When considering elements of permaculture design, Zone 1 is regarded as the area directly accessible within a few meters from the house. By setting up a garden that can be easily reached in a few steps from the kitchen, it is both convenient and also inspiring for the chef to see fresh
herbs growing and be able to harvest salad at will.
When we first built the Salad Garden in 2009 it was the first space we had to plant in and as a result we used it for mixed purpose. As no garden originally existed there we had to build up the edge by constructing a retaining wall to allow the garden bed to remain level and to contain the soil.
The original mixture of soil in the resulting raised bed was created by carefully mixing chicken manure, mushroom compost, organic compost, leaves, grass clippings, cow manure and then lots of lucerne mulch. Over the years, we have continued to build up the soil by adding many inputs including blood and bone, dolomite lime, mineral rock, seaweed and many more layers of different mulches from straw, grass hay, composted leaves and sawdust. Knowing that the best soil includes a diverse range of ingredients to offer the broadest range of nutrients for our plants to enjoy.
In the early days, we did not have a fence around the garden so we found ourselves constantly chasing the chickens out of the garden. They seemed to be congregating there (of course) looking for all sorts of insects that were being drawn towards the fertile garden bed.
It didn’t take too long for us to decide to build a fence to keep the chickens out and allow us to further the success of the garden. We learned a lesson at this stage that although we do like to incorporate chickens into the garden and the compost that they produce is of high quality, the
garden and small seedlings prefer to enjoy the protection of a fence.
Looking to utilise all possible space, we have utilised the fences by planting various vines around the garden including grapes, raspberries, young berries, choko and passionfruit.