Converting a pond to a raised vegetable garden

 
I have a semi-circular, raised brick pond - 3.7m long x 1.5m radius x
60cm high. There is little life in it, apart from some water lilies and
frogspawn which I'm donating to a neighbour. I plan to drain the pond,
fill it with soil and make it into a vegetable garden - thinking that a
high bed with copper tape at the base might provide slightly better
protection from slugs/snails (though this might be wishful thinking!).


As well as any general advice, I'd appreciate guidance on some specific
questions:


1. Should I remove the plastic pond liner once drained, or will this be
of some use to my vegetable growing?


2. Should I drill drainage holes into the bricks? If so, where and how
many?


3. Should I simply fill the new bed with top soil and a layer of mulch
on top? Or are there are other things I should add for a successful
vegetable garden?


Many thanks for your help!




--
martpol

 martpol wrote:

Remove it, you need free drainage not a pond.


Yes, several, say every 50cm around the edge, at ground level


It depends on the quality of soil that you can source and what you want to
grow in the bed.  Work from what you can get towards what you need.  For
example corn and pumpkins need much better soil than carrots and lettuce.

Is this pond in full sun or nearly full sun?  If it isn't you will be
limited as to which veges you can grow well.

David

 
'David Hare-Scott[_2_ Wrote:

Thanks David - very helpful.

The front part of the pond is in full sun, but the back part is somewhat
shaded by the border fence between us and our neighbour's garden. Would
appreciate any advice on which veg _can_ be grown in part shade.




--
martpol

 martpol wrote:

This is a generalisation, there may be some exceptions, also "full sun" in
some places is a lot more sun than in others.  The heavy feeders that are
building much tissue, especially fruits, do best in full sun, this would
things like corn, solanums, cucurbits.  Those that are smaller and mainly
grow leaves like lettuce, silverbeet etc will do OK in part sun.

You might want to put the taller stuff on the pole side and the shorter on
the sun side to reduce shading.

D

 
'David Hare-Scott[_2_ Wrote:

Thanks again.




--
martpol