the wall and build a new raised bed.
Taking the wall down was easy, as it had pretty much disintegrated on its own. Moving all the soil was another matter. While it wasn’t difficult to do, it just took a lot of digging to clear the area.
After even more digging and clearing, we were left with one big empty trench.
After digging the trench, we were finally able to start working on the foundations – which meant even more digging for poor Jan.
After measuring and marking the exact position of the finished wall, Jan dug a trench about 20 cm wide and 30 cm deep for the foundations.
We filled the bottom of the trench with 20 cm of rubble and then, after tapping it down, topped it off with 10 cm of concrete.
Because of the small area, we decided not to mix our own concrete, but to use Postcrete instead. Postecrete is a ready mixed concrete type mixture. It comes in bags that we could just tip into the prepared trench.
After making sure the dry Postcrete is completely level we watered it (just using a garden hose) thoroughly.
Unlike normal concrete, you have to make sure that the Postcrete is level before you water it. It dries really quickly, so you won’t have any time for levelling after you’ve wet it.
As usual, we underestimated how long the preparations would take – now all we have to do is build the wall!
Have you ever built a wall? Do you have any tips for us? What were you up to this weekend?
David Adlington says
How many bags of postcretedid you use?
Christine says
That’s a good question. We built the wall so long ago that we both can’t remember. I do remember having to buy more bags though, so you’ll probably need more Postcrete than you expect. Looking back, it would definitely be better to lay the foundations in concrete instead and, depending on the size of the foundations, it would probably work out cheaper, too.
Cx
caitlin says
Yowsa. That’s a project. I look forward to seeing where you are going with this. I’m wondering if you have to do anything for drainage?
Christine says
We’d though about drainage, too. As there was a raised bed there before and because we’ve only built strip foundations (the middle is still just soil) decided against installing extra drainage. We might fill the base of the new raised bed with some stones to help drainage, but other than that I don’t think that anything would be necessary. Fingers crossed it all works out.
Cx