Home » Plants & Animals » Alpines and Bulbs » Community Gardens

Community Gardens

© Gary Buckley

High-rise flat dwellers find them a reasonably good substitute for a real vegetable garden. There are many seeds that can be sprouted - alfalfa, wheat, barley, mung,and others.

We have found over the years that large coffee jars with old panty hose are the best medium for we two.

Regarding fenugreek seeds, it is always best to sprout fenugreek which does go kind of slushy, seperately by itself. It also needs to be aired and washed more than twice a day.

Put a tablespoon of dry seed in the jar and cover the top with a piece of panty hose held in place by a rubber band. Water the jar two or three times a day, laying it on its side to let the water drain out while the seeds sprout.

Experiment with seeds and discover the ones which best suit your tastes and climate. Please make sure you buy your seeds from a health food shop and not an Agricultural supplier, as the latter will most likely be for planting in the ground and will more than likely have been dusted with powders and chemicals.

If you are lucky enough to be living on a block of land and can put in a vegetable garden, then all the better.

Remember your new best friend will be mulch.

Mulch is any organic matter which covers the soil. In a natural forest for instance nature covers the bare earth with leaves, twigs and bark and they lie undisturbed, left to decay and in turn nourish the soil. These form a natural mulch. Organic growers, realising the benefits of such a process, endeavour to reproduce these conditions in their own vegetable gardens. To do this they use a variety of organic matter:

Hay is one of the best mulches to use, particularly if you can obtain second or third-cut lucerne. Lucerne makes lovely mulch. Its deep roots take up minerals and other nutrients which are often not available to more shallow-rooted plants. When the lucerne is cut and placed on your garden, these minerals are then transferred to your soil as the hay slowly decomposes. Second or third-cut is better than first-cut which often has a large percentage of meadow grasses which are not nearly as beneficial and which in turn may introduce unwanted grasses to your garden.

The best mulch of all is Sea weed piled high, we love it.

Even leaves make very good mulch. They are akin to the natural mulch found on the forest floor; they have got many nutrients and if you can gather a few trailer-loads in autumn it will save you buying hay in the summer.