It’s been another big month at Just Ground with potatoes sprouting, irrigation installed, students on the tools and fruit trees pruned.
This spring weather has us wanting to be outside all the time with dirt under our fingernails. We’re run off our feet most days but still get time to pinch ourselves and check that this dream work is in fact a reality.
Progress at Seaford market garden
Friends and family joined us at our new farmlet site a couple of weeks ago for a farm-warming and working bee.
It was so lovely to have many hands on deck for peeling sticky tape off cardboard boxes, hauling mulch, unfurling our silage tarp, painting our sign and tending the barbie. The small horde of kids hooning around on bicycles and in garden carts made it feel like home.
We are grateful to SA Composters, who have generously sponsored this project in the form of quality compost and mulch to help establish the beds and pathways.
We are using no-till techniques at this site, which at this stage means lots of smothering of weeds. For pathways and future planting areas we are sheet mulching with cardboard (pilfered from skips, the detritus of capitalism repurposed for food sovereignty) under a thick layer of mulch. The idea is that by the time the cardboard has been broken down by soil life, the weeds underneath will have died.
For opening up a new block (where we plan to plant pumpkins in early summer) we are using a plastic silage tarp to kill the weeds and break down the grass residue. The heat and moisture under the tarp encourage weed seeds to germinate, then the plants are killed off without sunlight and will begin to break down in the coming weeks.
Big thanks to everyone who came along on the day. Our next big task will be fencing the market garden area to protect our crops.
Canberra City Farm visit
On a recent trip to Canberra Indi stopped in for a tour at Canberra City Farm, a hub for community food growing and education.
It was inspiring to see a community farm project with some similar objectives to us but 10 years down the road. In particular, the way they have added different enterprises on the same piece of land. These enterprises share resources like water, compost, insurance & volunteers, allowing them to all run more efficiently.
Canberra City Farm has really strong community engagement with over 200 members, and a regular volunteer group of 40 people. Volunteers maintain the common areas, make compost and biochar and tend the orchards.