The Grand Opening

What a great day. a good crowd came to see Deputy Mayor Jim Howard officially opening the gardens and plant a Robinia in the centre of the gardens to mark the day (6th June 1014 by the way).

                                          They're arriving!

                                          They're here.

                                         Some of our guests planted up a raised bed, under                                                                                    the direction of the fabulous Karen Lenehan.

Gardening Workshops

We held a number of gardening workshops in the early part of 2014 - Urban Garden Design, Soils and Composting, Low-Water Use Gardening, Companion Planting, and Goring Vegetables. These were delivered by Karen McLennan of Karen McLennan Permaculture. They were a huge success!

 

Our first wicking garden - in a raised bed.

Well in week three of the Links to Learning relationship with Narrandera Food Garden the students built a wicking garden. A wicking garden is a system in which water is retained in the gravel at the base of the bed, and only moves up as the earth above dries out. It's a simple permaculture principle and reduces water use by reducing evaporation and reduces the frequency with which watering is required by retaining water within the loop until it's needed by the plants.

TAFE teacher Karen Lenehan demonstrated the way a wicking bed works first using a small one made using a polystyrene box, gravel, shade cloth, soil and a poly pipe. It's simple, anyone can do it. Karen has built 5 larger beds at home and she only needs to water weekly or less.

The students laying the shade cloth (you can use weed mat in the base of the garden.

With pond liner in on top of weed mat - the gravel layer goes in.

Our first garden bed

In October the phone rang and it was TAFE Teacher Karen Lenehan. Karen was looking for a garden for her students to work on. She had 4 mornings in which to take the boys through some units of study that where essential to their graduation. It just happened that Narrandera TAFE admin manager Heidi Loggemen had attended our Permaculture workshop and was able to tell Karen about our NFG.

She had found the right place. Karen inspected the gardens and we agreed that we would create a no-dig garden bed in week one, plant it up in week two, then build a Wicking garden in one of our raised corrugated iron beds in week three and plant up in week four. I undertook that these beds would be maintained over the long term by NFG.


Karen describes how the keyhole garden should look.

First you measure out the key hole shape.

Then you start adding layers.

Then you wet it all through and leave it (say a week) to start composting. After a few days it should feel hot if you put a finger down through the mix.  Ours was steaming on plant up day.

 

This should be good to plant up soon.

And the seedlings go in.