How to Build a Vegetable Garden - Episode 2

G'day, welcome to iCultivate, my name's Steve. Yesterday I talked about what we're going to do with regards to the development of a productive garden. Today I start that, so let's have a look at what we get done today. So let's get started. As you can probably tell, digging these holes is not my favourite job, but actually before we start this let's go and have a quick look at what the plan actually is. So what we have is an area that is about five and a half metres long and about three metres wide. You can see the shed here on the left hand side and this space here which is going to be our productive vegetable garden. So my idea is that basically I want to divide the vegetable garden area up into four garden beds and you can sort of see me roughly drawing them in here. And the whole idea about the four garden beds is that we can then operate some crop rotation. So we might start with tomatoes here for example one year, then the next year we might put the tomatoes over in this space here. But thinking structurally, what we're going to need is posts on each corner here and in addition to that, with this length here being five and a half metres, I'm going to need an additional post here, here, here and here. This end is going to be attached directly to the shed. But what does this all actually look like? So this is the actual floor plan if you like. So let's have a quick look. Now I'm clearly not an architect or an artist but hopefully this will give you some sort of an idea. You can see here the two corner posts at the end. This is the shed end here, so this is where the shed is here. And this is where it's attached to the shed. You can see we've got an additional post here and here and these are the two corner posts that I'm going to have to put in first. I'm going to construct some trusses that I will use for the roof area to span across that space which is about three metres wide. And obviously the ground is not flat so we're actually going to have this area here which is going to require some retaining wall space put in. So that's something which I'll show you when I'm actually down at the site. But this is the general idea I guess. Okay so we've seen the plan. You can see here the slope of the ground. This is that part that I have mentioned needs to be retained. This post is going to be holding up that retaining wall along with a couple of others of course. But this post is going to be a major structural support not just for the actual shade house itself but also for the retaining wall. So I'm really going to have to put a fair bit of emphasis on the hole that I dig here. So let's get started. First pole done. It wasn't easy. A lot harder than I expected but I guess that's the way these sorts of things go. Only five more poles to go. Okay so that's done. We've got all six poles in or at least the holes have been dug and the poles are in place. I haven't yet straightened them up ready for the concrete but that will be tomorrow's job. Today was a lot more difficult than I anticipated but I guess if there's anything you can be certain of when it comes to this sort of job is that it will be more difficult than you think. But anyway it's all done. So tomorrow what I'm going to do is get these poles all straightened up and concreted so that the following day I'll be able to get on with retaining wall and starting to develop the soil ready for our productive garden. Now I hope you've enjoyed this video but don't forget to come back in the next few days and have a look and see how it is progressing to the next stage and beyond. Can I ask you please to go down to the thumbs up and give us a thumbs up, subscribe to this channel and go to our website icultivate.net and become a member of the community. Thanks for watching.