Paulo Carvalho

Hi everyone =) non-native english speaking person here, so please bear with me

So, i'm in Brasil and starting a small growing op on my garden.  
As a complete newbie, all and any advice is welcome, so i'll begin speaking my plan and hopefully good advice will sprout.

It must be a raised bed, as my granny is a plantsperson and will help me take care of (she had a minor stroke and gardening is an excellent work tool to re-develop her hand strength and precision) so it needs to be a raised bed, so it can be managed without all the squatting required for ground-level gardening

My former plan was to build a hugel, but all the wood I had collected was 'taken care of' this year by another resident so i'm left empity-handed... so... yeah...

The main worry here is that using wood stakes and boards to frame the soil would attact slugs and snails, wich are already present on a plastic-bottle garden i keep in the backyard, as i understand those mollucs thrive on humid wood.


so, my main question is> is it ok to use wood as a frame?

also, any advice on starting vegetables, specially those that would look good and entice my patron on allowing me to expand the gardening area?


thanks everyone, for I've lurked this forums for years and years, and 'm finally starting to grow food. you all have been a great inspiring force and i hope to be that force to other people as well

Living in São Paulo there is clearly a lack of space to use for growing.
I'm -really- lucky to even have a garden in the front of the house I can 'take care of' (mostly observing the plants grow).

The solution I came up with is using used soda and water bottles to plant in.

this of course has limitations and i can't have some good big trees, but bonsai might work...
i'm planting mostly flowers, but some tomato seeds that went into my garden composting started sprouting, so i might even get some of those

a friend also used tetrapacks from milk and juice to plant a small herb garden

love the idea of the new lid. i understood the purpose would be to have a dry leaf cover (maybe add a few dry sticks below the leafs) over a cloth, wich would allow for more air on the composting?

i'm guessing half the problem on the composting was bad management, but the other half was poor planning, wich lead to both a bad managed bin and a bad designed bin

this was my first experiment, and i expect all my first experiments to fail miserably, both to not be dissapointed (well, i still was a little...) and to aim for a second better designed try



thanks again for all the feedback, as soon as i check on it again (this semester was brutal on me, trying to finish my undergrad life) i'll update the post with how the 'thing' is...


on a sidenote, a old wall fountain/spring was refurbished as a vase new compost bin. maybe this stucture will be better managed and produce compost. documenting this is added to my to-do list =)


happy holydays everyone, and may yout bins be ever healthy and happy!!!

thanks everyone for the answers!

i have no chickens at home to eat the grubs and worms, but as i couldnt move the bin (kinda heavy to move alone) it has been left in place. There seems to be less worms, and local birds might be eating those that leave the bin.

I piled about 10cm of leaves up to the top of the bin, but since it's summer here and it's been raining, i doubt i'll be able to dry the composting.

The smell is less worse (i wouldnt say better), but still not the pleasant earthy smell of the first week when it was well cared for.

The liquid drained at the bottom (on another bucket) was used to fertilize plants in the front yard, wich resulted on a not very pleasant smell but oh well...

maybe i should've taken some pics, but its still not possible, so i'll do my best to post some updates, hopefully until i'm able to recover the composting, or quit this bin it it comes to that (i dont want to)

Hello, long time reader, new time poster.
First of all, i live in brasil

My mother asked me to make a composting bin to fertilize her garden, but she didn't follow the instructions of piling earth and leaves on top of the organic matter, and as I live in another city there was no way to take care of it.

This weekend I came home to find some weird worms, that look like this that I researched as the house fly. It also may be Dermatobia hominis, called here as Mosca Varejeira, or Varejeira Fly wich parasites humans, dogs and cattle.

I was utterly disgusted by this, seeing my sweet earth-smelling composting bin into a vermin-riddenfoul-smelling trash bin.

Is there any way to properly take care of them without poison or wasting all my compost? what should I do? i'm worried about the flies hatching and getting to the dogs.