This year there is an immense sense of achievement in the community garden. The transformation over winter was stunning and now the raised gardens are overflowing with verdant growth. After the long winter the joys of rummaging through the prickly leaves of zucchini to find succulent fingers of fruit evoke a chorus of memories of happy summer’s days both lived and locked away in our genetic memory. It’s pure ecstacy of spirit. A feeling I hope Ember will enjoy one day.
We celebrated with a morning tea and it really showcased the cooking talents of the group. Sarah impressed with homemade lavosh created with a pasta machine, which I can’t wait to try making myself.
Ember sported the turmeric and marigold dyed cardigan that I started before she was born and almost didn’t finish in time to fit her. It paired nicely with the pink cosmos which I think have become the unofficial emblematic flower of summer in the community garden.
After all the hard work we put in we can now look forward to leisurely years of planting and harvesting, grass free and water secure.
Time seems to liquefy in warm weather. A sudden ice melt that goes from drippingly slow winter days to a spring river sweeping you off your feet. Ember’s sudden developmental leaps are an even more poignant reminder of passing time. There isn’t a week that mothers of older children don’t coo over her and reminisce about the time their crawler was at that sweet and immobile age. It has made me want to document our days like I did when we were world travellers. I’m concentrating on revelling in the warm spring days turning into summer and luxuriating in the minutiae.
This week in November
Our first hot nights have been restless and wakeful after a glorious run of night sleeping. When the clouds smothered the sun and unleashed a soaking thunderstorm we luxuriated in the cool. The garden responded to the rains, unfurling spring green leaves from withered crowns. Pink roses and dianthus blooming seductively, calling pollinators to return in the stillness after the rain.
Crafting
Dylan completed our garden arbour, a structure I have longed for and romanticised for some time. Our little grape has a way to go but one day I will be swinging under its dappled shade with some elderflower cordial and a good book. The arbour also functions as a rather grand support structure for our washing line. I christened it with some hand dyed wool coloured bright yellow with turmeric. If I’m not quick on the needles Emby will already have grown out of the honeycomb cardigan I have been knitting although I started it before she was born. Yikes!
Learning
Little one has newly made acquaintance with her hands and now is curiously pawing and kicking at everything within reach. Only a few weeks ago she could only manage to bat at toys and now she grasps and caresses them. She spends playtime exploring them lovingly with her hands and devouring them with her eyes and more often than not her mouth as well. During this period we missed her baby gurgle talk as she concentrated on her favourite new hobbies: splashing water out of the bath in great cascades and kicking mummy in the tummy whilst being changed. The former a serious job demanding full concentration and a stern expression, the latter one of the world’s premiere delights.
After 2 weeks of loosing her voice, she is back to her lovely baby gurgle talk. It came back as suddenly as it stopped, but gaining a new octave of shrieks.
Growing
It has been too long since I shared the monthly happenings in our edible garden. Was it really 2010? A different garden, but at a similar stage, just finding its equilibrium. We have been absolutely plagued by every imaginable kind of aphid this year..Allium? We got it! Rose? You betcha! Brassica? As think as soot! Then more and more red spots appeared in our verdant tapestry lawn, ladybirds making a home in our garden for the first time in four years. What a joy! Ember hasn’t lost her newborn fascination with red and these little beetles require a little protection from her curiosity.
We have been harvesting a lot of parsley which now grows like a weed in every quarter of our garden, even between the pavers and in hanging baskets. Nothing much else is quite ready yet except for some deliciously sweet strawberries which have just given us a taste of the summer harvest to come.
We finally planted our summer vegetables over the Melbourne Cup long weekend. We are resting last year’s tomato bed, but there is still some room elsewhere for planting Periforme Abruzzese, one of my favourites saucing tomatoes and a something new, a Riesentraube cherry tomato as I have heard cherry tomatoes can be a good option in fruit fly prone areas which unfortunately now includes Flemington!
This year we bought lettuce, capsicum, chilli and basil seedlings, but next year we hope to have a mini hot house set up in time for seed raising. Dylan chose the capsicum by its name ‘Giant Bullhorn’, the chilli is a ‘bishop’s crown’ a variety Edible Eden has recommended for its sweet and mild flavour.
We reduce our expiring seed collection a minuscule amount by planting a few saved sunflower, borlotti, tromboncino and butternut seeds. The snails knocked some off before we remembered to put down some pet safe pellets, but the survivors are now almost thick stemmed enough to make it on their own.
Looking forward to sharing our progress with you soon. What are you growing, making and dreaming of this month?
No time to obsess over paint swatches for the nursery, my nesting was all about gardening.
Normally winter hits me hard. It’s cold, it’s dull and leaving work when the street lights are lit, deflates what little spirit is left in me. The weather is not conducive to plant growth or a sunny disposition. This winter was different though. Perhaps the promise of our little babe softened its chill. Definitely the addition of a bedroom heater made mornings a little less spartan; the outrageous power bill was a problem for spring me to deal with. Of course, those frigid days make it the perfect time to plan and prepare the garden for the spring. However my activities were limited as our baby rapidly cycled through the fruits and vegetables from poppy-seed towards watermelon. By the time she hit cantaloupe size I had great empathy for hedgehog “trying to get out of bread”. I was able to do the dreaming, but needed to call in some physical philanthropists to do the doing.
Time was running out before I popped and I feared, quite justifiably it turns out that after she was born I wouldn’t have time to get anything done. Less than a month before giving birth, saw me join the rosy-cheeked group of permablitz volunteers to completely renovate the Farnham St Community Garden.
The design
Key features
5 seat height wicking beds
5 standing height wicking beds
2 large communal garden beds with drip irrigation
4 reused corrugated metal garden beds
Mulch paths
Existing features
Adjacent to neighbourhood house, food forest and playground
Water tanks connected to roof
Worm farms
Hot compost bays made from recycled pallets
Compost bins
The Problem
The garden had a lot of heart, but only the hardiest gardeners ever stuck it long enough to see multiple summers. When our little one starts toddling I want her to have a beautiful space to learn about growing food, surrounded by a passionate community. We needed to reinvigorate the garden to attract and keep the young professionals and families who to this point found the upkeep too hard. Accessibility needed to be improves as well for the stalwarts who have kept it running. It had to be a joy to maintain not a chore.
The existing garden was shaded and sucked dry by the towering eucalypt. It demanded a twice weekly watering roster in the summer holidays when everyone would rather be relaxing at the beach. The low sleeper beds with their narrow paths between also excluded people with back issues or disabilities from enjoying the garden. We warred a hopeless battle against Kikuyu grass which was continuously invading and pillaging nutrients from the gardens, it was hard, demoralising work.
The Plan
The invasive grass needed to be completely removed. We suggested it be replaced with mulch paths that could manage the water over flow from the garden beds. Near the gum tree, raised wicking beds in two different sizes were custom-made by MODbox to suit our geometric design. These beds will only require fortnightly filling of their water reservoirs once plants are established. The layout is as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional. The paths are wide enough for a wheel barrow and even a pram, something I never would have thought about before being pregnant. I am really grateful for this now!
The tops of the beds are capped to allow them to double as seats with sustainably harvested cypress used instead of merbau on special request. The L shaped border beds will be connected to the food forest’s drip irrigation system. This is where we will grow communal crops that can be harvested for use in the houses’ cooking classes. Hopefully soon the less than charming chain link fence will be covered with lush pumpkin vines, ripe strawberries dripping over the edge to be plucked by little hands.
It is exciting to have the opportunity to breath new life into the garden. All this was made possible by the tenacity of Pip from FSNLC who had the unglamorous task of securing grants. Let’s hope that this new garden will encourage more community members to invest some time into the garden.
The Permablitz
Every great cause needs a tireless leader. Pat made sure the day was a success, not only by facilitating the permablitz, but spending weeks beforehand coordinating: the deconstruction of the existing garden, re-use of resources and the inevitable mountains of gravel, sand and soil that wicking beds require. Besides, it is no mean feat to keep a motley crew of blitzers happy, hydrated, sated and on schedule!
The MODboxes arrived on pallets and once we got our head around the instructions it was great fun putting the beds together, like adult lego! We were lucky to have some tradies attend, and they were good-natured enough to let us bully them into setting out all the beds to make sure they were level. The layout is the moment when installations by volunteers can veer from wonky charm into a hot mess. I’m not going to lie, having some experts involved took the pressure off considerably. We could confidently leave them to work away while we instructed the other volunteers to build up the layers. By the end of the day it looked amazing, leaving us itching to get planting.
It is always astounding the amount of work blitzers can accomplish in a day, that magic moment when a sketch becomes a reality. By lunchtime it always feels like you will be left with piles of unmoved soil. Then suddenly, perhaps reinvigorated by lunch, the crew shovels, and barrows and the garden in transformed. How beautiful to have such a fantastic bunch of people sacrifice their weekend to make this happen.
Removing grass and levelling groundSlotting timbers together to form baseBuilding up the layers
Attaching the liner Installing the overflow
Checking depth of gravel reservoir Food grade liner Geofabric and fill with soil
Adding the cappingPlanting the communal beds with salvaged strawberries
It has been 9 months since my last blog post, I’ve been growing something other than vegetables this year. In early July we welcomed little Ember Wren into our nest. Our precious little girl.
It was international Women’s Day when we learnt that our sweet little baby was a girl. A bright little spark in my belly filled with potential, that day we named her Ember.
Since her birth day we have been hibernating, just basking in warm glow of this little soul, while tiny buds began to swell on bare branches ready for spring. We’re totally smitten.
Now that the weather is warming up we have been venturing out with our little one and introducing her to the garden. We look forward to lots of lovely days showing her the delights of nurturing tiny seeds into beautiful productive plants.
My nesting involved getting our garden ready for our new arrival as much as our house, maybe more. I’ll share details about our Community Garden reinvigoration in my next post. Until then enjoy a few photos of our little cutie patootie.
