From Barrens to Gardens.

This years vegetable garden would prove to be a little more challenging than previous years. I had recently moved to a new property that had no established vegetable gardens. As such I have had to turn the earth myself and start some gardens from scratch. This would prove to have its challenges immediately.
The available space for the garden was tucked away behind the shed in the backyard. This would prove to give me limited sunlight to grow with, this was my first problem. The second and more pressing issue was the quality of the soil. The owners of the property had recently levelled the area, building it up by using a granite gravel/granite sand mixture. I instantly recognised the gravel type, I had seen it before, it was quarried from a hillside near Texas Queensland. The quarry itself was situated at the beginning of the granite belt region that stretches back towards Stanthorpe. The gravel type was unusual in quality. It looked nice when spread out on the ground as it was white in appearance but it was not the best soil to be growing vegetables in. It is as I have stated a mixture of sand and gravel. A closer inspection of the quarry site would reveal that the sand / gravel mixture was actually the result of an eroding granite block that was protruding from the hillside. The granite was breaking down into a bread crumb mixture that glinted in the sunlight, this was because granite is renowned for having pyrite in it. Pyrite is also known as fools gold and my prospective garden soil was full of it, both literally and figuratively! I was going to have to dig deep to resolve this issue.
I first cleaned out the entire area of some old dog kennels and a small forest of hardy weeds. This process was a workout! It didn't help that I had decided to start this project late in March when the days temperatures were still reaching well into the late thirties. As this was the case the project became an early morning/late afternoon affair.  When I did dig it was deep. I needed to get below the granite gravel and into the original alluvial river soil beneath, this proved to be at about a depth of 20 centimetres. Once I was at depth I simply turned the clay soil into the granite gravel and mixed thoroughly. It wasn't the best soil, but it was better than paying $300 - $400 for a load of premixed soil from the local nursery. Once the area was cleaned out completely I drew up a design for my garden layout. I was planning on using the space to its full potential, as such I ended up with seven oddly shaped beds. 
The next step would be to start a compost heap in my chook pen. I decided I would be able to use this mixture a couple of months down the track to enrich the soil quality as I needed. I decided to go with a hot compost design for this. I had read stories about people having real success within a short amount of time and since I was planning on using the compost within a couple of months it was decided that this would be the best technique to go with. 
Hot composting is awesome technique. It involves using a mixture of green and brown plant matter and it will be the feature of my next post!
​Cheers!