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| Whampoa View Community Garden |
I finally got to join a local community garden. It is located just in front of 85 Whampoa Drive. This garden is maintain by 4 elderly resident of the same block, and belongs to Whampoa View Residences Committee.
This is how it looks like. There is a
Spondias dulcis, ambarella (aka Ba-long-long or Amokana) tree, a Lemon tree, young tomato seedlings, pumpkin seedlings, and just behind the green screen netting are garden balsam flowers.
On the other side, we have many kinds of "medical herbs" growing like wild grasses.
There were planted by another elderly whom is now not taking care of the plants and left it to grow wild.
To the back of the garden is a shelter made from bamboo poles. Passion fruit is planted to climb up the poles to create the shelter. The structure is slanted backwards as it is heavy and covered with dead leaves and branches from surrounding trees. These in turn have attracted pest and fungus to grow there too. As seen here, under the shelter is also dark and gloomy, even the grasses are not growing underneath it.
In the picture on the right, I had removed a portion of the shelter at the back.
I have taken note that this garden enjoys between 5 to 6 hours of bright sun-light from between 9am to 3pm daily. After which, the block of apartments seen here will block the sun completely, and becomes a well shaded area.
The type of soil in the garden is basically
clay. The surrounding turf's soil has poor drainage and floods during heavy rain pour. It takes about 2 to 3 days for the water to sink downwards.
Therefore, my initial plan is to take down the shelter and make the place livelier. After that, I will dig and loosen up the soil, and add organic matter to break up the clay and improve the soil web structure. I have chosen to used coffee ground and tea ground from a coffee shop as a source for composting. Coffee and tea grounds are rich in nitrogen and compost faster due to their fine mass and large surface area for microbial activities. An uncle had also recommended using bean sprout seed shells for composting.
While the compost is composting, approximately 3 months for compost to be ready, I will take down the existing fence and put up a new one. My idea is to peg pipe poles into the ground surrounding the garden and run wire mesh around using those pipes as support.
Then, to come up with a garden layout plan and research on the types of plants that will grow well together and add colour to the garden. Probably will need help on this area as I am poor in design work.
That's all for the moment. Will update as and when....
