Chippo paw paw replanted north side of Harbour Bridge

Two things from today’s road gardening; a paw paw tree goes north; and a new simple way to compost was swapped.

For this Friday’s gardening, Janet and friends came across the Harbour Bridge to join us.  Lots of ‘We do this . . “, and “How do you find this goes . . “, as we swapped stories of what works and doesn’t.

Together we planted:  chives, vietnamese mint, lemon grass, rhubarb, passion fruit and more.  The compost bins were given some carbon in the form of sawdust by Geoff and a new gardener, Jim, from Shepherd Street.

We had a self-sown, self-fruiting (male) paw paw and dug that up as our swap gift for the Notherners who planted it later today in their community garden and you see it above.

And I learnt about a simple way to compost.

Simple composter - a pipe in the ground with holes drilled in the section that's buried

It was passed on by Janet who told me the Northerners grew food for Waverley Council’s and the Digital Eskimo’s Grow Local campaign.  The Northerner’s food, along with other gardeners, was served up as a feast by Three Blue Ducks:  www.threeblueducks.com/

And there Janet found in the restaurant’s kitchen garden a simple compost solution being used by the restaurant:  a 150 mm pipe about 700 to 1 metre long is used; holes are drilled in the lower 300 mm or so; food waste is put into the pipe and when it’s full a tight lid is put over the top of the pipe.  The result:  no rats, and worms can find their way in from the adjoining soil, the nutrients from the decaying food leaches directly into the soil down where it’s needed at a rate that causes no harm and the pipe can be re-used in a month or so.  Simple.  Great idea.  And apparently they have no soil, just very well decomposed horse manure which grows veggies prolifically.