Weekly Report 29th November

By Jessica Tang

This week we have a new gardener, Jessica’s mother Amy, came to help in the community garden. Since Chinese students and their parents are volunteering in the community garden, this report will be translated into a Chinese version.

This week we have transplanted some young tomato plants and peas in the raised bed gardens, watering the plants with compost juice which made from composts, mulches and recycled water. Surprisingly, some seeds from compost has successfully germinated in the raised bed garden, and will be transplanted in few weeks.

The grapes at the backyard of Michael’s house are growing very well, they haved formed a lovely shelter for chooks. As the plants are bearing fruit, their stems are needed to be pruned to reduce the nutrients intake. To make the compost juice, we chopped the unwanted stems of grapes and soaked into water for 3 days. These grapes are given to a local cafe for it to make verjuice. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verjuice)

The chili peppers in our community garden are ready to harvest. Healthy and delicious, these spice can be used fresh in salad and stir-fries. Having productive gardens on streets means it only takes you few-minute walk to get the fresh vegetables and fruit. It decreased the money spending on transportation and reduced the pollution from transporting and packaging. The plants also consume the wasted vegetable and fruit. Take the compost as an example, the ingredients of compost all came from unwanted food and plants which are full in nutrients. Instead of spending time and money to clean the waste, we make it into fertilizer for plants and they will provide us food as return. An example of a cafe which accepts surplus fruit and veggies from local urban farmers is Cornersmith: http://www.cornersmith.com.au/

Chippendale社区花园是一个富有特色的多产花园。我们将本地的水果、蔬菜种植在居民区街道上，利用雨水浇灌，打造了一片美丽的绿色街道，也为居民提供了健康环保又便捷的食物来源。在Chippendale, 我们提倡环保与废物再利用。我们将丢弃的食物与植物枝叶制作成混合肥料，并且收集雨水和废水，将其再次利用于花园的灌溉与施肥中。这样做不仅减少了清理垃圾与脏水的成本，还能够带来一定的生产效益。

作为一个开放性的公共绿色花园，我们欢迎所有热心的居民。这个星期，中国学生Jessica和她的母亲Amy, 还有Mia同学一同前来帮忙。在Michael的指导下，她们定期来浇灌植物，修剪枝叶，移植花草，制作混合肥料。在大家的共同努力下，社区花园得以良好的运作。我们努力将Chippendale社区花园打造成一个有教育意义的典范，希望有越来越多的人加入环保行动中来。

Transplanted Tomato Plants into Garden Beds

These grapes are given to a local cafe for it to make verjuice from - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verjuice

Harvesting Chili Peppers

Mia(Left) and Jesscia(Right)

Jessica, Amy and Michael

PLANTING ALPINE STRAWBERRY FROM SEEDS

By Jessica Tang

27/09/2016

The alpine strawberries (Fragaria vesca) are shade-tolerant ornamental edibles with beautiful small white flowers and sweetly flavoured fruits. They are easy to grow and well behaved in the garden. With the help of this instruction you can have this beautiful fruit growing in your own garden!

·      Get the seeds from local Nurseries or online shops.

You may check out the website we bought our seeds from: https://www.diggers.com.au/

·      When and where to sow the seeds?

The alpine strawberries are best planted in early Spring. They can grow in full sun, and in warm areas like Sydney, they also thrive in half day sun and shade. They love the rich, fertile and well-drained soil with consistent moisture.

·      Sowing the seeds in seed bed tray/seeding pot

Placing a sheet of permeable fabric at the bottom of seed bed tray or small seeding pot. This allows the water to drain without losing soil. Fill two-third of the container with fine seed-starting mix and sow seeds 3cm apart and 2cm deep. Keep the container evenly moist but not soggy, and maintain a temperature of approximately 15 Celsius.

·      Feeding and Planting

Feed the seeds evert two weeks. It often takes 2 to 8 weeks for germination. When 3 leaves have appeared, the plants should be planting out into pots in the depth of 10-15cm. Transplant to garden when well grown (approximately 2 months), and spacing plants about 30-60cm apart.

·      Harvesting

It usually takes one year for strawberries to bear fruit. Matured alpine strawberry will form low-growing, leafy plants with the height of 15cm and spread to 50-100cm. They have lovely white or pink flowers, followed by red juicy fruits grown in early spring. Enjoy the fruits of alpine strawberries!

Further instructions on planting from seeds: http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/strawberries-ahs.pdf

Video instructions on growing strawberry plants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVQsaq2wBKY

Gennaro’s Italian Risotto with Strawberry & Balsamic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIWFG0-kp4c

Cover Image Reference: www.xn--kruterey-1za.com

Weekly Report 20/09/2016

By Jessica Tang

20/09/2016

This week we welcomed our new volunteer, Mia, to give a hand in our community garden. It is happy to see our sustainable ideas and work have been known by more people. Gardening has the magic to bring people together, and thanks to the enthusiastic volunteers, our garden has become healthier and beautiful.

Our weekly task for garden maintenance usually started with removing compost. Compost is essential to our productive garden and it needs regular maintenance. It is made up of leftover fruit and vegetables, papers, barks and leaves. We also chopped the unwanted stems from Fan Palm and Pawpaw to make the compost juice. They need to be augured to get mixed with air and settled in regular temperature in order to decay. During a few weeks the mixture will be decayed and formed the soil texture, which is the nutritional fertilizer for plants. Luckily, the compost on Myrtle Street has become better under the help of volunteer and neighbors.

We also removed the banana tree on the verge garden opposite to Peace Park. Because each pseudo-stem of banana only fruits once, their root system constantly puts our suckers that form new plants to replace the dying part of plants. The extensive root system of the plant keeps spreading and sucking the nutrients, which made it aggressive to the surrounding herbs and trees.

With sharp shovels, secateurs and lots of energy we dug out the mushy roots, trimmed into small pieced and put in the compost bin. It is amazing that plants never give up to survive. It is their nature to take care of themselves as much as possible. In order to make the garden sustainable, we should not only look at individual plants, also we need to make sure the lives in garden are balanced as a group. Thus, it is our job to organise the plants in a productive and healthy way.

Being sustainable is to respect the cycle of life. During this 3-months volunteering, I have seen the strong connections between our life and the life of nature. Living in the city we sometimes ignored this ligament that human being shall always live with nature. Things we did will subsequently impacts every part of the cycle, and it is going to influence ourselves as return. We have to be very responsible and considerable to the decisions we make. The good decisions can be as simple as putting leftover food in compost, harvesting rainwater for drinking, recycling the waste water for irrigation, growing your own food from seeds…Being sustainable will benefit both of nature and us. 

Mia's First Day in Sustainable Chippendale

By Yulan(Mia) Li

20/09/2016

As a green hand in gardening, my first time working in Chippendale road garden was absolutely a rich and helpful experience. The skills I learned include watering, pruning, composting.  I also got some knowledge about how to achieve sustainability through gardening.

Watering

My first work was watering plants on both side of the road with the help of Jess. We used recycled water(it may also be called ‘greywater’). I learned from Jess that it is the root that needs access to water, not the leaves. Wetting foliage can be a waste of water.

Pruning

We pruned kaffir lime and comfrey planted on roadside. The key point in pruning trees and shrubs is that always making an angled cut just above and sloping away from a viable bud. In this way we cut some offending branches that have blocked sunlight and take in too much nutrient. Comfrey is a kind of perennial herb and the pruning method is different from that of trees or shrubs. Basically we removed the stems from the comfrey.

Refer to http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/landscaping/implement/pruning_perennials.html for more information.

Auguring the compost

We moved the stuff in the compost bin on the street to the bins in backyard and aerated them with auger in order to encourage air circulation. The compost system is decaying well. I saw both brown materials such as moistened cardboard, egg containers, dry leaves, as well as green materials such as green leaves, garden clippings, and vegie scraps. They together provide sufficient carbon and nitrogen that are beneficial to balanced compost. It was good to see so many worms in the compost because they accelerate the decay and help function more efficiently.

Refer to http://www.sgaonline.org.au/the-science-of-composting/ and http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s4439784.htm for more information.

Life circle – Turning green waste into composts   

We shredded the fresh green pruning (both limbs and leaves) and broke bulks of banana tree roots into small pieces then added them into compost bins. We soaked the pruning in water and after a few days they will produce a ready-to-use ‘compost tea’ that can be soil conditioner. We add banana tree root into compost bins and stirred well.

Refer to http://www.sgaonline.org.au/compost-worm-and-weed-teas/ for more information.

Myrtle Street Sustainable Planting Map

A detailed documentation of plantings on Myrtle Street, contributed by Landscape Architecture student Huili Jessica Tang.