Look out for talks by resident community gardeners, who will be sharing everyday tips and tricks for low impact gardening in this bumper day of sustainability goodness. See you there! 
Footlight Festival this Saturday
Reply
Category Archives: Workshops
1st May is Permaculture Day
words by Kat, photos from this Friday’s working bee by Franklin
The Community Garden at Harold Hodgson reserve is not one but many gardens; an aboriginal garden, flower garden, soup garden, dappled heritage apple walk, the medieval garden, labyrinth and performance space as well as a dedicated childrens’ play area. A protected swamp, creek and bush areas undergoing regeneration complete the picture in this much loved public space. In 1993 the first brambles were cleared, and the first trees planted. All year round our volunteers and partner organisations work together to keep these delightful gardens open to the public, and today we’d like to share just a few of its secrets with you. Come along share some soup, and find your favorite garden.
11am – 12am Walking tour of the Gardenswith founding member Supapon Lantay and special guest gardeners.
12 – 2pm Seasonal Soup and Sourdough, made with ingredients fresh from the garden and local producers. Twitter with friends around our Outdoor cob oven.
12 – 4pm – Community Exchange Trading Day The Blue Mountains Organic Community Gardens is delighted to host this community trading initiative. Get started trading locally without traditional money, share your talents and see what skills your neighbours have to offer in exchange. Whether you can change a tyre, fix a kettle, knit a jumper, grow glorious herbs or have a surplus of gourmet duck eggs, bring your skills or produce along. Its totally free to join.
2pm – 3pm Walking Tour of the Gardens with gardens founder Supapon Lantay and special guest gardeners.
3pm – Composting Q & A with ‘a Sense of Humus’- Don’t know the difference between a tumbler and an aerobin? Come down to the gardens and get yourself informed about a range of composting techniques. From thermophilic to lazy composting and worm bins, we’ve got it all covered. Local composting experts show you how to transform your smelly bin into an earthy delight!
Entry by $5 or EMUs donation (so we can buy some more fruits nuts and perennials to grow our food forest)
All day, every day is Pot Swappin’ Bring your old plant pots for Pot Swappin’ in the shed. The community gardens recycles all your old garden flower pots and keeps them busy growing more plants. Don’t just throw them away, give yours a wash and bring them along, and get some more when you need some again. Whether you’re potting up, potting on or just a bit potty…
You don’t need to look far to find a vibrant sustainable lifestyle, its out there in the back yard. Permaculture and sustainability strategies are all over the country on May 1st.
If you’re nowhere near Katoomba on May 1st, find your nearest event at http://www.permacultureday.info
Creeks Need Our Care: Free Workshop
Friday 12th November, 2010.Creek Restoration and Managing the Flow of Water through Creeks.
This has been a year of high rainfall; you may have seen that the heavy amount ofrain moved boulders and eroded land and creeks in the Blue Mountains.
Join us for a workshop on how to restore creek lines and how to deal with flows ofwater across your property. Learn techniques to:
- Slow down the water
- Minimise erosion
- Increase biodiversity in and around the creek.
When: Friday 12th November, 10am – 1 pm, optional activity afterwards
Cost: Its FREE: a community education program by Blue Mountains City Council
Lunch: Community Gardens Soup
RSVP: Sign up by Wed. 10th Nov. to Jasmine/Michelle 4780 5788 or mhenry@bmcc.nsw.gov.au
The Community Gardens/Harold Hodgson Reserve is a great site to demonstrate changes with a small creek running through the site and various uses of land. The workshop leader is Eric Mahony from Blue Mountains City Council – BushlandManagement Officer and Trish Kidd -Bush Backyards Officer. The team from Bushdoctors Bush Regeneration will demonstrate techniques to stabilise creeks beds.
Participants are invited to help with planting along the creek from 1 pm onwards.
Bay Away
Bay Tree Project update - Finally A trip to Lawson presents itself, a chance to give a little of this garden to the budding Mid Mountains Community Garden. A further fig branch travels from Mt Tomah’s Cloud Farm, and Gwen kindly accepts this tiny Bay tree on behalf of community gardeners at Kilaha, Queen St. where our friends at the fruit and nut tree workshop today shared their tips on citrus growing across the Mountain region. Read more about this group here.
If you grow orange, lemon, cumquat, or even white sapote* trees and want to hook up with other growers, or to learn more about growing citrus, look out for fruit and nut tree updates here, and at the fruit and nut tree network
More fruit tree action to come when Sue’s enormous order of scions arrive next month. We’ll be running a grafting workshop when they do.
*according to Frank this is related to citrus, the seed being like a very large citrus seed.
Testing the water
I'm here to test the water
Some jobs are about direct gardening, and some about measuring the fruits of our various labours, in this case the water quality of our adjoining creek. Susan and Michael looked after the practical work today, while Fred and I donned our surgical gloves and got analysing a sample of our stream water. It took a full hour to complete the streamwatch tests. Here’s Dr Fred, gathering today’s sample. The area we’re sampling is downstream from our work on the creek and also downstream of our veggie growing activities. So its a great place to find out if, on balance, we’re promoting the health of our little section of waterway.
…………………………………………………..……oooOOOOOOOooo…………………………………………………..
.
Here are today’s results
Fred gathering the water sample
Temperature: 7.5 C (cold)
Turbidity: 10 NTU (clear)
pH (potential Hydrogen) : 6 (very slightly acidic)
Electrical Conductivity (tests salts) : 110 µS/cm (not very salty)
Available Phosphate: 0.03 mg/L (I think that’s quite low)
dissolved oxygen (DO) mg/L: 6.4
dissolved oxygen (DO) % saturation: about 56%
Don’t know what some of those things are?
Here ‘s more information about some of the less commonly used units of measure.
mg/L = milligrams per Litre – there are a thousand milligrams in a gram
µS/cm = microSiemens per centimeter – a microSiemen is the unit measure of electrical conductivity
So for all those who rocked for a social at lunchtime, this is what we were peering at.
There are many groups across the region, so if you’d like to know more about the work of Streamwatch in your area, check out their website. See you next Friday.
