Our community garden is becoming more productive every year and we like to celebrate a good harvest on the shortest day of the year. Why not come down for a tour and celebrate with us as we demonstrate making compost and pruning our deciduous fruit trees?
When: 10.30am – 2.30pm Sunday 22rd June, 2014
Cost: Gold Coin donation: M/tea provided
A morning of activities including demonstrations of: 11am: making a hot compost pile 12.00 noon : winter fruit tree pruning
Lunch: Wood-fired Pizzas using local tomatoes Members – No charge Non members – $7
For further details: Jill (0414) 545735 www.mossvalecommunitygarden.org.au
On August 4th we opened our gates to welcome in our members and local residents to celebrate the passing of the Winter Solstice.
Joy stokes the fire ready for the beef & lamb roast to follow.
We fired up the pizza oven, which was going to cook a winter roast beef and roast lamb, as a change from pizzas. Then as people arrived, we commenced the highlight of the day – a demonstration of how to use your winter whippy prunings to make a Hugel Kultur bed. Its a great way to turn a waste garden product (prunings) into a resource you can use on-site whilst saving a trip to the Resource Recovery Centre. It will become clearer as the photos will show below:
Jo Dodd, a local environmental educator, kindly agreed to give a demonstration of how to incorporate your prunings in your garden as a resource. Here she is with the first stage of building the basket bed.
The first layer is thick cardboard to exclude the light and kill the grass. Thick sticks are poked into the ground to provide the base onto which the long whippy prunings will be woven.The weaving begins, watched by the members and friends.
As the sides increase in height, the twiggy smaller prunings are thrown into the centre. These will be covered with garden mix before planting out to perennial species.
The final part of the wall weaving involves twining whippy prunings around the last few layers to tie them in and complete the basket bed. See below:
Here’s a completed one that Jo made earlier in her own backyard. Kathi suggests we turn ours into a basket with handle filled with living herbs. It is only a matter of time before it happens!
Jo’s website: www.lightfooteducation.com.au
is a great local resource if you are looking for environmental ideas and local activities relating to sustainable agriculture and sustainable living.
Sorry! No photos of our feast available – we were all too busy tucking into our roasts! But here’s a photo of our morning tea cake.
Well, some of you were planning to come to our Winter Solstice Party and Pruning Demonstration in June until the skies opened and 300mm of rain later we felt we had to either celebrate in wetsuits or postpone to another date.
So…. let’s try again, this time on Sunday, 4th August from 10.30am!
Instant Garden Bed from Prunings
and …
WINTER FEAST/CELEBRATION
Entry is by gold coin donation – the cheapest cup of warming tea/coffee in town.
We will still be celebrating around 1.00pm with a roast lunch using local produce cooked in our wood-fired pizza oven (members – no charge, non-members $7.00)
But while that’s cooking, around 11.00am we plan to build a hugel kultur garden bed. Read on …
Joanne Dodd of Lightfoot Education will demonstrate how to use all your winter prunings in the creation of a new raised vegetable bed. Joanne has been running workshops on a variety of sustainable living topics like beekeeping, backyard food growing, chooks in the backyard, etc. In fact, it is worth a visit to her terrific website: www.lightfooteducation.com.au
Here is a photo of the hugel kultur bed in Joanne’s backyard:
Jo Dodd’s hugel kultur bed made with recycled cardboard, and woven fruit tree prunings in winter.
What a terrific way to re-use your backyard prunings. A waste product becomes a resource! And hopefully more organically produced food.
Bookings essential (for catering purposes). Please RSVP by return email before 31st July: email hidden; JavaScript is required
For further info you can contact Jill on (0414)545735
In early April, I was invited to Mittagong Garden Club to talk about community gardening. It was great to see a room crowded with keen gardeners, some of whose faces were familiar to me. The following Friday, the members of Mittagong Garden Club were invited to have a tour of Moss Vale Community Garden to see what sorts of activities we get up to.
Luckily the weather held out and we were able to have a cup of tea and a biscuit followed by a tour of some of the features of our garden. The strawbale shelter was of particular interest, as was the pizza oven and our new raised wicking beds.
Explaining the workings of our new raised wicking bed.
Autumn is a great time to show gardens off. We still had masses of tomatoes and several varieties of dwarf apples fruiting in amongst all the salad greens and berries. We are going to share some of our bell lantern chilli seeds with the Mittagong gardeners so they can spread the intriguing looking chilli around the Highlands. That will ensure it’s survival in our area.
Mittagong Garden Club members check out our compost bays.
