Gender
Male
About
Location
Auckland
Birthday:
November 21
Suburb
Waitakere
Post / Zip Code
0072
I can offer
Food from my garden
Food Growing Skill Level
Moderate
Experience and Qualifications
Bio-Dynamics
I am interested in...
Bartering Local Food, Learning, Preserving, Helping Others, WWOOFA Hosting, WWOOFA Working, Seed Savers, Offering Land for Gardeners
Tell us about your garden and what you're growing
Ooooby is fantastic! At last a grass roots community to connect local aria gardens. We have a small garden at present. Keen to put down a bigger patch asap for the summer season. We live out at Piha. We would like to be growing enough excess to barter or trade with people in our local aria. Looking for good organic soil? Thanks for any help.
Comments
thanks to be my friend. What gardening stuff are you into? For me it's selling through the ooooby store at the Grey Lynn Farmers Market and developing a community learning centre in Remuera/Meadowbank (so far it we develop the gardens, next year we hope to do some community courses) - and then of course tending to my own garden.
I see you live in Piha. I got married there - behind Stedfast Camp. We also planted a Pohutukawa at our wedding spot and it is doing great.
What I did: I build a raised bed and added thick layers of mulch and horse manure. The mulch I got for free from a local landscape company (they would have to pay to bring it to the recycling plant). The horse manure I got for free from the Ambury Farm Regional Park/ Riding for the Disabled in Mangere Bridge. The mulch is full of carbon and the horse manure full of nitrogen. Together, they rot down well, just like compost.
I also added a bit of lime, some wood ash from a friend's fireplace, and a bit of agrissentials (organic trace minerals).
During the first season (in my case autumn to spring), I sowed lupins. They establish themselves easily, grow reasonably deep roots, cover the soil quickly and add more nitrogen to the soil (nitrogen-fixering plant). Just before flowering I cut them down and composted them. You could also use them as green manure, i.e., chop them up and leave on the soil as fertiliser.
Then the soil was ready for planting gross-feeders such as tomatoes, brokkoli, etc. Now, three years later, the soil looks and feels awesome and is still full of nutirents.
The only thing I would do different next time: I would mix in some clay soil (my original soil). The clay can hold nutrients and carbon better than organic material.
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