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 wrote:
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?

Remove it, you need free drainage not a pond.


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


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

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?


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

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 wrote:[color=blue][i]
'David Hare-Scott[_2_ Wrote:
;914860']martpol wrote:

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


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.

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

Thanks again.

To convert the pond in to a garden you need to fulfil it with a fuitfull land because if you will just fullfill it with the ordinary send then it will not give you the desired vegetables so need to full full with the black soil the fruitfull land.

Hi
You should not remove the plastic pond liner; use this for some vegetable growing use. For a successful vegetable garden I think you should fill the new bed with top soil.

Sounds like a great place to grow carrots! They will be safe from the dreaded carrot flys!