Farm Garden News

🌱 Join Our Garden Volunteer Team! 

If you’re passionate about gardening or eager to learn, I’d love to have you join me in the garden! I work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the mornings, and I’m looking for volunteers to help with various tasks and projects. It’s a great opportunity to get hands-on experience while working alongside me.

Classes start next term, so extra support would be greatly appreciated. Whether you can come by for a few hours or want to take on a task that you can do at your own pace, I’d be thrilled to have you! If you're interested, feel free to pop in, give me a call, or reach out anytime. Let’s grow something great together! 🌻

Class 6 Weekly Produce Stall

We’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quantity of produce for harvest over the past month. It’s been a tad too hot to do much planting so we’ll probably only have leafy  greens and herbs for a few weeks. We’ve sown loads of seeds in the nursery and some of them are ready to plant out.

Garden & Soil Health Compost

We made a ripper hot compost at the Working Bee on Sunday, and it took no time to reach 74 degrees C. At this temperature it can be turned after 2 days. We choose to make compost in this way (following the Elaine Ingham Soil Food Web School approach) as it ensures a regular supply of balanced microbial rich nutrient for our garden in a short amount of time. 

A hot compost needs to be a cubic metre in size to work effectively. The recipe is based on 40 buckets of material that has all been soaked well in water beforehand: Carbon (Woody) Material: 60% (woodchips, straw, cardboard etc.) - 24 buckets Nitrogen (Green Plant & Animal Manure) Material: 30% - 13 buckets High Nitrogen (Party Food - Grass clippings & beer mash) - 3 buckets. The heat is generated in the centre of the pile and requires X 3 turnings to ensure all material has had a turn in the centre.

Compost Crew

I’d really like some help with managing the turning of our hot compost this year, so if you’re interested in learning more, please send me your contact details and I can add you to our Garden WhatsApp group. I’ll send out a message when a new pile gets to the right temperature and it’s usually 3 days later that it needs to be turned. Our process is reasonably labour intensive, but it ensures that we always have lots of this essential ingredient.

Key Biodynamics Spray Dates for March

https://biodynamics.net.au/e-newsletter/Soil Sprays (Horn Manure 500, Soil Activator, Manure concentrate): 

• Descending moon 23 March - 4 April (Moon’s influence is working below the soil)
• Atmospheric Sprays (Horn Silica 501, Equisetum 508 (or Casuarina) Ascending moon 8 - 22 March (Moon’s influence is more above the soil)

Chickens

Our 2 chicks are growing quickly and continue to bring much delight - we’d love some help with determining their sex! 

Chicken Coop Rebuild

Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to our design process. We’re working on a modified version of this one: 

We’ll soon be sending out a request for a quote for the Chicken Coop build and the outer additional fencing and gates will be a school community voluntary project. Does anyone know who did the existing farm garden fencing? As we’d really like some continuity of style.

2025 Garden Working Bees: 

Please pop these dates in your diary. Feel free to come for as little or as long as you can.

School Gardeners WhatsApp Group: If you’d like to be added, please send contact details. Kaz contact details: 0427 461 047 or gardener2@alicesteiner.nt.edu.au