A growing concern

Every gardener knows that starting from scratch with a bare canvas, is in theory, a cool idea. In practice however, I'm sure that the term 'tennis elbow' would be more appropriately named 'gardeners elbow'.
I know that the one I have is directly a result of hauling more wheelbarrows of soil, mulch, potting mix than I have ever done in my life to date. Which is no bad thing, given that I am  - just - over 50 and any excerise is good for continued longevity! And that established gardens have been the norm till now. Expanding on those doesn't count.

Given that the brawn of the operation has been flat out working (so much for semi-retirement!) since we got here five months ago, it got left to the usual supervisor to get out there and ensure the gardens were in and preferably, at the height of summer so that I could catch at least some of the autumn bounty.
And, as every gardener also knows, it takes time to get the soil biology up and running to the point where you will get the big 10 pound cabbages I used to get from a green-fisted friend's garden the year after she'd moved out after being there 22 years.
So trying to juggle getting a healthy soil going on top of topsoil that was primarily a thin, sandy layer with alkaline tendencies and getting produce from newly set combinations wasn't as easy as it sounds.
I also had to decide how I wanted the gardens to look and being that over 50-year old who has a crook back from falling off a horse 10 years before, meant I now needed to have something that I could sit on while I worked in the garden. Bending like Beckham simply isn't in the possibilities pile any more.
I've always loved the idea of potager gardens; potager being a French translation for an ornamental kitchen garden for growing vegetables that were most often used in soups. And given that as I write this, the first winter vegetable soup is bubbling away in the slow cooker behind me with such veggie ingredients as carrots, celery, parsnip, turnip, kumara, peas, beans and whatever else I had on hand this morning, it shows just how versatile these raised garden beds can be.
So I used the cardboard box I had saved from the new washing machine and a couple of other large purchases and laid that flat before soaking it for 24 hours with the sprinkler. On top of that went sandy topsoil, then went well rotted horse manure. Next was bark mulch which had almost broken down into soil. Then went in a six inch layer of good quality potting mix and some additional blood and bone that had been well mixed in. All of this was well saturated. For the asparagus beds I went a bit  further and used old seed raising mix as well.
This then is the basis for all the gardens we have put in, knowing that this first year probably wouldn't give us a great deal of produce; the soil biology has to take time to really kick into action.

However, we have been pleasantly surprised by what has happened. The first of the seven gardens was built in late December. Two more happened in January. The remaining four, including three large tractor tyres, were completed in March.
Here in the final days of May, I look back on what the gardens have given us and it has been pretty good:  lettuces, carrots, silverbeet, spinach, celery, cucumbers, gherkins, beans, tomatoes, onions, (red, brown, spring and shallots), asparagus (although that's a while off being used) beetroot, radishes, cabbages, brocolli, brussel sprouts, plus a very large herb garden as I like to dry my own herbs, as well as use fresh ones for most meals I make.

I've even grown yams this year and that was by accident. I had put the young yam plants into a hot water cylinder that had been cut lengthways prior to the Big Shift (along with a few handfuls of garden soil) and as time went by, it sat snugly behind a small compost bin and I forgot about it. When I finally remembered it, I had a look to see how it was doing and found I had leggy yams that had produced in three quarters of the cylinder - and a healthy bush of going-to seed puha in the last quarter. So I will definitely be replanting yams early next spring, but in  a much larger container - being a member of the oxalis family, they need to be contained or they will take over the garden.
Although I do have one inadvertent crop - I used some Tui's straw mulch and now have a full barley crop in most of the gardens! I have left it there simply because it works as a greens crop that can be worked back into the soil much like mustard greens for example.
In between times I have added a little bit of nitrophoska, because the bark mulch component requires it, but to be honest I do like using Seasol's products; natural and working well within the system we prefer. Outside of this, the only added extra we have needed has been Derris Dust for the cabbages; local farmers grew brassicas as a stock feed in recent years and the white butterfly is of plague proportions.
If there was a problem to be had, it is that the gardens should be rotatable for a few years; that is, whatever you plant in one one year, gets moved to the next garden in the next year. The problems is that one bed is a dedicated asparagus bed. Another is solely for herbs. That leaves five, three of which have a good percentage of them filled with onions which will not be ready for harvesting until almost next summer. So the two brassica gardens are going to have to be rotated into.. you guessed, some new gardens. When my elbow has recovered!