Moerewa’s Hobbiton

Built by the Bro`s without the Hairy Toes
Not Middle Earth but Maori Earth

An Adobe Nicho is a Mexican style Catholic altar that was in every adobe house in Mexico.

This is all part of the Mex-Maori, Maori-Med [Mediterranean] Fusion we are attempting at Otiria.

We did this in one day and all the Maori boys who helped me were blown away by how it turned out. Grant.

I am very excited about this method and now prefer it to the concrete organoponico walls but they both have different functions.

It is very simple to put  the manuka stakes in after outlining the shape you want to follow with 13mm black alkathene pipe held in place with weed mat pins. Then you lash on the bamboo slats and apply the paper adobe plaster.

These walls are very strong and highly stable because of their curved nature.

Eventually the bamboo and manuka will rot out or become brittle but the plaster itself is the strength of the structure, not the wooden framework. Thats just an armature to hang the plaster on.

Grant.

These walls were made from just sand and cement

The site where we were building the garden had a very sandy soil so we just used the sand from the site.

The soil benind the wall was amended with large quantitiies of compost and rock dust to make it fertile and improve water retention

I have learnt how to make the moulds cheaper and easier to build.
If you do not want to take the corners off the beds then all you need is
2 planks [12 x 2  inches ] and can be any length but I normally use 2.5m
2 iron braces
2 wooden wedges

The iron braces are the genius of the design

Now if you want to get fancy then you can build the end walls as shown in the third picture which involves cutting compound angles and using hinges

But if you want to use the moulds in a more flexible way then do not any hinges and only to make simple saw cuts on short pieces of plank as shown in pictures 4 and 5.

Keep the wall shutters apart with 2 iron braces and wooden wedges
This allows you to make circles and wiggly walls

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