Good day everyone! Zak here from Cape Town, South Africa.

I have been expanding the garden again! Some time ago, I built a raised bed out of concrete posts that were being thrown away at a building site near me. I have "thing" for upcycling and building out of rubble so I claimed them and built the structure as pictured below.

Heavy stuff... but rewarding!

The idea is that you do not need to go to the hardware store and gardening depot and spend thousands of Rands (or Hundreds of Dollars) on Building materials.

I have been doing my own composting and while this bed does contain a lot of my own compost, I don't make enough to establish such a deep bed from scratch and I also lack one ability - I cannot MAKE dirt! Haha!

I could collect bags of dirt from all around but that would be time consuming as I would need to water and weed it out for weeks before using the dirt.

Of course, if this were an emergency, I would just build bed after bed with whatever sand and deal with it later!

Anyway, let's get into the update!

Filling up

I had a base of Sticks and self-made compost with some dirt at the bottom from the last update.

I then added some reddish buildger's sand because there is still a lot of volume to go. This is not clay soil not is it too much like sea sand. It is sand that comes from an agricultural area up the coast and inland from where I live. Builder's use this sand to plaster.

This was spread out.

I then added potting soil.

And some more potting soil!

I gave the above a good mix with the fork and then added a bag of compost.

Nice and dark! Looking good!

I then gave this a good mix as well. Some of the sand surfaced and all three layers were well mixed together.

I have to tuck in the filling all over the place, but I knew I would need to wet it to make the filling fill the gaps between the stone to clog it up. Water, organic materials and roots will hold this dirt and compost together. If something runs out I can scoop it up and put it inside again.

I also got myself some Mulch for the other beds.

I have not worked with this stuff before. I have been reading up on the obvious benefits of mulch, but had had no idea how good this one would be. So I tried it out!

With a little container, I went to work!

The little raised herb garden got filled in between the plants.

The lower level now contains Marigolds, a Watermelon, Bell Pepper, Parsley and Radish. Along with two cucurbit type plants I have not yet identified but am letting grow to see what happens!

This is partial cover so you can see the difference.

And a full cover...

I gave the tomatoes some love as well. So I am just waiting for these tomatoes to finish with their fruits and then I will be removing them and planing something new here.