Winter Tasks in the Garden

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Most years the amount of people interested in the garden tails off somewhat in Winter, but new volunteers are bucking the trend in 2013 coming forward in the cooler months and committing regular hours to help our grarden grow. Not everyone is gardening however this doesn’t mean they’re sitting idly by.  In recent weeks we’ve seen a renewed creative flurry, and while the mosaics aren’t getting any bigger, small films are hatched, songs are played, poems recalled and vessels woven.

A good deal of energy in Winter will be devoted to organising and getting ready for the growing season next year. Our visioning process earlier in the year produced some fantastic ideas but progress has been a bit slow on turning them into realities.

Winter crops are largely in but we plant more seeds in readiness, knowing we’ll find spots to squeeze them into in existing beds.

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Whether you have 20 square meters or 20 acres, Winter Tasks in mosts gardens includes organising for the year ahead, checking in on the tools, inventory, repairs, sharpening replacing anything lost to damage or just lost. It’s also a time to reflect on what worked, and what didn’t, and make small improvements every year based on those observations. How did our garden grow this year? What did we grow, what did we harvest? Was it successful, bountiful, equitable and delightful? Leave comments below if you’d like to help grow our successes in 2013/14.

Reflecting then on the Friday sessions, these have traditionally been open: Bring your self, your interests and something for the pot, or a small donation. Seeds, seedlings, flower bulbs, crafts and stories wander in one by one, and come together to work in the garden and make a tasty soup.

Sometimes more social, sometimes more hard graft depending on who comes. As regular visitors to the gardens come and go, each wave brings different talents, energy levels, abilities and interests. It’s a tricky balance to maintain, welcoming all that come, embracing the social experience which some value above all else, as well as giving order and tasks to those who are looking for a more structured experience. So as we talk today we capture not only what the Gardens needs are in Winter but also the explore the needs of the Gardeners. To encourage group ownership of the Friday Sessions for all contributions to be welcome we review the tasks which need to be done each month, and think about how we know when some things need to be done. Experienced local gardeners have a wealth of knowledge about likely times for the infamous last frost and so on and its this calendar we need to refer to rather than general planting guides. Do you have any wintery observations you’d like to share with gardeners in the upper mountains?

A Little Weaving

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Have you ever had a pile of woody weeds you didn’t know quite what to do with? Next spring you could be looking forward to flushes of growth of all kinds how ever many plants you have in the wrong place!

I was especially delighted to hear Claudia talking about weeds as a potential for weaving material at a recent Random Weaving workshop held at nearby Kindle Hill School. There we pulled out broom, roots and all, trimmed bamboo walked along the side of the road trimming plants of all kinds as we went. Are alot of weeds good for weaving? I ask. Oh sure, many many of them, Claudia grins. I found it just incredible to discover that having something useful and beautiful we can easily create from them means that all these woody weeds we have in the community gardens (and all our gardens up and down the mountain) are no longer the bushcarer’s chore to dispose of but become the weavers pleasure. We no longer weed, but harvest branches, leaves & grasses for the next weaving project.

With this in mind I invited Claudia to come along to our community garden and see what material we might have which would be nice (to cut down as well as) to work with. And a couple of weeks later, here we are cutting back nearby well known Cotoneaster and Privet, as well as weed of national significance Tortured Willow (Salix matsudana) and Poplar tree sticks from the creek bank. But we’re not doing this as a bushcare group, we’re looking for fibres to make baskets with. Today we look not at the scale of the problem of these trees, but the form and possible function of each branch piece, its flexibility and decorative attributes. And so pruning is no longer just a destructive action but a creative act.

Walking quickly around the site today, we identify the trees we’ll use and take only the material we need. We acknowledge that this can be a dangerous thing to do, as many trees will respond well to being given a severe haircut. In some cases even cutting down to the ground can extend the life of a tree or stand of trees to hundreds of years. This is known as coppicing and it is an old sustainable forestry practise, which is starting to gain ground again as communities’ interests start to look for local supplies of sticks for building and gardening. Well today we’re not building anything so large, and we lop pieces 1-2m long to work with. We’re here in part too to seed the idea that if we work together with bushcare groups we might all benefit, because of course many hands make light work. And so do suitably motivated ladies with loppers!
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Soon our Tortured Willow and Poplar are are among so many strands delicately wiggled together into the beginnings of a basket. We start as weaving seems to do with an aim to produce a very simple form. Hands eyes and plant material come together to make two circles first. And then bring in the random weave to connect them to form the structure of a handle.

After filling in between the circles we just have time to begin another kind of weave, coiling and here we’re using handfulls of pine needles with quite a different result in mind.

If you’d like to find out more about workshops coming up at the community gardens sign up to get updates here in the top right menu, and if you’d like to come along to another day of weaving with our weeds, leave a comment here. Claudia is also running a classes in Wild Basketry on Friday afternoons in June at Wild Valley Art Park

We’ll be planning a bigger weave soon – watch this space :-)

Sunday volunteers 26 May

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IMG_2884Another clear warm autumn day in the mountains…

Today we started by repairing some more of the clay oven with an additional render layer on the main oven door space to harden it up for rain and other adverse weather – which has been plentiful the last few weeks.

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While that was being done others moved into weeding and removing blackberry.

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The central vegetable gardens are repopulating well and crops like the salad greens, kale, garlic, broad beans, snow peas and bush peas are progressing well.

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The cut flower garden is recovering from our cleanup from last week.

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And then we moved onto cleaning up and rejuvenating the new beds that had been growing squash over this summer. The soil is starting to develop a nice structure and after a winter crop of legumes will likely be ready to grow some more adventurous and hungry crops in the spring.

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Thanks to all who came to day to help out. :)

I will be taking a break for a while from running the Sunday Sessions. Happy gardening!

That Friday Feeling

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With a classic ‘in the clouds’ day in the mountains the cold can be quite insidious, if you’re sitting still that is. If you’re out in the garden its a wonderful opportunity to put in new plants and seeds as the air is moist and you don’t have to worry about them drying out. Friday group nominated this week to begin spreading out any herbs we’re backing up at the gardens from home. Although the gardens have fine specimens of herbs in the medicinal garden, some of which are cullinary, they’re not to hand when you want them to make soup with (except Bay). So, as we pull out artichokes whose flowers have now died back leaving skinny beige sticks behind we plant to revegetate with perennial herbs to use in the kitchen: thyme, parsley, oregano marjoram and rosemary beginning today with oregano and thyme.

The first great reorganising of the twentyfirst century is taking place in the shed. This task began some time ago and we hope is nearing phase one completion by which we mean we’ll have a much better collective sense of what’s in there and where it is. Many years of faithful soupmaking and gardening have left debris, and it’s taken a while to sift through the archeology of gardeners’ groups past.

After spending much of our co-op allowance on seeds to date, having cleared away all the old bits of foodstuffs of unknown origin, Lynn went all out on soup ingredients and stocked up on the basics again. So rice, lentils, chia & quinoa are now back in stock for the hearty soups we need to make to keep gardeners glowing and growing through winter.

So today’s soup recipe is a simple one with lots of cupboard love.

Take leaves of garlic and pull perennial leeks. Chop finely and saute in local organic olive oil & herbs.
Add liberal handfuls of grains and seeds, and today we plump with barley, chia, brown and green lentils and pour in a few cupfuls of water. I ferret around and find a few oca just outside the shed door, rinse and add those too. Between us we’ve brought a sweet potatoes and potatoes for the pot and much chopping ensues before they too are thrown into the mix. Broccoli basil also feature but they’re left to put just at the last minute so they’re hot, but keep their colour and flavour. Organic black pepper and salt are the final seasonings and then it’s left to boil while we wander out to work up an appetite.
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We plant leek seeds and what the hell more leek seeds, so hopefully trays full of these lovely mild alliums will work into our soups. A small space in the soup garden cries out for china rose radishes so in they go too. I’m  in a quandry over some broadbeans which I need to plant but its a bit late in the season, so I chose places I hope are sufficiently sheltered and wont be hit too badly by frost while they’re still small and spread them around so that I’m not putting all my broadbeans in one basket. And speaking of baskets, a reminder that this weekend is Weaving with Weeds. Sunday 1-5pm with the lovely local weaver Claudia Echeverria.

 

 

 

Sunday volunteers May 19

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IMG_2871It was a bright and sparkling autumn day at the gardens today… you can feel the winter cold starting to creep in to the mountains during the day but there is still some sunshine to be had out in the open – and its warm if you stand still next to a wall… :P

Today the focus was on clearing out and cleaning up the ‘cut flower’ garden which involved removing dead and dying growth from the salvias, tree dahlias etc and a huge amount of rose over growth which was quite a savage thing to interact with. There are lots of interesting plants underneath that have been hidden during the summer like various bulbs and iris and it will hopefully be looking good again in the late winter and spring with flowers blooming.

There was some checking and watering to be done as well in the main central vegetable beds where the seeds and seedlings planted over the last few weeks are finally coming up to speed… ( ie above ground and mulch level)

Then we moved on to the northern swales area with the rounds and planted some hardy Feijoas to replace some of the sadly deceased citrus. It is a pretty harsh environment and we are looking at growing a wider range of fruit trees and bushes in that area as the combination of wind and cold has taken a severe toll on the attempts so far to plant it out. There are lots of options for cold and wind hardy fruit trees we can put in till we get a suitable protected environment built up to attempt to plant citrus out there. It has been an interesting experiment so far but costly in terms of loss of citrus. The local soil in the rounds is starting to look pretty good after just on 18 months of cultivation and preparation with lots of Lucerne and straw etc.

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Thanks to all who came today and see you next week. :)