Sarah and I attended the ‘No Dig’ workshops delivered by Sustainable Illawarra and The Garden at Kiama Public School today.
We learnt much about how to create a No Dig vegetable patch and more importantly, in many respects, to see how our environment and the community prosper from partnerships between councils, schools, community organisations and the individuals who support this kind of positive growth.
It was a salubrious morning spent with my daughter in the company of people who like ‘growing things’. The garden took no time at all to construct with many willing hands. Sarah enjoyed watering each layer as Aaron helped us construct a vegetable garden at our local school. The teachers explained that the school was endeavouring to have a sound environmental philosophy and the community workshop is generating gardens that can be sustained, even over the long summer holidays.
Next week my school will place an advertisement for a new agriculture teacher to support the organic direction our school farm is taking. Hopefully, we gain a person committed to sustainable agriculture!
I should mention that our luck was in today as Sarah won a book on organic gardening, with ticket number 23.
Elaine Talbert
Great idea! Might give it a go, somewhere around our new house.
I look forward to following how the school garden grows.
In the past, I have enjoyed working at several schools where Agriculture is taught.
Since the 70s, I have only ever planted Australian plants and edibles in my gardens.
Elaine
darcymoore
Thanks Elaine.
I grew up gardening and Dad, in particular, really had a green thumb. He was always proud that his father, a dairy farmer mostly, refused to use chemicals when they were all the rage pre – ‘Silent Spring’.
Many of the principles shown today were ones that Dad used (he has no time for gardening atm he says) when I was a kid.
I am currentky using the egg shells from our issa browns, crunched up, to keep slugs away. That’s a Dad trick!
Darren (Green Change)
Awesome, that looks like it was a lot of fun!
We went to the Jamberoo Community Growers meeting yesterday – they had talks on gardening in small spaces and keeping backyard chickens. The kids potted up lettuce seedlings while the mums and dads were listening to the talks. The idea is for the kids to bring their lettuce plants back to the next meeting in a months’ time to see whose is the biggest. They loved it!