Keilor Office Sustainable Foundation

This blog shows the development of the veggie garden at the Brimbank City Council, founded by me - Russell Cadman

Name:
Location: Woodend, Victoria, Australia

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Planning Veggie Garden Pics 30 Mar 06

The cucumber has finally finished (had about 20 odd yummy cucumbers), and the capicum, silverbeet and parsley is growing like crazy.


Planning Veggie Garden 30 Mar 06


The corn will hopefully be ready to eat soon - yes would have been great to put it in 3 months earlier! - but I was a little busy with work.




The beans are powering on and we've already had a plenty of fresh greens :)

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Staff Veggie Garden Update 20/01/06

Hi All Keilor Staff,

Thanks to the warm weather and an early November planting last year in SKOF’s Engineering Veggie Garden, the first tomatoes have started ripening :).

We have 5 different varieties of tomatoes this year with 3 cherry and 3 salad tomatoes.

So keep an eye out in your area in the coming weeks when we should be able to start putting them out for Keilor Staff to enjoy!

Don’t forget - the worms are ever hungry and need your food scraps!. Please put your food scraps in the compost scrap bins located in the main kitchen and engineering kitchen).


Many Thanks

Russell Cadman
Chairman
Sustainable Keilor Office Foundation
A Division of Global Worms Incorporated

Monday, March 20, 2006

Engineering Bed Development

Jan 2004

I choose the site next to the Keilor Engineering Office to put in the very first staff veggie bed at Brimbank City Council at the end of January 2004. The idea was to make use of the lovely rich compost from the compost bin at the office and the worm farm juice/castings.


Veggie Garden before 290104

Carl, my good work college helped me dig over the site and add a couple of bags of gypsum, cow and horse poo, and of course the lovely rich worm-filled compost.

We soon discovered that a third of the site still had a foot of compacted crushed rock just below the mulch surface! So the fork didn’t make a great deal of headway in these areas and the tomatoes planted above this definitely struggled that year!

We planted nine tomato plants, mostly cherry tomatoes and we were rewarded with yummy snacks at work from the beginning of March right through to the end of May.


Veggie Garden after 290104

So after the tomatoes were pulled out in June, it was time to do something about that gravel!

During June and July, I spent many hours before and after work digging out the crushed rock areas and sieving the top section of the soil to remove the larger crushed rock.


Eng Bed gravel 090704

Finally half the bed was ready for planting and in went some left over celery and lettuce from Murray. Most of the lettuce didn’t survive the transplanting, so I bought some discounted punnets of parley and rocket and put that in.


Eng Bed celery lettuce 090704

The second half of the bed was finally finished towards the end of Sept so, I bought a punnet of silver beet and beetroot, and planted these next to the carrot seeds I sowed at the front.


Eng Bed celery lettuce carrots beetroot silverbeet 230904

Everything was sweet…


Eng Bed 121104


Dutch carrots and yummy peas 101204

…Until some bored local kids over the Christmas break decided to pull out the rest of the carrots, the lettuce and some parsley - hopefully they ate them!

Thankfully the rest was left alone, and we enjoyed yummy beetroot, silverbeet, celery, peas and parsley.

Oh yes – and Murray helped me squeeze in the peas at the back of the Silverbeet too.