Tips
Starting a vegie co-op
Community gardens are all the rage. No doubt some of this interest is inspired by reports of the more than 300,000 allotment gardens in the UK, where people who don’t have their own individual space can ‘borrow’ a piece of land for a garden.
While allotment gardens have never been as popular in Australia as in the UK – perhaps because the individual quarter acre has (until now) been an achievable Australian dream – with more families moving to inner city or high density living, the idea of sharing garden space has taken on more appeal. Local councils are leading the way, but many other groups are also active. If you want to get involved in a community garden, your local council is a good place to start – hopefully you may be able to join an existing group. If you can’t, the council will probably be able to give you some direction or guidelines for starting up a new group.
And if the idea of joining a larger community garden group isn’t your thing, a few families or households can get together to form their own, smaller scale, vegie-growing co-op. There are many benefits to be derived from these more casual arrangements, such as:
- You can garden without leaving your own home, but enjoy the company of a larger group.
- It’s much easier to get the whole family involved if other families are doing the same thing. This applies particularly to kids, who enjoy sharing experiences with friends but aren’t so excited about doing things with mum and dad.
- You can pool knowledge so that the more experienced members of the group provide guidance for the novices.
- If the co-op gardens are close together, it’s simple and cost-effective to arrange bulk deliveries of soil, building materials, manure and mulches.
- Individual garden plots can be devoted to one type of crop, but the harvest can be shared by all. This makes it easier to care for a particular crop. For example, if you are the carrot grower of the group, you only need to worry about fertilising carrots. And if you’re only growing lettuces, you’ll know they do best if they are regularly fed with a
liquid, high-nitrogen food like Thrive Soluble All Purpose. - When it comes to purchasing larger items, you can increase your buying power. If you are buying a number of expensive items, such as compost tumblers, you’re in a much better
position to negotiate a discount. - Similarly, if you want to hire some equipment, the usage time and costs can be allocated across all the members of the co-op.
- If children are involved, the co-op garden can become the basis for great learning experiences. Encourage kids to write, record and photograph their gardening story. A tech-savvy person can set up a blog for the group.
Final advice: before setting up your co-op, get together to agree on the ground rules that all will commit themselves to following. And make sure that each household checks its insurance cover!
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