Putting the soil where we want it...

During the Spring Permaculture Design Certificate here at Milkwood, a funny thing happened to our basecamp garden. Somehow, it quadrupled in size. It was the most un-anticipated permablitz i have ever been a part of,  and this time (for the first time) it was at our house! Or our woolshed, to be precise.

Rosemary Morrow, the lead teacher of this PDC, had come up to me the day before and asked (in her marvelous, quiet way) if the student’s could extend our basecamp garden a bit. Of course, Rowe, I said.

The garden pre-blitz, with ferrocement garden beds in progress to left

This garden has been a funny little thing scratched out of the dirt of the paddock at the back of the woolshed – it grew up around our caravan while we were living there (see here for an early plan and explanation). As our beloved caravan has now become the kitchen for our on-farm courses and interns, the garden in time became a communal kitchen garden of sorts.

fast-paced rumination and discussion, figuring out the design

While we lived here it was just a small and scruffy thing, on rock-hard ground. But we mulched and we planted and each season built another bed here or there, and by the time the caravan was promoted to kitchen space, from small-family space, we have a good supply of greens going on, and sometimes other good things to eat as well – depending on the rain, the sheep and the kangaroos.

Re-delegating the meagre soil resources

However, now that things are starting to gather momentum around the woolshed in general, it was perfect timing to extend the garden and get some growing going on!

Beds going in, paths going in

The students from the Spring PDC did an amazing job in one afternoon (all 24 of them) – designing, gathering materials and installing a sweeping no-dig garden of potatoes, garlic and many transplants from our existing beds.

Happy gardener

The new garden leads everyone down to the outdoor classroom under the big gum tree, which also houses the ‘landscaping pit’ used for teaching hydrology and permaculture earthworks during our PDCs. The rest of the time, Ashar has claimed it as his sandpit.

Getting there!

Having this new extension to the garden has now changed how we think about this growing space – our interns designed and installed a simple drip-irrigation system, which makes it possible to expect that the vegetables will actually grow.

More layers of compost and lucerne - all coming together now

We’re now planning for this year's Spring PDC how we can get enough stuff growing there to supply a goodly portion of the on-farm menu. Fingers crosssed. I rekon we can do it.

Next day in the outdoor classroom at the end of the garden

Many thanks to all our fabulous PDC students from this course for your energy and your gumption. Special thanks to the entirely amazing Rosemary Morrow for her quiet knack of encouraging people to take initiative and see things through. And, as always, a special big YAY to our rockin spring intern team: Adam, Andrew, Alexe + Dave.

our kitchen garden 6 weeks later, in the summer rain.

And now, 6 weeks later, we have squash, potatoes, parseley and all sorts of other tasty morsels going crazy in this rare summer rain. Can’t wait for the harvest.