Three years ago I returned to study fulltime at the University of Canberra and have just completed a Bachelor of Heritage, Museums and Conservation majoring in Conservation. A year ago my life went completely topsy turvy caring for my elderly parents. Coping with the stress was hard, and I found the only way to cope was to garden, so I joined a local community garden and got started. Literally - I was given a 50 square metre patch of rock hard clay, so I put in raised beds and built it up. My journey was documented on my facebook page and consumed a lot of my life. In January this year I applied for some more land so I could grow potatoes and sweetcorn, in March I was offered a plot and then refused a plot. So began another nightmare, this time dealing with community garden internal politics. In July I was finally offered two lots of 25 square metres of land, accepted them and made a late start trying to get all my raised beds ready for Spring. I am still trying to get the new garden ready, Spring has arrived, and the politics haven't stopped. Hopefully, with an AGM at the end of this month, I might see a return to a normal community garden.
Documentation of Plot 2: My Extension of 12 Raised Beds
These beds are filled with a mix of 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 cocopeat and 1/3 mixed compost and manure. I have to be careful what I plant because some of the beds contain horse manure that has not been hot composted or aged for 12 months. I've read that potatoes can get blight if planted with fresh-ish horse manure so am planting them up in my other beds which contain more soil.
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| Compost from my tumbler |
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| Mixing compost with cocopeat and vermiculite. |
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| Planting some young rosemary plants. |
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| Weedmat pathways. |
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| Barley straw on the weedmat until I can bring in some sawdust. |
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| I organised the delivery and sale of a truckload of straw. |
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