Re: [Community_garden] school gardens crafts

Hi Kristin, I just wondered how you went with the garden crafts and whether you have posted any pics anywhere with the results of your craft project? Tamsin Sydney, Australia On 24/9/08 12:37 AM, Kristin Faurest [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Help! I'm looking for a wide range of ideas for kids

Re: [Community_garden] New community garden with a rain storage question

Hi Erica, If your garden has a bit of a slope you could design swales and berms into the layout to re-route rainwater to beds. This isn't exactly storage in a tank, but rather ground storage and seepage to the root zones of your plantings. It is one of the principles used in permaculture and is

Re: [cg] Getting rid of a dandelion lawn

Hi, I have tried solarisation on small plots and it works well to clear the ground (depending on the temperature and moisture), also have used old heavy carpet which takes a fair bit longer but works fairly well by cutting out light and composting what¹s underneath it (in both methods watch your

Re: [cg] New community garden for hobbyists

Just a thought which may be way off but... If the garden is for hobbyists in higher income areas, food may not be the ideal focus, maybe something like rare indigenous plant cultivation or rare/heirloom vegetables, where the focus is on continuing seed stock, making plants available to other

Re: [cg] Growing edibles on streetsides (Valor tempered with discretion)

On 11/2/04 9:01 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Lisa! I agree first with the caveats raised by Adam Judy. Having said that, I'm sure that ALL urban agriculture risks contamination by cars, pets drunks. So why not use that curb strip for some hardy roots,

Re: [cg] mathematical formulas and food production

Here in Australia, Diggers Club is a heritage seed group which publish results like that. They have set up a sample vegie garden and advertise the amount of food produced. Their quote follows... You can grow a years supply of vegetables in just 10 square metres ­   just 2% of the average back

Re: [cg] RE: Misplaced Plants in the Garden, Round-Up story

Great discussion on weeds!! We have sheet mulched with really thick pads of newspaper (about half an inch) which overlap. On working bees we fill the wheelbarrow with water and have cardboard boxes of newspapers posted along the area to be mulched (these could be stacked in another wheelbarrow

Re: [cg] Starting from Scratch

Hi Jane, Community gardens are awesome and I don't want to divert your energy if a community garden is what you really want to make but by the sounds of your email you are interested people gardening their own back yards. Community gardens don't have to be in a communal place. My recommendation

Re: [cg] Fun with the Garden's Current Produce: Three Ingredient Cooking

Great idea!! My current fave is rocket, pear and cheese (parmesan or fetta). If I had to use three based on the plot at present (the rocket is not big enough and neither is the brocolli) - I would pick dill and silverbeet, and mix the dill and siverbeet stems (finely chopped and streamed) with

Re: [cg] marble for paths

Marble is beautiful and doesn¹t leach and has be used by cooks for ages as a cold board for pastries and sweets - rather than use in the garden, polish the surface and finish edges and sell as chopping/pastry boards and raise money for your garden ­ a simple metal drawer pull/handle screwed onto

Re: [cg] attack of the killer tomatoes

A beautiful film: 'microcosmos' And what about something 'lite' like 'a bugs life'?? Also, here in Melbourne our film and sound archive rents out films for projectors they have a huge list and also keep all local short films (often where you'll find gems which are in the subject fields you are

Re: [cg] Permaculture Biointensive Community Garden WAS community_garden digest, Vol 1 #1408 - 3 msgs

Sharon, the great site you are describing exists in a form in Melbourne, Australia. CERES (centre for education and research into environmental stategies) is a reclaimed site over an old landfill on the edge of the Merrri Creek and is over 30 years old. It has woodlots, food forest, café,

Re: [cg] No argument on community gardens being organic. . .

New gardens get a free pass from Nature the first year or so because the bugs haven't found your veggies yet. The key is to build soil so that the plants are strong and to avail oneself of the sustainable methods knowledge that is so readily available on the Web and elsewhere. This isn't

Re: [cg] Fees for gardens

Hi, At our garden we cover water use and a little extra to cover postage of letters/newsletters if need be (about 5 stamps/plot). The fees are per square metre so that plot holders feel there is no fee discrimination between varying plot sizes. Plots are AUS$5/sqm/year. So far this has amounted to

Re: [cg] Woodchucks and fences

Hi, This may be right of course as I don't know anything about woodchucks, but here we have possums which eat everything in a garden if they gat the chance, they don't burrow and to keep them out of gardens we sometimes have to cage in the plot so they cant climb a fence and hop in, but they are

Re: [cg] Wood to be used in a community garden.

Hi all, Great discussion. Some friends of mine use old bicycle wheels mounted at the axel on top of posts and grow climbers over these which adds an interesting structure to the garden. I grew plants up both metal and bamboo last year and found that the bamboo was more successful - plants weren't

Re: [cg] Use of fungicide

Hi Jan, I have found with our roses that picking off leaves with blackspot as soon as you notice them and taking the leaves out of the garden so they cant re-infest; along with making sure the roses are healthy ­ well fed with an organic fertiliser which has trace elements such as a seaweed

Re: [cg] Sources of less common kinds of seeds

Hi Sharon, If it is plants from different cultures that you are interested in contacting different cultural groups may also help. My partner is from eastern Europe and I ask his mum for interesting seeds which aren't available widely but used in traditional dishes, also from my grandmother who is

Re: [cg] Rainwater collectors and more tomatoes.

We are planning to put rainwater collection tanks in and went to look at another garden which has put rainwater barrels against a brick wall which faces the sun and they act as a heat store (dark plastic) and create a micro climate (the wall has been enhanced with two wooden fences at angles on

[cg] Math in the garden

Hi, I have found a great website which explores Fibonacci numbers (the pattern which explains spirals in cauliflower, pinecones, echinacia...). It is great for kids (and adults) and is an interesting way to explore the garden and would make a great education lesson plan. It shows the links between

[cg] Prison gardens

I have a question for anyone involved in prison gardens. My sister (a landscape architect) is designing grounds for a low security prison and would like to include a horticultural therapy section in the way of either a market garden or individual plots. The ability to grow food would be an

Re: [cg] Powdered milk

Recently our dairy farms have been deregulated and there has been some concern that large companies were buying up farms and milk in order to undermine the local industries and be allowed to import milk from overseas, this hasn't happened but the publicity has encouraged people to think about what

Re: [cg] Community garden nutrient inputs

Tanks Libby, It is great to hear about what other gardens do, your composting sounds great. We too have been collecting woodchips from our local arborists so hopefully when our paths rot down we'll have a good addition to the compost piles. A great permaculture garden in a town about two hours

Re: [cg] Re: Compost bins

Hi Steve, You are so right about climate and soil types to drive compost techniques! The pit method is awesome and I think I¹ll try it here (we maybe should have a winter and a summer method as the season¹s humidity changes quite a lot), my dad lives in Sydney on sandy soil and he has composted

[cg] Community garden nutrient inputs

Hi, Just a question I've been thinking about while visiting our garden and also reading this list serve. How much 'stuff' (manures/compost ingredients/soil...) do different gardens have to bring in to keep their plots productive? As vegetable gardens are constantly harvested, is there a way with

Re: [cg] Compost bins

Hi Tori, At our garden we constructed very simple bins, and we were able to make then out of reclaimed materials. We marked out a square on the ground 3ftx3ft and another square joining it the same size so that they share a common side. At the six corners we hammered in long star pickets. Fencing

Re: [cg] worms

Hi all, Frank at our community garden is our local worm expert (and now supplies our local city with worms for their horticulture programs) and his favoured way of separating worms from castings is to get a black tarp/thick garbage bag cut open and spread over a table, then get a large onion bag

Re: [cg] successful models or ideas

Hi Jennifer, Open garden models are beautiful but we haven¹t mastered the skills yet (although it sounds like many of the NY gardens have). Our garden is open to all whenever a plot holder is in the garden working. Also as our garden is on the side of a community centre we have invited all

Re: [cg] Holiday Cards

I would be happy to do a drawing/watercolour (botanical-ish style) and donate it to ACGA (to be used or not as you see fit)­ sounds like a great excuse to visit the garden and not get dirty! The idea of using artists of all media who are involved with community gardens to make images is great!! I

[cg] Compost creatures

Does anybody know of any good books/references/guides for the common (and not so common) life forms found in the garden and compost piles? I have a slow and a fast compost pile and the number of life forms in the slow pile is astounding, and I think it would be quite a fun 'get to know the world

Re: [cg] Vegetable Garden Compost

A rambling reply... Yep, The Koala eats these and spends many hours sleeping in the tree blissed out as it digests the leaves, apparently in an altered state. Also colourful parrots (cockatoos, lorakeets, rosellas...), sugartail gliders, bats, goannas both nest in the trees and feast on the

Re: [cg] Plants for community garden

It will be interesting to see how raspberries grow here, it is probably getting a little late to plant them (we¹ve just begun the second month of spring) but we will give it a go on a small scale. I think I¹ll see if the local organic gardening mob have any advice for our local area, I know a

Re: [cg] Plants for community garden

Comfrey, what a wonderful plant! I will be sure to try some comfrey medicine. Comfrey will be the next plant to go in I hope. We are planning to add a small article about comfrey in our next garden newsletter and that is a great tip, thanks! Do you think strawberries and rasberries would cope

Re: [cg] Plants for community garden

Thanks so much for the excellent ideas! 1. Our Botanic Gardens are great for native flora and also landscape achitecture although unfortunately they have stayed away from vegetable growing (except for an amazing organic garden area of the Tasmanian Botanic Gardens - over Bass Straight an all

[cg] Plants for shaded areas in a community garden

by trial and error but it would be great to have some other experience to add to our knowledge base. Sorry about rambling on, happy gardening, and a wonderful autumn harvest to all of you in the northern hemisphere! Tamsin Salehian Dig In Community Garden Melbourne, Australia

Re: [cg] Local food systems abroad

Hi Andy, For community gardens in Australia there are two websites which you may find useful - http://www.magna.com.au/~pacedge/garden/index.html This website will be undergoing an update but has excellent contacts and info [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is a community org in Melbourne doing great