Visit the new one here: new Youth Food Movement website.
The Youth Food Movement is run by young people for young people. This site is about connecting you to the info and things you need to enjoy food in a conscious and sustainable way.
Slowly,
YFM Sydney Team
Posted in News
The City of Sydney launched a Green Village initiative last week with Pecha Kucha lightning talks. An inspiring evening of how our city can be a sustainable one including designers, artists, architects, restauranteurs and YFM’s Sally Hill, talking about how passata Day means much more than just fresh stocks of pasta sauce. “Passata is made by people, Dolmio is made by robots!”
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So now you’ve decided you are going to grow something yourself. Fantastic! …but where do you start? You start at the bottom. The foundation. The soil.
The soil is the life source of your garden. It’s an aspect of gardening that is often glossed over, yet the soil is where your plants get their water, nutrients and stability to grow.
There are a few key points you need to know about soil to help your plants thrive.
First of all – texture. The texture of your soil will determine how much water and nutrients your soil can hold. Texture is how much sand, silt and clay there is. A ‘clayey’ soil will be mostly clay, and a ‘sandy’ soil mostly soil. There are, however, numerous other textures including loamy sand, sandy loam, loam, clayey sand, sandy clay loam….it’s a reasonable list.
In your garden, a loam is usually the best soil type. A loam has about 40% sand, 40% silt and 40% clay.
Texture is important because it affects so many other soil properties such as
1. Water holding capacity – the more clay/silt in a soil, the greater amount of water it can hold
2. Nutrient holding capacity – a straight sand holds almost no water or nutrients. A loam on the other hand will hold plenty of nutrients.
3. Drainage – the sandier the soil, the greater the capacity for drainage. This is why a straight sand holds minimal water – it’s lost to drainage.
4. Compaction – clay soil compacts more easily than sand. It is still possible for a sandy soil to become compacted, but it will take longer than a clay
5. Organic matter content – a finely textured soil (i.e. more clay) can hold more organic matter than a sandy soil. This is because 1. clay particles are more ‘charged’ and can hold more organic matter, and 2. decomposition occurs faster in a sandy soil.
To find out what texture your soil is you need to do the ribbon test.
Next comes soil structure. A ‘well structured’ soil will have about 25% air, 25% water and 50% solids. Quite frequently, soil becomes compacted, reducing the amount of air and water space. Plants need at least 10% air space to survive. This is in addition to the water in the soil. Without oxygen, plants will suffocate.
You will know if you soil is compacted as soon as you try to dig into it. Compacted soil often resembles bricks. A great way to decompact your soil is to use a garden fork to punch holes and ‘work’ the soil.
pH is important because it affects the availability of nutrients. Broadly speaking, if a soil has a pH outside 5 – 7, plants start to have trouble absorbing nutrients in the soil. This leads to a weak plant that is more susceptible to disease.
You can buy a simple home soil pH test kit from most nurseries and test the soil yourself.
Texture, structure and pH are the very basics of soil management, but give you a good introduction to why your soil is so important. Go to www.organicsoilguide.com for more information, and to download the first chapter for free.
Alisa Bryce is the author of a recently released Organic Soil Guide. This guide teaches you what you need to know about soil to grow vibrant, healthy plants. It includes step-by-step instructions on how to assess your soil, what the results mean and what to do next.
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As some of you may have heard through the grapevine, our next event is going to be a little different from what we’ve done in the past!
As the summer season draws to a close, we are collaborating with the lovely ladies from The Source to pay our respects to the SEASONALITY of food.
Tomatoes represent a staple ingredient in many meals here in Australia. Tomatoes don’t discriminate! They sustain you if you are young or old, caucasian, Asian, African, Middle-Eastern, American and any other ethnicity.
They are just wonderful!
At the end of February Team Sydney will be getting together to have a passata making weekend, and we’ll be documenting it for you all to enjoy.
We are encouraging you to do the same. Get a couple of friends together and make something from scratch.
Why & what is this all about?
It is about respecting past traditions of food preservation.
It is about respecting the mighty tomato, and the natural rhythms of its life!
It is about getting your hands dirty, putting in some energy to get a reward later (mmm pasta in the winter!)
The wonderful Sally at The Food Anthropologist has done a little story on the history of passata making in Australia here.
A quick Google will give you an idea of what to do, here is one we found useful.
Stay tuned for more…
Team Sydney
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GreenUps! Connecting City and Farm from 3DOTS STUDIO on Vimeo.
Yes a little belated, but always a worthy watch, this small clip was taken at the fantastic GreenUps last year that was all about FOOD!
It was such a great night and we are really excited about the next one.
Thanks to Ben Ward, Food Connect and Feather & Bone for putting on an inspiring and invigorating evening – it certainly sowed the seed in all of us to go out there and continue our work.
Team Sydney
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Some time ago Slow Food Sydney started a community garden at Crown Street Public School and the project has been thriving ever since!
Other great organisations including the City of Sydney, NAB and Jim’s Mowing in Bondi have all supported the garden along the way, and the school is happy to announce that they’ve recently been awarded a “School’s First” program grant from the Department of Education & Communities.
With all of this, they are looking for a couple of keen volunteers to help out occasionally on a Thursday morning with running the garden and talking to the kids, parents and teachers about how it all works.
Leesa from YFM, who has previously dedicated much time to the project says “it is definitely a rewarding project to devote as little or as much time as you like towards”.
Want to know more? Visit their website and follow the links to the roster.
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On a humid Monday eve, a group of 70-80 permaculturalists, community enthusiasts and active gardeners gather in the Alexandria community centre in Sydney. Their common ground steams across all aspects of a greener world but today they gather on more specific terms. They’re here to find out about the permaculture craze, Permablitz, that is overtaking Melbourne’s green thumb and gardening community. Permablitz is a 25 year old community project started by local permaculturalist Dan Palmer and has grown into a large scale, non-charity organisation that carries out the design, landscape and implementation of 25 edible gardens a year in and around Melbourne. The definition of a Permablitz (as stated on their website) is fairly simple:
Permablitz (noun): An informal gathering involving a day on which a group of at least two people come together to achieve the following:
create or add to edible gardens where someone lives
share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living
build community networks
have fun
Its seems fairly straight forward but as the speaker, Adam Grubb begins to explain, after years of trial and error the process of a Permablitz has a specific structure that makes this green-feeding operation work.
Firstly a Permablitz acts as an informal economy, not a charity. The idea is that if you help out at three Permablitz, then you get to have your own fully designed and landscaped edible garden. The host, who is having their garden remodeled, provides the seedlings and equipment as well as a shared lunch and the volunteer’s chip in where they can (extra seedlings or plants).
It is a collective that needs certain components to make it work. A Permablitz must have a design team to map out an effective and practical design. The design must work with nature and not against it, which, we are told, only requires a bit of common sense and an understanding of ways you can organise things, “Its no place for cookie cutters” Adam slips out. A Permablitz is also specific to the location and to the person. Each part of the property has a different microclimate i.e. slopes, soil types and weather protection so a site analysis must done to construct the ideal design. Similarly, each person has their own skills, dreams and motivations and part of the process is understanding how to fulfill their edible garden needs.
A lead facilitator is also an important aspect of the Permablitz process. There needs to be someone to direct (but not micro manage) people in what to do and to keep the ball rolling. Workshops are run to teach volunteers different aspects of permaculture and to avoid the day becoming loose, disorganised and in the end tiresome. At the end of the day a brand new edible garden is constructed from the complimentary balance of hard work, education, socialising and eating: a fabulous way of bringing the community together. They’re rarely short of volunteers either with each event booking through an online rsvp system. The turn out sits at around 80% with honesty and commitment as their best insurance.
But what really makes Permablitz in Melbourne so successful is that after 25 years there is a strong citywide collective and a free and willing momentum that drives positive impact.
Its now close to 8pm and the conversation turns to Sydney. How can we get this happening here? Is it possible to have such a cohesive network in a city that speaks always of its disconnected, segregated communities. “We are a different city and we have to work with that,” a Marrickville resident points out. Some point out issues with council and insurance policies while others resist the conversation heading down the path of beaurocracy. Soon we discover there is already a permaculture movement in different parts of the city, different attendees yell out that they’re from ‘Permaculture North’, ‘South!’ ‘East!’ and ‘West’. So, we decide, we are around and ready to make things happen we just have to stay informed and compliment each other with a the wide range of skills between us.
Again, momentum is the key, and to get that happening we need to tap in to what we have locally and stay connected. It’s been proven to work in Melbourne, so there is no reason why it can’t work in Sydney.
Find out more on Permablitzing by visiting http://www.permablitz.net
words by Sally Ayhan
www.thefoodanthropologist.com
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