community garden 3231 newsletter growing food, friendships...

CG3231 Newsletter November 2019

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Community Garden 3231 Newsletter

Growing food, friendships & community

November 2019

Dates for your diary

Working bees: Sunday 17 November, Saturday 7 December from 9am St Aiden Artists are joining us for morning tea on 17 November. Please come along. Garden Team planning session; Friday 22 November 2–4pm at the Aireys Community Hall. All welcome CG 3231 Christmas Party: Friday 13 December from 6pm Art in the garden: Saturday 25 January 2020

Emma collecting herbs for dinner


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From the President Following on from the AGM on 7 September, the first meeting of the new committee was held in October. At the meeting we finalised the make-up of the new committee for 2019–2020. The positions are as follows:

President Liz Wood Vice President Heather McKee Secretary Susan Funder Treasurer Therese Hutchens Committee members Avril Blay, Gabriel Fuller, Gretel Lamont and Keith

Bremner (Honorary member Janice Carpenter) Thanks to those who have volunteered to be on the committee and a big thanks to those stepping down – our wonderful garden is a reflection of your work on the committee. Community Garden 3231 continues to be a highly successful community garden with wonderful support teams. Each working bee the garden team plan a list of jobs (written up on the whiteboard) and a garden team member is on hand to provide further support and direction if needed. This system works very well. Thanks Barb Evans and Avril Blay (pictured below) for stepping up recently. Our working bees are very productive and well run!!


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Composting and weeding are vital garden jobs. Please attend to the paths next to your plot and remove any weeds as Gretel has arranged

for a local student to mulch all of our paths. (Thanks Gretel and Oliver). Mark found that the compost had clumps of newspaper that hadn’t broken down and made turning the compost a little harder – see picture above. If you are adding compost and newspaper please make sure the newspaper is well separated and won’t form a clump. Upcoming social events Our next social event will be the Community Garden Christmas party on Friday 13 December starting at 6pm. Bring nibbles, salad or a desert to share and something to drink for a fun night. More information coming! pop it in your diary. And then Art in the Community Garden will be held on Saturday 25 January 2020. Best wishes To Gabrielle Fuller and Marg Jacobs – we send our best wishes and hope to see you back in the garden soon! Catch you in the garden Liz


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Garden Team News The soil is really starting to warm up now, eleven varieties of tomatoes are in the ground (and there were ten but a garden neighbour has donated a Greek heirloom variety called ‘Santorini’). We are getting ready to plant capsicum, corn, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant and other summer crops. Lettuce, kale, spinach and beetroot are coming along well in Bed M. Bed T now has longer lasting leafy greens such as sorrel, silverbeet, perpetual spinach and kale. The idea of the Community Beds is that as you often just need few leaves, so these beds save us all from growing the same things and wasting lots of it. So please harvest as you need it. Recent harvesting An excellent working bee on Cup weekend welcomed old and new friends to the garden, when we harvested broad beans, onions, broccoli, asparagus and most of the garlic. As expected, a fungal disease (rust) increased its grip on the leaves of our garlic as harvesting approached but the bulbs developed well for this variety. Limited and popular crops like the garlic are harvested and shared at working bees. There are some saved in the shed if you could not get there. If you miss out on these, be sure to come to the next working bee on 17 November as the last of the crop will be pulled then.

Harvesting garlic The garden has a harvesting policy for the community beds on the website http://aireyscommunitygarden.weebly.com/in-the-garden.html which is worth a look if you are unsure how it works.


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Watering Thank you to all who have signed up for the summer watering roster. The instructions have been updated and the system checked. We need more people and aim to pair you up with someone who has done it before. It is also much quicker with two people. The list is on the shed noticeboard, near it the Watering Book with map and instructions. Planning ahead With a new committee and structure, it seemed a good time to have a look at how different areas of the garden are performing and make some longer-term plans. The garden team welcomes comments, ideas or suggestions from members at any time but you are also very welcome to join us at a broader planning and evaluation meeting we are holding on Friday 22 November 2–4pm in the meeting room at the Aireys Community Hall. Send us your thoughts and/or come along if you can. See you in the garden Avril and the Garden Team Herb update Spring is here and summer around the corner so salads are on the way too. The perennial herbs are coming to life with a bit of a weed, prune and feed and now it’s time to plant seasonal (annual) herbs in Beds N, O and P to add a bit of zing to summer fare. • Bed N has half Italian parsley with more seeds to be planted so we

have a continuous supply. Chervil and dill seeds were planted a couple of weeks ago and are just coming through now. If you are in the garden, do please give them a drink so they continue to grow well.

• Bed O has coriander that will finish fairly soon. We all love coriander, but it’s hard to keep it going through the summer. We will try, but it tends to bolt quickly. A few years ago Gretel planted a big bed of hot salad greens that were very popular, so the idea is to do some in Bed O. Three types will be tried: mustard mizuna (Brassica rapa), rocket Apollo (Eruca sativa) and mustard ‘ruby streaks’ (Brassica juncea). We may be able to squeeze the seeds in now between the coriander plants, so they get a head start …

• Bed P has been planted with sweet basil seedlings, and purple basil (Rubin basil) will be planted at the working bee on Saturday 2 November. Sweet basil will also be planted as companion plants to the tomatoes when they go in.


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Herbs for teas It is suggested that we increase the variety of herbal tea plants. We have mint which is always popular, but if you have any growing in your garden and can provide seeds or plants, or would like to suggest ones you’d like the garden to grow, please write a note on the board above the sink. Jo has offered lemon balm, but we need a container … anyone have an old vessel or suitable container for herbal teas? Possible candidates for us to grow Lemon balm (hardy perennial): The strongly scented leaves make a delicious and soothing tea to calm the nerves. Mosquitoes are repelled by the lemon-scented foliage.

Agastache (herbaceous perennial): Its fragrant anise leaves are infused in water as a health tonic and it’s attractive to bees in both colour and long flowering period. Best sown in autumn. Bergamot (herbaceous perennial): This `bee balm’ has masses of flowers to attract beneficial insects and a long flowering season over summer. Its highly aromatic foliage is similar to lemon verbena for lemon tea. Perennial update The Russian tarragon next to the flowering sage around the pizza oven has been removed for a bit of nurturing in a pot and a new French tarragon

A field of lemongrass in southern Cambodia – rather random, but that’s why the newsletter is late this month. Editor


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plant has been added to one of the trough beds with a perennial coriander. The common thymes along the pizza oven have been pruned and thinned and one has been replaced by a lemon thyme. Rosemary is growing well in the top bed. Art in the Community Garden is on again! Note the date: Saturday 25 January Remember the spectacular event last summer – the garden was fabulous, the art magnificent, and the sausages sizzled. Kids made their own art, there were lots of visitors and we all had a good time. We will need lots of volunteers: to organise advertising, set up the stands, show people around, wrangle the kids’ art corner, make veggie burgers, cook sausages and burgers and no doubt more, including have fun. A list of opportunities will put up inside the shed soon – but if you’d like to help, send an email to [email protected]


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We are now on Instagram You can now follow Community Garden 3231 on Instagram. We currently have six followers – we need to double that each month, so check out communitygarden3231 and start following.

community garden 3231 newsletter growing food, friendships...

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