Dishing the dirt

Now I’m far too excited about the fact our office has AN ACTUAL, GROWING GARDEN! (Excuse the allcaps – honestly, I have no idea where this enthusiasm for growing things came from. Five years ago I was into beer and bad music. Now it’s beer, bad music and broccoli…)

Anyway, for those who didn’t get the last email, the story so far is:

• Green Ideas magazine moved office over Christmas to Takapuna
• The new place has a little courtyard, so we built a couple of planter boxes
• However, despite several of us being competent home gardeners, we know nothing about using them, leading to…
• A call for help to our newsletter readers!

So thank you to everyone who wrote back with pointers, especially Melissa, Jennifer and David.

The upshot of your advice is that we definitely need good drainage, so we have drilled holes in the base of the boxes and this weekend took delivery of a load of scoria which went in the bottom, plus some very rich soil to go on top.

Once that was in, we transplanted seedlings for (sing it) parsley, sage, rosemary and, in time, coriander, rocket, kale, beetroot and broad beans should make an appearance too.

None of that would look very impressive, however, without the 20-odd baby lettuce plants that a very generous reader, Sarah, donated. Thanks Sarah! So despite being just a few days old our planter boxes now have a fresh flush of green.

Oh, and the nice people at Tui also sent us a bag of something called Saturaid, which apparently helps retain moisture within the soil, so we dug that in too.

Perhaps most exciting, though, is the fancy worm farm that Hungry Bins were kind enough to deliver.

Worm farms really are pretty cool. With a few hundred worms and even a little garden like ours, you can ‘close the loop’ on a lot of the waste you make – and it has already changed the way we do things here.

Now, all the food scraps from office lunches get collected in the kitchen and go into the worm farm at the end of the day. The worms eat the scraps, turn them into soil and liquid, and that goes into the garden to grow us more food.

Love it. The bin man doesn’t even get a look-in.

Like I said, I’m perhaps a little too excited by our garden and its new hermaphrodite helpers. But we have actually been busy with other stuff, including making a new issue of Green Ideas which has an excellent cover feature on… pause for suspense… worm farming!

Specifically, the story’s about how to make your own for just $20, which is our little way of showing that – whether you use a beautifully designed unit made by a company like Hungry Bins, or a simple homemade stack – worm farming is easy, good fun, and good for the environment too.

So check the new issue out. It also has a report on deep sea oil drilling, yummy recipes, an inspiring family that went waste free for a month, a beginner’s guide to installing solar power, an intro to aquaponics, a hanging table DIY project, and HEAPS more!

Greg Roughan
 Editor, Green Ideas magazine

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