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Elwood Chooks & Veggie Gardens

February 2, 2012

Join Will on a tour of a recent VEG installation in Elwood.

Design and Implementation

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The great VEG Veggie Bed Giveaway (IS OVER)!

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veryediblegardens

We help you create edible ecosystems, providing for human needs while caring for the planet and its marvellous creatures. Also here @veg_wicking_beds

🎉 Big congratulations to our garden stories com

🎉 Big congratulations to our garden stories competition winner! 🌟

🌱 "Since moving here two years ago, my big boisterous family and I have developed a front yard veggie patch that's more than just a garden—it's a community builder. The soil, rich with composted leaves, coffee grounds from the local cafe, and kitchen scraps via Share Waste, supports plants that leap from the earth. By growing from collected seeds and snapped cuttings, we've not only nurtured our bodies with food but our spirits with friendships, sharing surplus with all who pass by. This garden is our joy."

📘 Our winner has snagged a copy of The Weed Forager's Handbook. 📚

On our mailing list? Keep your eyes peeled for more contests coming soon! Not signed up yet? Head over to wickingbeds.com.au to download our Wicking Beds 101 guide, join our community, and receive a $10 off code—another great win! 🙂

#GardeningLife #Competition #VeryEdibleGardens

🌸🌿 Spring is here or is it?! As the temperat

🌸🌿 Spring is here or is it?! As the temperature warms and we move away from the icy memory of late July and early August, it’s time for action in the garden. All your planning and preparation will now turn into boots on the ground or soil between the toes. As daytime temperatures rise, soils will warm, creating perfect conditions for seed germination.

💧 Wicking Beds: Outlets can now be turned back from their free-draining winter mode to their summer water-saving mode. Before planting your next season’s crops, consider a nutrient top-up with compost and aged manures. Organic matter depletes quickly in a wicking bed’s soil, so keep it refreshed each season to maintain strong, healthy plants.

🐔 Chook Care: Your chooks should be back laying or will soon be. Give their coops a spring clean, donate weeds and spent crops, or let them turn over winter vegetable beds themselves. Protect fruit tree roots in orchard runs using wire off-cuts, mesh sheets, landscape pins, and bricks to create no-scratch zones.

🧹 Compost: When raking out straw yards and coops, combine the material with lawn clippings, green waste, kitchen scraps, and high-carbon sources like newspaper, cardboard, or sawdust to start your next compost pile. And why not let your chooks in on the fun by utilizing their natural scratching and foraging instincts to turn over and aerate the piles. They’ll make a big mess enjoying a nutritious feast of bugs and critters around the edges but will aerate and add some extra nitrogen in the process.

🌼 Biodiversity: Plant a variety of flowers and herbs to attract beneficial insects and pollinators. Flowers like cosmos, calendula, nasturtium, yarrow, and alyssum are excellent choices. You can also let culinary herbs and vegetables like dill, mint, lemon balm, and even carrots go to flower to boost food sources for beneficial insects such as ladybirds, lacewings, and hoverflies.

🔗 Learn More: Visit our website for more detailed guides on spring gardening and how to prepare for a fruitful summer. Check the link in our bio!

#SeptemberGarden #SpringInMelbourne #GardeningGuideSeptember #SpringGardening #VeryEdibleGardens #Melbourne

Want to win something awesome and have your garden

Want to win something awesome and have your garden featured in our next newsletter? 🌸🌱 Here’s your chance! We’re giving away a free copy of The Weed Forager’s Handbook: A Guide to Edible and Medicinal Weeds in Australia by Adam Grubb and Annie Raser-Rowland, with free shipping Australia-wide! Plus, your garden story could be shared in our upcoming newsletter and on our social media!

How to Enter: 🌻

1. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook 📲
2. Email us at competitions@veryediblegardens.com with:
📸 A photo from your garden—this could be your biggest success, a learning moment, or just a beautiful snapshot of you enjoying your edible oasis
✍️A short story (from a sentence up to 200 words) about your gardening experience. Keep it short and sweet!

📅 Competition ends: Monday, 26/08/2024 ⏰ Make sure to get your entries in before the deadline! That's 2 weeks!

Our team at VEG will pick the winner based on creativity and the story that best captures the spirit of gardening. We’ll announce the winner via email.🌟

Eligibility: Open to everyone who loves gardening!
Submission Guidelines: Photos must be original and taken by you; stories should be your own work. Please keep the content family-friendly and appropriate.
Use of Entries: You keep the rights, but by entering, you allow us to share your photo and story in our newsletter, on social media, and in other promotional materials.
By entering, you’ll be added to our mailing list, but don’t worry—you can unsubscribe anytime!

Full details and terms and conditions are on our website! Follow the link in the bio.

We can’t wait to see your gardens and hear your stories! 🌱📸 Get those entries in and good luck! 🍀

#GardenStories #WinABook #GardeningLife #EdibleGardens #TheWeedForagersHandbook #GardenInspiration #GardenCommunity #VEG #GardeningLove

🌱 Exciting news from our latest project! We've

🌱 Exciting news from our latest project! We've just unveiled our new netted cover systems at The Venny in Kensington, designed for both wicking and non-wicking beds. 🌿

🛠️ Made with sturdy galvanised tubing and top-notch 2mm insect netting, these covers provide ample room for your favourite brassicas and medium-height veggies. They're ideal for keeping out those pesky white cabbage butterflies and Queensland fruit flies!

🥦 Already have one of our wicking beds? We're now offering these protective covers for new and existing installations where appropriate. Get in touch to find out if your wicking beds are suitable and safeguard your crops in time for Spring!

#CropProtection #VeggieProtection #WickingBeds #UrbanGardening #VeryEdibleGardens #Melbourne

@the.venny.inc

🌿🏆 Kensington Estate Compost Hub Rules! That

🌿🏆 Kensington Estate Compost Hub Rules! That’s what the sign says, and we couldn’t agree more! The fantastic team at Kensing Food Forest recently invited us to upgrade their composting system to our new Very Edible Gardens 4-bay system, designed to last for years and keep rodents at bay! 🐭🚫

🛠️ Custom-built for Durability and Functionality, our compost bays are crafted from ethically harvested local Cypress Macrocarpa and include removable slats for easy turning from one bay to the next. They’re not just built to last; they’re built to serve! Each bay features lid supports, lockable latches for security, and customizable options like ventilation and drainage systems to keep your compost healthy and effective. 🌱🔧

💧🌤️ Smart Design, Smart Gardening: The lids combine wire mesh and shade cloth to protect your compost from the sun while retaining moisture and letting rain filter through naturally. Built on a foundation of crushed rock, our bases ensure excellent drainage and stability with these bays even including agi pipes designed to channel excess liquid directly into the adjacent garden beds—how cool is that?!

📞💻 Interested? These bays are perfect for community gardens and public composting hubs. They're an investment in sustainability that pays off in spades! Check out our website or call us to discuss how we can tailor a compost bay system for your needs. Link in bio or visit www.veryediblegardens.com.au!

#CompostBays #KensingtonFoodForest #KensingtonCompostHub #SustainableLiving #VeryEdibleGardens #Melbourne

🌼🐞 Boost your garden's health by attracting

🌼🐞 Boost your garden's health by attracting beneficial insects! In most cases, we are referring to generalist and specialist predatory insects that require certain flowers as an additional food source, especially in their adult state. Beneficial insects in the garden can include a variety of critters from spiders and praying mantises to ladybirds, lacewings, and hoverflies. They either feed directly on caterpillars, aphids, and other herbivorous insects, or they lay their eggs inside them.

✨🌿Plant a variety of flowers and herbs from the Asteraceae (dandelion, cosmos, calendula), Lamiaceae (mint, lemon balm, rosemary), and Apiaceae (carrots, dill, parsley) families to support these garden allies. The Allium family—chives, society garlic, and spring onions—can also be beneficial and aesthetically pleasing, and their scent brings additional benefits. All these blooms attract beneficial insects and add joy and colour to your garden.

🗓️🌻Ensure a continuous bloom year-round by planting a variety of species. This keeps your garden buzzing with biodiversity benefits.

🌱 Tips:

🌿Mix It Up: Combine flowers with veggies and herbs.
🌷Succession Planting: Plan so there's always something blooming.
🦘Native Plants: Use native plants to attract local insects.
🐝Avoid Pesticides: If pests become a problem, opt for manual or organic pest control.

🌸Create a beautiful, biodiverse and sustainable garden that supports beneficial insects all year. Visit our website for more tips and tricks, link in the bio. Happy gardening!

#VeryEdibleGardens #MelbourneGardening #BeneficialInsects #OrganicGardening #Permaculture #SustainableGardening #EdibleGardens #GardeningTips

🌿📘 Start your sustainable gardening journey

🌿📘 Start your sustainable gardening journey with our FREE guide! Packed with over 15 years of expertise, this guide teaches the Very Edible Gardens way of designing, building, and maintaining wicking beds.🌟

🔍💧 Learn the Science and Setup of Wicking Beds: What are wicking beds? How do they use "capillary rise" to keep your garden thriving? Our guide covers everything from bed types and sizes to what goes inside, helping you create the perfect environment for your veggies. 🥦

📚🔗 Get Your Comprehensive Guide Today! Follow the link in our bio or visit our dedicated wicking beds website to download your free copy and start gardening the Very Edible Gardens way! 🎉

@veg_wicking_beds

#VeryEdibleGardens #WickingBeds #SustainableGardening #FreeGuide

🌬️🌧️ August is here! Now is a pivotal ti

🌬️🌧️ August is here! Now is a pivotal time to plan, prepare, and be proactive in the garden, getting everything ready for the approaching spring. While the soil and air temperatures remain chilly, the sunny interludes and slight lengthening of days hint at the approaching warmth—and lush growth—to come.

🌱 Summer Seed Starting: It's time to start planning, stocking up on, and even planting some summer seeds. Get creative with warm windowsills, cold frames, or greenhouses. Summer seeds like tomatoes, capsicum, and eggplant can be started early if you have the right setup. Remember, they need warm soil to germinate effectively. Consider planting multiple rounds over the coming months to hedge your bets against the variable start to spring and summer.

🌳🍎 Orchard Expansion: Don’t miss the chance to establish or expand your orchard with bare-root fruit trees. Winter is the perfect time to prune for strong spring growth. Nourish your trees with compost and mulch to ensure a vigorous start, but remember to keep mulch away from trunks to avoid collar rot.

🥦 Keep Planting for a Spring Harvest: For those without the means to germinate summer seeds early, continue focusing on fast-growing and robust leafy greens, herbs, and veggies that can withstand the winter chill. There are spring rewards to be had with spinach, lettuce, kale, beetroots, and radish, to name just a few.

🌾 Bed Preparation: Begin preparing your beds now. If the space is empty, start by incorporating compost and covering with mulch to create the perfect seedbed for summer seeds. If your beds are still full of veggies, keep the compost piles turning and worm farms fed so you have a stockpile of nutrients ready when the time is right.

⚠️ Remember, whilst our guide aims to be comprehensive, conditions vary across Melbourne and soil temperatures are still low. Before planting, take a moment to assess your garden’s unique conditions, including microclimates and soil temperatures, to ensure optimal growth. 🔍👩‍🌾

🔗 Visit our website www.veryediblegardens.com, link in the bio, for more tips on winter gardening and how to prepare for a fruitful spring.

#PlantingGuideAugust #VeryEdibleGardens

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