Garden Working Bee - Back in October 2012

In the art garden...

We have been soooo lucky at the garden over the last few weeks to have a wonderful local artist Leila come and beautify our southern fence. We're wondering if the hot weather over the last few weeks inspired Leila to wish that Clifton Hill had its very own beach? Wouldn't it be lovely!

Spring cleaning!

Its. Almost. Spring!!! And to celebrate, the weather is going to be 19 degrees on Saturday, which means its get down to the garden time!! From about 1.30pmish there will be some casual gardening/renovation works going on and everyone is welcome. And being spring-time, maybe its time for you to dust off your tools and build your very own box?

The leaking garden

The garden just isn't allowing itself to be limited by the boundaries of the laneway: it's leaking out into the community.  The first box to break away was reported here, and made plenty of waves.  Now a second box is up, tucked away in Rutland street.

Thomas and Dale with the new planter box
(permit no. YCG-02) 

It's a wicking bed, planted with low maintenance herbs, such as dwarf rosemary, Spanish tarragon, creeping thyme, German camomile, perenial basil and oregano.  An ornamental kale centre piece will provide a bit of variation, along with an Hakawase strawberry; lettuce was planted in between the herbs, to take fill up the space while the perennials are still small.  Mint Corsican was planted in clumps in between, in the hope it will form a living mulch, and we also spread some alfalfa seeds to do the same job whilst everything else gets established.

Freshly planted box

It's not just a planter box for the community, but came from the community.  It was all made possible with the encouragement of locals, and the help from Dale, Neil, Maude, Crina, Barry, Sue and Norm, sponsorship from the Clifton Hill/ Fitroy North Community Bank, and compost made from food scraps from the Quince and Squirrel Cafés.

End view

Wicking bed in construction

Wicked!

A lot of people have asked us folks up at the garden what those weird tubes sticking out of some of our garden beds actually are? The answer is "wicking beds" - the most joyous answer to water-starved guerrilla gardeners this side of the railway line!
In this video the gorgeous Deb (who taught us everything we know about wick beds) gives her lovely explanation of why wicking works, and how you can easily create your own at home or on a nature strip near you.

Weird weather...

In one week's time (and a bit) it will officially be winter - but try telling that to the eggplant bushes down at the garden. They're still going mental producing a wide variety of fruit - perhaps the results of the unseasonably warm Autumn we've just enjoyed or the weirdly wet 'n' wild summer that went before it. Not that we're complaining. We've been enjoying the tasty little fellas "nasty" dengaku style - grilled in the oven with a miso and miring glaze. Mmmmm.

A spoonful of soda...

Cleaning up a communal box last week we were lucky enough to dig up a bouquet of healthy looking Jerusalem Artichokes. According to a few of the gardeners up at the laneway, Jerusalem Artichokes are notorious for causing flatulence: in the words of one gardener, the last time they ate the stuff "it wasn't worth it!" However before the chokes could be chucked on the compost heap, the fabulous Antoinette came to the rescue with a remedy a chef once told her. This technique involves soaking the artichokes with 1 tsp. of bicarb soda for at least a few hours before you intend to cook them, afterwhich you can enjoy the chokes fart-free.
With some trepidation we bought the bouquet home, scrubbed the little fellas, and dutifully soaked them in a big bowl of water with said bicarb soda. We left them for rather longer than what had been suggested (in the hope that it would really work), and then Neil put together a simple soup. We ate the first few spoonfuls slowly and waited. Nothing. A few spoonfuls more and we'd stopped worrying about our innards and were simply enjoying the delicious flavour: at once creamy, nutty and spicy - unlike any vegetable I've tasted before. After that we completely forgot about their fart-inducing reputation and downed the lot. And it seems Antoinette's chef was right, the diagnosis from Neil was "no more farts than usual!"

Punked!

We're halfways through autumn already and it appears the many feral pumpkin plants that have sprouted from our compost have decided it's high time they set fruit. Hidden beneath the bushes and amongst the long grass we've begun to notice a vast array of gorgeous looking pumpkins poking their way into the world. There's been whisperings on the vine that growing multiple varieties of pumpkin in close proximity can mean your plants set strange fruit - we've yet to try any yet but I guess it will be a case of suck it and see!

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to the the Clifton Hill Community Garden's blog.

We're a group of enthusiastic food gardeners based in Clifton Hill, Melbourne, Australia. We're constantly looking for new ways to grow food in our suburb, and thought it would be nice to share some of our urban agriculture adventures here.

The group also picks up food scraps from two local cafes, Quince and Squirrel, which we then turn into compost. That aspect of our project was set up under the supportive wing of Cultivating Community. We're always on the lookout for volunteers to get involved and be on the roster for picking up from the cafes - the dream is to continue expanding and include other cafes in the area.

We also have spare plots at the garden, and welcome local folk who crave some dirt to grow vegies in. We're in the City of Yarra, which means we live in a city which currently has an urban agriculture coordinator, Pete Huff, and a great street planter box scheme for growing vegies as well. Look out for some more posts on that in the near future, or check out some of the info on the council's community garden info page.