Pruning maintenance plan for Rea Lands park

Local pruning maestro, Gael Shannon, has been working on an orchard maintenance plan for Rea Lands Park over the past few years and today Patrick met Gael to go over the plan and ask her questions about how best to look after the many various fruiting trees including peaches, quince, almonds, figs, cherries, apricots, feijoa, plums, hazelnuts, citrus, berries and nectarines. Stay tuned for the maintenance plan drawing, which we'll publish here shortly.

Gael Shannon and Patrick Jones discuss fruit tree maintenance at Rea Lands Park today.

It is because of the generous contributions of local folk like Gael that our community food network can grow and prosper. We have much local knowledge in our area and many generous folk to pass this knowledge on. Tap into this knowledge, learn, give and get involved with one of the community gardens. If you want to be kept up to date with our regular working bees, workshops and other food related business, email us and ask to go on the mail out list, otherwise check in with our facebook page or keep an eye out for the chalk board at the Albert St garden (beside the library).

Our work recognised further afield...

Melbourne's wonderful resource organisation, Cultivating Community, has written a comprehensive report on our growing community food network. This is how they begin:

Anyone who has been involved with community gardens or urban public growing spaces will know the patience and compromise necessary to get a new project started. Without wishing to widen the city-country divide we’ve always suspected that things are “different out there”. We decided to head out to rural Victoria to investigate some unusually forward community garden and food projects. 

First off we headed to Daylesford where we had heard murmurs that a group of rural Victorians – frustrated at sluggish responses to environmental and health crises – had been taking matters into their own hands to rapidly expand their network of communal growing spaces. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were greeted by Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones, who have been instrumental in establishing the thriving and diverse network of Daylesford Community Food Gardeners (DCFGs). As well as being lovely hosts, they were kind enough to answer some questions and fill us in on the history of the project.

Read on here.

June Bee (community compost capers)

A frosty morning brought us out slowly today for our monthly working bee.

But when the sun seeped into the Albert Street garden, so did our smiles.

We admired the winter's fruit and our own climate zone which allows for some form of fruit year round.

While we worked away in the garden Tom played up our spirits with the sun.

During the lead up to the working bee we collected pallets, leaves, straw and horse manure for our bonza winter compost workshop. We demonstrated how to build a four-bay compost area and how to set a compost for some serious heat decomposition.

We recycled, reclaimed and reloved everything, including ourselves. About thirty of us turned up to lend a hand, hand-cut the grass, prune and take out the dead organic matter to add to our composts.

It was all very Portlandia, which we relocalised as Daylesfordia.

But unlike Portlandia we actually had something to show for ourselves other than just jokes, although we had those too.

Soil fertility! There's nothing more important than compost in a post-fossil fuel future.