Sunday 30 December 2007

Playing with corrugated iron sheets

While we are on the subject of the old wood shed.
I stacked the individual sheets along the fence for later use. One suggestion was to build raised beds. I have always wanted raised beds but shied away from the cost. Now, re-using these sheets would be perfect. But how to cut the sheets to size?
Do a search and you will be rewarded.

Tearing was the answer. I will take pictures of the individual steps as I found it really easy to tear the sheets and assemble this compost / raised bed. I also love our new toy - a cordless drill! Very handy.

Anyway, this is the prototype. More to follow. I'm on a roll, baby! (Once the heatwave is over, of course.)I might get fancy and use old irrigation pipes that are lying about here. Slit it open on one side and slide it over the edges of the bed. Whatchareckon? Worth a try. The edges are not really that sharp, but I like the idea of a nice finish.

I built the bed in between two old fence posts. They are no use at the moment, but I was thinking that maybe I could plant some climbing veggies or fruit in this bed. Then it would be easy to string wire between the two posts and the stardropper in the middle.

Just behind the bed you can see a big pile of weeds. These will be going into this bed (and the other yet-to-be-built beds) with layers of compost, kitchen scraps, horse manure, daggy sheep wool, straw, etc.

There's probably room for about 3 or 4 more of these beds in this area. Just think of all the veggies that we can grow in there!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a clever gnome you are! Cosmic Bobby had a look and comments thusly: You will need more supports along the length as the outward pressure of compost etc needs support or the sides will fall down. If you want to get really fancy, put brackets on the outside corners to keep it square, if you put pipe along the top it should make it nice and neat but make sure it isn't a place for snails to party especially where the top edge is corrugated. Last but not least, zinc will leach out over time with possible effects on anything you grow. Cosmic says - go for it, you can always demolish it later.