True to expected Bank Holiday form, the weekend was spent on a DIY project. However I wasn’t out spending my hard earned cash on flock wallpaper (at £50 a roll) but instead a project to save us a material amount of £ each year as well as providing some fresh healthy food.
With the fish given away to my brother in law two weeks ago, the pond conversion could finally begin in earnest.
Clearance
Emptying the pond and getting it ready for topsoil wasn’t as easy as I envisaged.
1. The first problem I hit was that when I opened the drain (which dumps the water into an old unused cesspit) was that it only drained half of the water out. This meant I had to bail the remaining 2.5′ of water out by hand – no mean feet when the pond is over 5′ deep. And yes there was a point when it was too deep for wellies and too shallow to lean over/reach in!
2. It soon became clear that the builder had done an annoyingly thorough job and had lined the pond with fiberglass (manually laid not a prefabricated liner). This needed to be broken up in order to allow drainage through the bottom of the pond.
3. Beneath the fiberglass I unsurprisingly found a layer of cement/concrete. I was hoping to hammer and chisel though a thin layer of cement in order to give the bed some decent drainage. What I didn’t factor in was that the guy had laid 10″ of steel re-enforced concrete!
After much swearing I ended up having to hire a kango for half a day which made the job much easier. I kangoed down to the steel grid then used a borrowed angle grinder to cut the steel out before kangoing down through the final few inches of concrete.
4. Finally I got through the concrete and hit a thin layer of sand then heavy clay which contained lots of flints. In order to prove this was the subsoil I hoped it was I filled the trench with a few inches of water and checked it drained over night, which I was mightily relieved it did!
The Fill
In order to further help drainage I filled the bottom of the bed with a mix of scavenged bricks, concrete, broken ceramic tiles (from a recent DIY project) and other assorted rubble. Initially I began sourcing more rubble and top soil from freecycle, picking up car loads form various local people in the area. After a couple of weeks it was clear that it would take me all summer to fill the void. The amount of rubble/soil I could fit into one car load was tiny in comparison to the hole I was trying to fill. Eventually I decided to resort to paying for top soil.
Local landscape gardeners were quoting me £50-60/m2 making it around £480 for the 8m2 I needed which seemed too much capital outlay for what was supposed to be a money saving project. Finally I found a local skip company that sells screened topsoil for £12.50m2 which was more like it. Even if it wasn’t the best grade I’m more than happy to improve it with homemade compost and leaf mulch over the next few years.
The filling of the pond was made much harder by the fact that the pond is situated in our back garden that is on accessible via a several steps, a long winding narrow raised path about 20m long. This meant barrowing/bucketing all the materials in by hand.
Eight tonnes is a hell of a lot of soil when moving it manually like this. Thankfully my obsessive side kicked in and like a man possessed I managed to get it all done in 12 hours straight on Saturday, with only one notable break for some poached eggs. On Saturday night I slept like a dead man.
After letting it settle for a couple of days (with some heavy rain) I decided that some soil conditioning was required if I was to get growing this year. Having forked in all the homemade compost and leaf mulch I had, I resorted to buying a few bags of well rotted manure too.
The end result is what I hope will be the mother of all raised vegetable beds…
1.
Total Cost
- Kango Hire: £29.50
- Top Soil: £100
- Pre-rotted manure/soil improver: £20
- Total: £149.5
The Benefits
So I’m making a risk free annual saving of £423 per year by not owning fish and I have what should be a productive vegetable patch that is easy to maintain and will provide lots of enjoyment to boot. The conversion cost a grand total of £149.50 and has been an excellent project in terms of allowing me to get my soft office hands dirty, enjoy some hard physical work in the spring sunshine and get that glow of satisfaction that completed DIY projects provide.
The next couple of weeks will see the raised bed get planted up with a variety of different vegetables. I’m also pondering on some soaker hoses to aid watering however given the depth of the soil in the bed I’m hoping it should not dry out too quickly.
I will hopefully report back later in the summer with gratuitous pictures of a monster harvest of vegetables that will help us in our efforts to maintain cheap healthy diets.
Notes:
1.Please excuse the Romanesque urn in the background…another legacy of the former owners of the house 😉
Excellent job UTMT! It was quite a herculean task in the end! It was a very heavily engineered pond by the sound of it. I suppose you had an insight into the mind of the builder when you noticed how well the actually fishy-related apparatus was integrated into the pond.
The good thing about doing it with an eye to the savings each year is that the cost–although not overly expensive–palls into insignificance when you think of the year after year of savings and fruit and vegetable gains!
A bank holiday well spent I feel! Now it is time to get planting…!
DD,
Thank you. As with most of the DIY tasks I undertake this one threw up a few more complications than I expected at the outset. As you say now the fun part starts in deciding exactly what to plant!
DIY tasks always do throw up more than you expect. But it always provides a nice challenge!
Many years ago I used to have an allotment. I was a big fan of root vegetables: beetroot, carrots, onions, potatoes etc. Simple and resilient! A raised bed like that though gives you so many options!
Can’t wait for the next update!
You overcame various hurdles which would have put many off the task at hand and put in a lot of actual physical sweat and tears too – well done, you must be so proud of your efforts!
I look forward to seeing photos of unfeasibly large vegetables!
Weenie,
I’ll try not to disappoint 😉
Rather than break up the reinforced slab, you could have knocked out some bricks in the raised bed walls to form weepholes to allow drainage. Even so, good job well done.
Borderer,
I did consider the weep hole approach however there were a few of reasons why I opted for breaking up the bottom:
1) 3 sides of the bed are surrounded by patio so I didn’t really want to direct excess water under that which may have caused future problems
2) The other side is where the pumps/filters are. I intend to keep the concrete base of that section and use it as a cold frame area
3) I don’t like to be beaten. Once I’d decided to break up the bottom I didn’t want to be defeated!
Well done UTMT! Quite the task to say the least.
Quick question, did you wet the soil during back filling? If not, you may get quite a bit of settlement in the coming weeks during rainfall. Something to keep in mind.
Do you guys have a mushroom farm around somewhere? If so, I would recommend trying to get some of their compost, this stuff works miracles on your future plants. Friends of our did this and I have never seen larger produce coming out of any garden.
Good luck!
Mr FSF,
I didn’t wet the soil during the back fill however it was reasonable moist as it went in so I’m hopeful there won’t be too much settlement. That being said I plan on working lots of goodness (compost, manure, leaf mold etc) in over the next few years so hopefully I can keep up with any settling that does occur.
Funnily enough we have a mushroom place about a mile away and I was thinking about it just a few minutes ago. Maybe this weekend I’ll ride over and see if I can snaffle some compost!
The last reason is the best! Good for you.
By ‘eck! That was one hell of a day. 12 hours straight? I reckon most people would have given up at that point, good on you!
Roll on the harvest 🙂
Mr Z
Not sure why you didn’t siphon the water – looking at your photo’s you had gravity on your side!
End result either way looks fantastic & a vast improvement on the pond! Get planning your slug/snail prevention strategies next i think!!
I think you did the right thing to break up the bottom – allows bigger plants to send down much deeper tap-roots & makes the whole thing much more drought resistant.
Look forward to seeing future harvest updates!
living cheap in London,
Thanks. The depth of the pond unfortunately ruled out siphoning as an option.
One more comment: not sure if you already do or not, but get composting at home if you can – you can feed a bed this size very nicely with your peelings/trimmings.