Hi, how do I start garden beds? Our soil type, I believe, is clay and poorly drained. Any suggestions on how to get started please.

Hi Robyn, the best way to start building up your garden if you have clay soil is to build raised garden beds. This will also improve drainage which is important for healthy plants. Raised garden beds can be made of timber, metal or anything that will contain the soil without collapsing. The beds don’t need to be lined with plastic, unless you want to do this, but leave the bottom uncovered and bare soil. I would suggest making the beds at least 50cm high for good drainage. Once the beds are built, you can then start adding organic matter to the beds and building up the soil structure in layers by adding any organic matter you can find such as pea or barley straw, lawn clippings (make sure they have not been treated with a lawn weed spray), rotted fallen leaves,  animal manure such as sheep pellets or chicken and sheep pellets, seaweed from the beach, (dunked in water first to get rid of the salt and chopped up), rotted saw dust, rotted hay, compost and a layer of garden mix on top to plant into. If you don’t want to build raised garden beds, you can still create mounds by doing the same thing. If your garden beds are already planted, create channels or borders around the beds for the water to drain into, keep adding organic matter and garden mulch to the garden beds around the plants to help improve soil structure.  The Tui Team.