Digging It With The Dirt Demi-God

Steve Solomon is a Growers Guru

The Living Better With Less Group had the honour of a tour of his garden this weekend and one and a half hours flew by as he spoke to us passionately about soil health, nutrient balance, seed dilemmas for small growers and plant spacing for optimum yields.

Steve lives in suburbia on a large block and grows all the food for his family all year round.

Everything lush, healthy and disease resisting. He grows for food and also extra for seed. Growing from saved seeds saves $$$ and you can be assured of genetic material suited for your area, climate and vigorous.

He spoke about his huge line of asparagus that he keeps contained width-wise between the parallel wires. This limits the sprawl and also makes weeding and access easier. He tells us that over a few years he selectively culled all the female crowns and kept only male plants a) because they produce larger spears rather than putting their vigour into seed production and b) by culling the females he avoids the prolific seed drop and thus delays over-crowding for years.

Another shot of his garden and a climbing frame for peas and beans. In the very first photo, Steve and I are standing in front of his healthy kiwi fruit vines covered in flowers. Down the western side he has espaliered fruit trees and berry bushes. A netted tunnel of raspberries is heavily cropping and you can just about hear the plants singing.

Steve is 73 and very fit and looks at least 10 years younger than his age. What struck me especially was the way he is still learning and still experimenting with growing. Further proof that you never stop learning. Reluctantly we thanked him and departed and I have to tell you the experience has been very profound for me. My mind has been in a whirl, thinking of all we spoke about, trying to catch hold of it and not let a snippet of information be missed. 

Afterwards we enjoyed a bountiful shared lunch at a fellow members beautiful mud brick built house by the Tamar river. Wonderful times and memories to treasure.

If you have the opportunity, Steve's books are well worth the investment. This is the copy I covet. I wish all of you could have joined us and benefited from his knowledge and passion.

All Free...But We Couldn't Give It Away!

Last week I was very excited to be a part of the Colony 47 Spring Share Market.

Colony 47 works for the community and their mission is

"to create a fairer community, eliminate disadvantage and improve the lives of Tasmanians" 

A share market was organised to coincide with fair food week and timed for encouraging spring planting.

All the seedlings above

Free.

A picnic blanket to sit and read gardening magazines and maybe take one

Free

The seed box with hundreds of seeds

Free

A speaker about compost making

Free.

Just look at that great teaching tool created from half a bin and some Perspex. Learning about nitrogen and carbon layers and the additions like comfrey (bottom right).

The Tasmanian community food garden group were there with activities for kids

Free

A demonstration showing fun with food and how to be creative with it.

Free

I drove from Launceston and did a talk about beans, how to grow, how to harvest and how to use dried beans.

Free

I talked about nutrition and feeding through the "hungry gap" and had made baked beans from scarlet runner beans, a bean salad in seconds and a white bean dip even faster! Note the Good and Cheap book- I was so excited, it turned up just the day before. It's a not for profit book that aims to teach people how to eat well on $4 a day. I love it!

Trestles under blossom trees and little marquis 

And the Colony 47 garden putting on a good show and even mushrooms coming up from the compost!

Being a typical spring day it was a bit breezy and cool and clouds were scudding across the sky. It was beautifully organised. About 60 people had rsvp-ed to this all free event...

But we were lucky to have a dozen people show up I reckon.

I'm starting to wonder,

if you make something free, is it then perceived as valueless?

Is something only worthy if it has a dollar value attached?

Green + Brown = Gold

This is the view from my workplace, stunning isn't it.

More than that though it is a great resource for free compost ingredients.

We talked the other night about keeping a compost sweet and active and keeping it simple we talked about layering brown ingredients (carbon) and green ingredients (nitrogen). If your compost slows to a halt and is dry and dusty it probably needs more grass clippings, weed tops, vegetable scraps...if it is too slimy and sour it probably needs more brown, like straw, shredded paper/cardboard, dead leaves.

You can get as techy as all get out talking about composting but you really can't go wrong with this simple rule of thumb and good old fashioned personal observation, ie: looking at and sniffing your compost pile for general health. Having ingredients on hand so you can create various thin layers sets you up for success and don't forget, keep the pile a bit loose allowing air to get in and accelerate breakdown.

What you are looking at above is gold!

Take the kids to the park and make a game of collecting up the leaves into bags.

Take it home and dump it out on the lawn.

Mow it; you are using the easiest method known to cut and shred the material into a great compost size and the added benefit is that you are getting a mix of lawn clippings in too. It's a perfect green and brown mix for dressing into the layers of your compost! Free!

By now you will have pulled your corn stalks and they are perfect for layering into your compost between levels to keep the pile open and airing.

Beautiful rich humus will be yours for top dressing your beds come spring.

Composting Know-how From A Worm Wrangler

Our Living Better With Less group met up last Thursday and our guest speaker had a BIG subject

Composting.

She gave a superlative talk to our group, keeping jargon to a minimum and dispelling the mysterious, she proposed simple no frills ways with waste for every home.

She talked about hot composting, cold composting, worm farming and bokashi.

Dianne has taken on an exciting project that I'd like to share with locals and maybe others could start in their communities too. About four months ago Dianne found two cafes wanting to commit to saving their food waste for collection. A team of people are rostered to pick up the buckets of scrap and they either use them to feed chickens or make compost or feed worm farms. Both of the cafes are vegetarian and have a lot of organic waste matter. This is a win/win for the cafes and for the people using the waste and it's FREE!

"Fresh"

There are more cafes wanting to come on board but they need more people to do collection. What do you think? Are there any locals who can help?

Are you inspired to do this in your town?

Has your community garden or school garden thought about this resource in your area?

"Garden of Vegan"

The goal is to eventually find a central location for mass scale composting and then making the rich humus available for all gardeners. Ideally council co-operation would be key and it could also be a site where they dump their collected leaf litter, grass clippings and tree mulch. The group is dreaming of owning a gobbler that turns waste into compost in 24hr turn around!!!

If you are interested in knowing more about the project or about worm farming or bokashi methods check out the face book page here Worm Wranglers

Thanks Dianne for an awesome talk.

Next month we meet up 26th June

at 3 Charles St south, Launceston

7-9pm 

We will be looking at simple herbals around the home and step by step making a healing salve.