Sign-up Day!

Drum-roll please...

The moment you've all been waiting for has arrived!

If you'd like to join Narrandera Food Garden as a community gardener, head along to the Garden at 11:30am Sunday November 2nd 2014. Narrandera Food Garden is located at the showground, next to the Men’s Shed.

There will be committee members at the Garden from 11:30am until 1pm taking membership subscriptions.

For $40 you will get your own plot for a twelve month period, to plant up with whatever herbs and vegetables you like. This year the committee will be providing seedlings and seeds at no additional cost - and of course there will always be someone available to give you planting advice should you need it.

There will also be a series of workshops held for members throughout the year – keep an eye on this blog and the Narrandera Food Garden Facebook page for details.

If you are unable to make it on November 2nd, but would like to become a member please drop us a line on Facebook or call Julie on 69592440. (Please don't state your interest in a comment here on the blog, as we might not see it.)

Narrandera Food Garden is a family-friendly environment and we welcome members of all ages, abilities and gardening experience - so if you'd like to learn new gardening skills, share the skills you have, or simply make new friends, come along and join the fun!

Composting tips with Sophea

This weekend the Time Space Place: Nomad Project Performance Space project was hosted at Narrandera by The Cad Factory, and took up residence for a few days beside our Garden.

One of the artists, Sophea Lerner, is passionate about composting, both at home in her apartment and while she travels. Sophea and her friends were happy to work with Narrandera Food Garden to make use of our compost tumblers while they were in residence, and in return Sophea shared some of her home composting tips with us.

While in Narrandera, Sophea also showed us her portable 'garden in a suitcase', and some of her friends conducted wild-greens foraging activities and created artworks based on the edible plants they found. (If any readers have photos of these let us know!)

Sophea Lerner sharing some of her composting tips with Narrandera Food Gardeners and friends

One of Sophea's key tips: make sure you have enough (chemical free!), carbon-rich, dry, 'brown' waste - such as shredded paper, dried hay, or dead leaves - to balance your nitrogen-rich, wet, food scraps or fresh garden clippings. This will help your scraps break down into rich, friable compost, and avoid becoming slimy and smelly. Keeping your wet scraps covered by a dry layer can also help keep pests out of your compost.

Sophea preparing to open the compost tumbler after 
several days of adding food scraps

Inspecting the compost in the tumbler

 - it was a little wet, we needed to add more brown matter!

Four-footed gardener Gigi learned a few tips as well (and caught us a mouse)

The Grand Opening

What a great day. a good crowd came to see Deputy Mayor Jim Howard officially opening the gardens and plant a Robinia in the centre of the gardens to mark the day (6th June 1014 by the way).

                                          They're arriving!

                                          They're here.

                                         Some of our guests planted up a raised bed, under                                                                                    the direction of the fabulous Karen Lenehan.

Prepping for the Opening

 We planted a few beds up to show how it's done Signs and bunting up too.

Gardening Workshops

We held a number of gardening workshops in the early part of 2014 - Urban Garden Design, Soils and Composting, Low-Water Use Gardening, Companion Planting, and Goring Vegetables. These were delivered by Karen McLennan of Karen McLennan Permaculture. They were a huge success!

 

Our Youngest Gardener

                                                  Zoeay Hodgetts with her mum Tammy.

The Fairy Garden

            Mia Hallie and Nate Briggs's Fairy Garden - ready for our opening planned for 6 June.

Pavers Down!

 Ok - we have pavers in place, and our raised beds look about right where they are too.

Making Mosaic Pavers for our Gardens

Julie Roffe and Joyce Spencer getting things moving.

Jeanette Miller and Julie Roffe

Caitlin,Tim, Jeanette, Nathan, Layla and Jessica and volunteers, working on a few dozen beautiful pavers for our Narrandera Food Garden.

We have stumps - let's make this!

Resources and Learning

We are beginning to get together a collection of resources our gardeners can use over the future years of community gardening. This is the worlds largest catalogue of heirloom seeds. A good start.

Food Glorious Food.

Today I picked these from our Wiradjuri Food Garden at the Sandhills Foundation. The snowpeas are all gone - eaten straight from the vine by the girls that planted them. Salads have been made from the produce. Beetroot has been roasted. Success! Planning now what to plant next. Ideas people?