Make a garden before you build a house: Difference between revisions

== Introduction ==

[[File:Garden view in January 2021.jpeg|thumb|Thumbnailed image]]

'Make a garden before you build a house' is a site-specific work carried out in the intermediate space between the JvE buildings in Maastricht. The garden is unearthed by artist Nickie Sigurdsson and maintained in cooperation with participants, five Indian runner ducks, private seeds savers, and with generous support and guidance from Wim Storken and Yvonne Velthuis.  

*strawberries – rich soil, is ok with shadow

*moss – soil moist covered by foliage the wines.  

I got that the soil was rich, but “disturbed” in the sense that several minerals had been added to it. It was moist, which explained the snail invasion. The blood sorrel revealed that the soil seemed to be relatively acid, while Greater celandine indicated that the topography was similar to that of a forest.  

   

I decided to use a system of ‘raised beds’, a soil layout designated to cultivate a dense population of plants and accumulate organic matter. The system is e.g used in urban farms in Cuba known as Organopónicos.  

One simply digs out pathways in-between growing beds, and naturally the soil bed will ‘rise’ as more soil is added. The bed has a fixed width of 75 cm – a good working width for a farming. The benefits of the raised bed infrastructure is that it enables a better drainage and a fixed indication for where the cultivation is happening, which means that the soil on the beds will not be compacted as persons will use the pathways for walking, so there will be a good build-up of topsoil year after year. I like the functionality of the raised beds, but I also find their composition really nice because they make the garden more accessible and open up the layout of the garden.  

The compost I used from Bio-kultura  (https://www.bio-kultura.nl/) was very good, but also fairly expensive. I reckon cheaper options can be found near-by. I wanted the first batch to be really good quality weed-free compost. I used the compost bins in the garden momentarily but they had not been maintained properly and there wasn’t enough for the whole garden.  

Seeds:  

*Many plants did not do so well either due to the lack of sun

*The area in front of the metal workshop might have some toxicidisies, it would be good to have it checked perhaps or grow plants that remove toxicities. All the crops I planted dwindled and died in some way. It could also be nematodes.  

These are actions that would be good to do before the winter:  

Trimming:  

New Zealand Spinach: is perennial, and it is a good idea to trim the beds a little aka remove the weeds and cut them down a bit. They will come back next spring.

== image gallery ==