Organic Gardener

Latest Organic Gardener is now in Library Bin. Sign in the book for two weeks or so. Happy reading.

Planting Day

Our wonderful new GM free zone sign and flowering native blue-bells.

We had a wonderful day yesterday and were amazed at how much we can accomplish when people turn up! Everyone deserves a pat on the back, but especially Marijka and Ros who organised it all beautifully.

We have planted out a large area beside the seat and along the railway line with a range of local indigenous plants, so now let's all cross our fingers for rain. Marijka and Chris have a plan to gradually produce a map of the area so that eventually we will be able to walk around the gardens and identify all the various plants.

It feels great to be part of a community effort like this, and hopefully we will all reap the benefits of it in years to come.

May Meeting

Another of Vince's clever devices- this is to train the broadbeans on...

Christine's Sapphire potatoes-

Chris's Brussel Sprouts!

We had a great turn-out for our meeting on Sunday, and managed to cover a fair bit of ground. Thanks to Christine and Alistair we now have a GM free zone sign on our fence, and are proudly supporting the movement to pressure Darebin Council to declare a GM free zone too.

We need everyone to search for new grants to get our water-tanks, as the one we'd planned to apply for has been cancelled.

Next Sunday 1st June is a working bee dedicated to planting out some more indigenous plants purchased with the grant from Darebin Council that Marijka got for us, so hopefully we'll have just as good a turn out for that!

Seed Saving Workshop

A great day as the pictures tell the story.

By putting up so many pictures Blogger decides what to do with them no matter how they are organized in the preview .
A random selection of the seeds that we discussed.
Plot holders can decide, as time goes by, to save the seeds from one plant. Then next Autumn at the Seed Saving workshop we can have a swap around. Marc has already taken up the idea of saving the seeds from one of his plants.

The pumpkin soup as usual was delicious thanks to Roz...

And a hearty welcome to three new members Christina, Alistair and Liz.

Spam comments

Due to our blog having been hit by comment spam, we will now have to moderate comments before we publish them, but please don't let that stop you from leaving comments, it just may take a bit longer for it to be published.

New Book for Library

Diana dropped off a new book for our library recently called "The Orchid Thief". The library books and records of loans book are in a large plastic container in the shed for those who wish to borrow.

"The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orlean.

"The Orchid Thief" is a non-fiction book by American journalist and author Susan Orlean based on her investigation of the 1994 arrest of John Laroche and a group of Seminole Indians in South Florida for poaching rare orchids in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. Laroche, a plant dealer was determined to find and clone the rare Ghost Orchid for profit. Orlean spent two years shadowing Laroche and exploring the odd and fascinating world of orchid fanatics.The book is based on an earlier article Orlean wrote for the New Yorker magazine and the book, Orlean and Laroche were later used as the subjects of the highly fictionalized and self-reverential film Adaptation (2002).

Seed Saving Workshop

Traditionally we have held a Seed Saving Workshop each year. This year it is to be held on Sunday 4 th May 2008 at 1pm. Also we will celebrate our harvest with cooking up a delicious pumpkin soup. The drought has seen our garden plots a bit scarce on produce yet nevertheless by scrounging here and there as you can see on the poster we have a good representative of seeds for the next coming year. Let the rains come.

Come and share, trade or just come along. Guaranteed you will leave wiser and richer with a pocket full of seeds...and maybe we can pursuade ourselves to share in the growing of seedlings and therefore reducing a tiny amount of landfill by using less plastic containers. Most commercial seeds are treated with fungicides and and other chemicals.

marijka