Produce from Concrete

It was a bit more than two years ago when I moved into this tiny house attachment in Sydney. It was not much but everything inside me told me it could be more. I have always had a passion for permaculture, self-sufficiency and design (of many... many kinds). For most of my first year living here I stared at the concrete courtyard and routinely told myself "surely I can still do something with this."

The first bed was rotten and nail-filled timbers I pulled up elsewhere on the property. If this was going to fail at least I would not lose much money in the process. I sourced what I could, thieving grass clippings from council grounds maintenance or leaves from a nearby park to lay the first layer down in this makeshift bed. To this first garden bed (to be) I added table scraps and weeds as they came up through the cracks between slabs.

Then it hit me... I have friends who are guineapig breeders. I used to as well, it is a wonderful hobby but not for a student who is moving regularly. I contacted one who was delighted to have somewhere to send the cage mess each fortnight. Even now more than a year later I am still getting this free high-nutrition "soil" for my plants. The difference is that, now, I can leave her a big bag of greens in exchange.

Come along with me on this journey.

Let us fast forward and journey through my first year turning concrete into a productive vegetable garden.

GARDEN BED NUMBER ONE

Pre-spring 2019

It started with a few cheap seedlings, a bag of guineapig soil and those rough timbers. Red cabbage, parsley, rocket, capsicums and a few other things that did not survive the first month. As it turns out, not having a back fence means the frost drifts down and pools on the concrete. I used plastic drink bottles cut in half to mini- greenhouse my seedlings and give them some protection. It sort of worked until the wind came along and made a mess of the idea.... repeatedly....

Early Spring 2019

From frost to heat I thought everything was dead. But it is spring now. Time to clear out the weeds and try this again. But... wait.... those are not weeds!!! The rocket I brought had survived long enough to cast seed and with the spring warmth and rain, I have a half dozen or so very strong rocket plants. Buried in amongst them I find a single parsley that also survived and grown up. Okay, so some plants will grow okay in what I am giving them. With my courage perked up I pulled away the debris of the dead things and give the green things a good water.

GARDEN BED NUMBER TWO

Okay, I have attacked my patch of concrete hard and added a long narrow bed along the 'fence' line.

Since the back fence is "down" (to put it politely) let us start with the palings. These are possibly as old as I am, from days of 1.2m fences being the legal standard, and what were (probably) 10cm wide have dried out and weather shrunk to more like 8cm. I was collecting guinea pig soil for some months before trying to use it. I felt it would be better to let the worms and bugs have at it for a while and start breaking it down before I tried growing things in it.

Turns out I was wrong though. Weeds found their way in and grew fine so here we go, time to jump in the pool. I purchased some basic equipment, such as a hose, a trowel and a bag of sugarcane mulch.... because it was so cheap. I moved a couple of the rocket plants since they were too close and too big now. I have added my first lettuces, a simple salad mix. As I work through the garden I am dreaming and scheming of how I want things to go.

GARDEN BED NUMBER THREE- maybe

Early summer 2019-20

I planted out the corner where the oldest of the guinea pig soil went down. Lettuces, kale, rainbow chard that i had grown from seeds, some of the rocket plants and a couple of other herbs such as rosemary, echinasia, sage, thyme and a raspberry. The first of my square pots was sown with carrot seed as well. I plan to sow one pot a month and do a rotation. As the first pot is harvested its immediately resown and put back in the cycle. This gives the carrots four months- 17 weeks to mature. The five bags of potting mix were my first real experiment. That area between the concrete and the side fence is full of rubbish. I really did not want to be working with it so I will see if I can use the bags themselves as pots.

Every theory is sound. But nothing ever really goes to plan some times. I had made the assumption that hese purchased bags of soil would grow stuff. You know... like "potting mix" is supposed too. But no. Seeds germinated, grew and inch and decided to stop there. Since i had used the same potting mix in the carrot pot I was about to face many many weeks of millimetre growthrates. Lesson learned.... this brand of potting mix grows nothing.

Late Summer 2019-20

Things are growing up! Look at my lettuces...

Autumn 2020

The kale is doing wonderfully now and last years 'I-thought-it-was-dead" parsley has really recovered and taken over its corner of the bed everything is really glowing with health and I am utterly blown away by the vigour considering how shallow the roots are and how crowded things are becoming.

Feeling entirely enthusiastic now about how productive this could turn out to be I lay out more palings and start to plan out where the next bed will be. The portion of the long bed on the left at the back is old enough to start growing things in. It was set up as a 'green manure' bedI deliberately planted plants that will be cut away later to form the foundation for the new beds.

As Autumn slides past I notice a few trouble areas. Parts of the first garden bed are now in full and soon to be permanent shade. The first lettuces are turning bitter and starting to run to seed. The back corner patch is growing steadily and I am looking forward to grazing from the younger, sweeter lettuces soon. At the very back, in the bags of potting mix, the peas are doing better than the onions and betroot I put in. At this point I am noticing that something is a bit 'off' with those bags. Most things are still sproutings and the peas are not as green as I thought they would be.

Early Winter 2020

And here I was wondering if 5 inches of root space on the concrete would work.... Short answer-yes, yes it does work. Three tuscan Kale are the feature for the first bed. The rocket has begun to go to seed now and it has crowded out pretty much everything except the parsley, corriander, peppermint and some carrots that made it into this bed by accident. On the right you can see the big leaves of some radishes.... check out how big they are once harvested!!!!

I had to abandon the bags of potting mix. I pulled the peas out, mixed the bad soil with young guinea pig soil and resowed the seeds. I dont like peas so if htey failed again it wasn't going to be a big loss. I figured that since everything is growing on solid concrete-asking plants to grow with rubbish and rubble at their roots would not be worse.I put down palings and lined it with cardboard to keep weeds supressed.

Now we are off! the peas are growing three times as fast as they had before and some of the sickened seed sprouts I rescued have been added to other beds and have doubled in size already.

HOW?

How did this raddish come out of finger deep soil?

Late winter 2020

The fenceline bed that I planted out for 'green manure' plants didn't quite work out as expected. I made a mistake with the guinea pig soil. I was given, to try, a bag of chicken coop hay. Well I figured, chickens are pretty good at turning things over and picking out the seeds- it will be fine- I had told myself. Wrong. The top-dressing of chicken coop hay had so much seed in it that the only thing able to push through it was the nasturtiums. And I promise you I had attempted to weed it twice.

CONCLUSIONS

As we round out this first year of growing food on concrete I have worked out that it was indeed an overwhelming success. Sure, plenty of things did not work but when they did work- WOW!

So how did things look in August 2019?

And how did they look August 2020?

Will you join me for round two?