Converting a pond to a raised vegetable garden

[martpol]

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?

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

2. 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!

[David Hare-Scott]

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

[martpol]

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.

[David Hare-Scott]

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

[martpol]

Thanks again.