A busy Christmas for us and a happy new year to you! 2014 has seen some big changes at the Philippine Organic Garden Project, we will do our best to fill you in on our grand plans and new growth.
One of the great hopes for our garden is to provide a space that attracts and motivates a broad range of visitors to engage and support organic agriculture.
We will be dedicating our six separate raised beds into six interesting themes including;
medicinal and indigenous plants, all forms of companion planting (what plants are and are not friends), a perennial garden and a vermicompost/cash crop bed.
Each slice of our raised bed pizza will feature cheesy garden art and a dash of information seasoning. Our plan? to entice not only the green of thumb, but anyone and everyone with an interest in something beautiful.
First things first, we needed to source the materials; In this example we have the unusual mix of ex-drainage grates, palettes, bamboo, corrugated iron and material from old sun beds.
Layering rice hull, soil medium, rice straw, carbonized rice hull with goat and cow manure; we built the soil up, before we left the bacteria and fungi already present to do their job of bringing it all together. In the meantime, its been all hands on deck preparing our seedlings for our cropping schedule and companion planting experiments.
Beginning with Turmeric, Corn and Pigeon Pea the garden is taking on colour and life. The roots of our first crops will aid to mix our new soils, housing and feeding the fungi and bacteria that will provide for the crops to come. Abiding by our cropping schedule and starting from the soil up, our garden is proving itself to be far more than a pretty face.
But, what a pretty face it is...
