Sprouts are really easy to grow and extremely nutritious. Growing them yourself is much cheaper than buying them, comes with less packaging and means they will be super fresh and delicious! |
You can sprout lots of seeds (see table below for ideas) and although soaking times and rinses may vary, the general principles are the same:
| You can make your own sprouter from a jar, a rubber band and some muslin. |
- The Source Bulk Foods
- NSW (Victoria St, Brunswick)
- Nurseries
- Online
- Or of course, you could save your own seeds form your garden
Seed bombs are balls of clay, compost/worm castings and seeds mixed together at a ratio of approx. 5:3:1. The clay can be dug up from the ground if you have access to that, or purchased from a craft store. We bought kiln dry terracotta clay from Riot Art & Craft, but we just let it air dry so that it wouldn't be too hard for the seeds to break out of! Seed bombs can be thrown into abandoned lots or garden beds, or just into your own garden. When the environmental conditions are right (i.e. it rains and the temperature is warm enough), the clay will soften and the seeds will sprout, with the organic matter giving them a good start to life. The clay and organic matter both also retain moisture, which helps to sustain the seedling in those first crucial days after germination if it doesn't rain again.
You can use all kinds of seeds, but we used a mixture of pumpkin, capsicum, sunflower, lavender, loquat, bean, bitter gourd and silverbeet. It will be survival of the fittest as to which seedlings survive, but this gives the bombs the best chance of success overall. If you throw them into your garden, you can always separate out the seedlings so that they all have plenty of space. Now to spread the gardening love around by throwing these into spots that could use some greening! |
SInce most of us do not study at Burnley. the trip was definitely eye opening and mind blowing. We first went on a tour at Burnley gardens. Chris has an interest in planting weird edible plants which natural habitat are not in Melbourne(most of them). For example, Chinese Cedar "Flamingo"(Toona sinensis) has edible leaves that taste like onion and bacon. It is great if you serve it with stir-fried eggs. Other exotic edibles included with sapote(native in Mexico and South America) ,Bamboo(native in China), Ensete Ventricosum(Native in Ethiopia). There are also trees which are native to other states(eg. queensland) found to be growing well in Burnley Gardens. Thanks to the commitment from Chris and other people taking care of the garden, we are now more confident about growing un-native plants in Melbourne.
We then went to look at the veggie patches, which are managed by students at Burnley.
Following that, we visited the roof top garden at Burnley Campus. The roof top garden is absolutely pretty, ornamental flowers, herbs, succulents are scatter around nicely. There are also walkways and benches for students to sit there and chill out. How cool this is!
To wrap up today's event, we had a picnic at the lawn. We and our friends from Monash and Deakin sat down to share some great food. We also talked about setting up a community garden network for unis around Melbourne area. It's encouraging to see more conversation among community gardens run by uni students. Stay tune for more collaborated events from us!
On Last Friday we had our first ever edible flowers workshop in the garden. Pippa and Joyce talked about how to plant various species of edible flowers in Melbourne Climate, including Nasturtium, Pansies, Natural Violets, Calendula and Chamomile. Except pansies, we are already having all other flowers blossoming in the garden. Therefore we did some cuttings of Nasturtium, Natural Violets and Calendula for our lovely volunteers and friends to take home!
If you missed the session but would love to grow some edible flowers in your garden, check out this document we created for plant care and cooking suggestions! :)
docs.google.com/document/d/1nM6nrbmh6j8AO97Alj6wPL7iCmB7eBqUDUaZB9krmt0/edit#heading=h.yux0c33lx5od
We then had a cooking session appreciating how delicious these flowers are! We together made some Edible Flowers Canapés. The recipe is really simple. Below is how we did it!
1. Mix one Philadelphia cheese with herbs( we used chives, parsley, sage and thyme from the garden).
2. Mix another Philadelphia cheese with honey and Lavender.
3.Get one packet of savoury crackers and one sweet crackers.
4.Spread the herb and cheese mix onto the savoury crackers and the honey, Lavender and cheese mix onto the sweet crackers.
5. Decorate with your favourite choices of edible flowers and herb leaves(we used Nasturtiums, Calendula, Pansies, Basils and so on).
Some pictures at the cooking session!
Thanks everyone for coming and we hope to see you guys at our next event!
MUC Garden Terrarium Workshop by mucgarden on Scribd
Or, if you've got the space but lack the patience for looking after a compost bin or worm farm, trench composting might be your answer. Trench composting is just what it sounds like: A hole dug directly into the garden that becomes a spot to bury food waste. It has the benefits of disguising odours and returning organic nutrients directly back to the earth. In addition, it's easy to create a trench composting plan that rotates waste by using different bury spots to stagger decomposition. Check out this infographic for more details on this, as well as tips on how to use food scraps in the garden without composting them (e.g. egg shells to deter slugs and snails).
Don't forget that even if you can't compost at home, you can always take your scraps to a communal composting hub, like ours at the garden (though it is nearly at capacity!). There are also compost bins in the System Garden on campus, and some councils have community compost hubs that anyone can contribute to.
Check out our beginners guide to composting below!
On a cloudy day, there's nothing more cheering than some cider and sauerkraut, right? We ran our fermenting workshop today. First, we kicked things off with some fresh-made cider. Then Pippa talked about an easy way to make cider yourself and where to get your ingredients (check out this website for all you need to know). |
To download the handout form the workshop (including recipes) click here.
Today the rain stopped just as our working bee started - much better luck than we usually have! We continued digging holes to put the arch in, working carefully around all the pipes in the ground. Eventually we discovered that one of the pipes we had been digging around was just building debris - not an important pipe at all! | We also potted up a tray of alpine strawberries to sell in O-week. |
Because our compost is chocka block, we've had to stop taking scraps temporarily. However, this brand new composting area in the System Garden can take our overflow! How great is that?! While in the system garden, we also had a peek at the beehive there, it has a sort of "bee chimney" so that the bees fly out of the hive 2m in the air. It also has little windows so that you can see inside the hive - so nifty! |
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Read all about it: MUC Garden and Burnley Student Association share updates on their activities.
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