Of bees, hotels and permaculture gardening

Where would gardeners be without bees? Probably down on our knees with little horse-hair brushes, or busy planting species that attract hoverflies and other pollinators. But many plants are selective about which insect species they’ll share pollen with, and who has time to hand-pollinate an entire garden these days?

Sometimes you just need bees.

Most of us, when we think of bees, think of the introduced European honeybee Apis mellifera, but Australia is also home to around 1500 species of native bees. Some, like the stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria, form hives and produce honey, but most Australian bees are solitary and nest either in the ground or in small gaps and hollows in timber and stone. All bees are pollinators, although some are able to pollinate a wider variety of plant species than others; some species, like the native blue banded bee (Amegilla cingulata) I spotted up at the gardens earlier this year, are particularly valuable pollinators for food crops, and are a boon to gardeners and farmers alike.

So how can we attract more of these oh-so-helpful solitary bees into our gardens? By building them a hotel of course.

Beneficial Insects in the Narrandera Food Garden

Hi all, Kimberley here. I recently attended a workshop on Beneficial Insects and thought you all might be interested in learning a bit about them too.

Read on to find out why I was excited to see this guy

At the Narrandera Food Garden we are trying to adopt permaculture principles into our gardening practices. Permaculture is all about working with nature to achieve an end goal that is beneficial for all. This means trying to encourage natural pollinators and pest control agents, rather than poisoning our environment, ourselves, and all those ‘good’ bugs (and the things that eat them!) out there by using pesticides and herbicides.

We live in a very chemical-based society, and it’s so easy to get caught up in thinking that we have to use pesticides and herbicides all the time to get rid of weeds and pests. However, this over-reliance on chemical controls has been proven to result in not only the loss of plants, insects and animals that can help us control the ‘bad guys’ but also to create environments that encourage weed growth and pest attacks (invasive weeds are the first to encroach on bare ground after weed spraying, due to the lack of competition; and loss of predatory insects, due to broad-scale pesticide use, can give the pest species that emerge later free reign). Agricultural scientists are also finding that weed and pest species are developing resistances to commonly-used pesticides and herbicides, making them less effective, and forcing chemical control companies to develop ever more potent poisons. The end result of this cycle is a higher and higher reliance on chemical controls as we steadily remove harmless and beneficial species from our gardens and crops, and more and more chemicals going on and into our food, soil, water and air. The only winners in this cycle are the chemical companies.

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 first wicking garden - in a raised bed.

Well in week three of the Links to Learning relationship with Narrandera Food Garden the students built a wicking garden. A wicking garden is a system in which water is retained in the gravel at the base of the bed, and only moves up as the earth above dries out. It's a simple permaculture principle and reduces water use by reducing evaporation and reduces the frequency with which watering is required by retaining water within the loop until it's needed by the plants.

TAFE teacher Karen Lenehan demonstrated the way a wicking bed works first using a small one made using a polystyrene box, gravel, shade cloth, soil and a poly pipe. It's simple, anyone can do it. Karen has built 5 larger beds at home and she only needs to water weekly or less.

The students laying the shade cloth (you can use weed mat in the base of the garden.

With pond liner in on top of weed mat - the gravel layer goes in.

Our first garden bed

In October the phone rang and it was TAFE Teacher Karen Lenehan. Karen was looking for a garden for her students to work on. She had 4 mornings in which to take the boys through some units of study that where essential to their graduation. It just happened that Narrandera TAFE admin manager Heidi Loggemen had attended our Permaculture workshop and was able to tell Karen about our NFG.

She had found the right place. Karen inspected the gardens and we agreed that we would create a no-dig garden bed in week one, plant it up in week two, then build a Wicking garden in one of our raised corrugated iron beds in week three and plant up in week four. I undertook that these beds would be maintained over the long term by NFG.


Karen describes how the keyhole garden should look.

First you measure out the key hole shape.

Then you start adding layers.

Then you wet it all through and leave it (say a week) to start composting. After a few days it should feel hot if you put a finger down through the mix.  Ours was steaming on plant up day.

 

This should be good to plant up soon.

And the seedlings go in.

Let's Get Started

Hi all, Narrandera's Food Garden is coming to Narrandera Showgrounds soon!

We've made a great start with a fabulous workshop on Saturday 3 August led by Permaculture expert Cecelia Macaulay. (Special thanks to Tammy Galvin and family for looking after Cecilia for the weekend) Cecilia unwrapped before our eyes gift after gift. The gifts were insights into just how Permaculture works and how its principles, derived from nature can transform our gardens, our homes and our lives.

We learned practical things we can do, create, and dream-up that will make our garden sustainable, productive and fun.

There'll be loads of waus you can be involved.
You can

• help create the basic structure, yes a little bit of landscaping to be done
• create garden art
• donate garden features and materials (we are working on a wish list) to make the garden funky as well as plant and people friendly
• sponsor the gardens
• contribute gardening tips or great recipes to this blog
• serve on the Food Garden Committee - we only need a small group
• mentor new gardeners
• make friends - not compulsory, but it will happen, watch out!
• share in the creation of the shady sunny, cool, warm, green, worm friendly, people friendly garden

...and garden - compost, plant, water, pick!

We've a great plot of land at the Showgrounds thanks to the Narrandera Showground Trust and we are hot to trot. The area will be fenced in a week or so. The Narrandera Shed for Men has built some raised garden beds from re-cycled corrugated iron for us and they will construct our garden shed as well. Thanks gentlement! I think we'll be great neighbours.

Enough for now. Call me, the Live Well Narrandera Project Officer, Julie Briggs at Narrandera Shire on 02 6959 5510 to get involved.