Jimboomba Community Garden Gardening column

We suffered, as did many in the area, with loss, heartache and the task of cleaning up.

When the floodwater had resided and it was safe to do so, I went to inspect the garden and was happily surprised (after my initial shock) at just how well the plants had handled their soaking. It appears that we have lost none of our permanent plantings and the garden will grow strong again.

This, however, is not the end of the problem. Floodwater brings with it a whole lot of new and unexpected problems. The first problem that I was concerned about was that our soil would have drowned.

I expected that all our earthworms and microorganisms would have died, but this was not the case.

I believe that due to the health of our soil before the flood, there were enough pockets of air to sustain life while it was under water.

The next problem, and by far our biggest concern, was what effect would the floodwater have on our health?

We are told continually during floods that the waters are contaminated. Research shows that these waters contain cryptosporidium, giardia, and E. coli, just to name a few.

Garden volunteers raised concerns about whether this contamination could be passed on to people who eat the produce, and the answer is yes, if the correct procedure is not followed.

Fortunately for us, we are not the first community garden to be flooded and we were able to contact friends at other gardens to find out what needed to be done, so we must give a big thanks to Northey Street City Farm.

As to eating produce that contacted floodwater, the rules are this:

If you can’t cook it, throw it away.

A good wash will not save you from infection, so all our leafy greens are gone.

Wash other vegetables, then sanitise in a weak, bleach solution of one tablespoon of bleach to two litres of water.

Then rinse in drinking water, peel and cook.

This needs to happen for two months after the flood, as a pumpkin that grows today will still contact the contaminated surroundings.

So what can we do in the next two months to eradicate the risk of disease?

We can still plant leafy greens if we can improve the activity in the soil, irrigate without splash back and prevent the plant leaf from contacting existing soil by using a barrier like hay.

We can prepare other areas by introducing more air and covering in a thick layer of hay and then resting the soil for two months.

The Community Garden will be running free workshops on flood recovery techniques for the garden.

Please visit our Facebook page to watch for details and to register your interest.