October Working Bee

There was a great turn out to the October Working Bee, which coincided with the Garden’s AGM.

Many hands made light work, with gardeners weeding around the raspberry bush, fences, and other garden beds. Compost was spread around communal areas, and the gravel was cleaned with great finesse.

After a morning of work in the garden, the AGM was held with great success. All of the Garden’s dedicated committee members nominated themselves to continue in their positions – thank you Kay, Louise, Maggie and Ngaire!

 Gardeners enjoying morning tea during the AGM

With Spring upon us, many of the plots are now filled with tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and more.. We are looking forward to watching these babies grow!

All of the plots are looking fabulous, with newly planted Spring seedlings.

 

March Working Bee

It was a small but dedicated band of gardeners that attended the working bee. The NEPA works were barely audible!

We emptied the worm bath onto the bed in preparation for planting garlic. The worm baths are now up and running. Jeff is making a sign to indicated which baths are ready to accept food scraps and which are in rest mode – watch out for those signs!

One bed was prepared for planting onions (no sheep poo, as they like the soil pretty plain). The sunflowers were stripped of their leaves and snow peas were planted at the base.

The area between the igloo and the wicking beds was weeded and mulched, as was the area between the citrus bed and Louise, Pete and Ruby’s plot.

Wheelbarrows now float along as Jeff has pumped up all the tyres!

Jeff made a start on cleaning out and tidying the locked metal shed and will continue at the next working bee.

We also started pruning the apricot tree, on the north side of the garlic/onion bed, but it will need some further attention with a saw. Louise volunteered to continue with this later.

As usual, a delicious morning tea was had by all.

That’s it ’til next working bee, on Sunday 29th April. Grange Rd re-opens on 6th April, so there will be no need to take a cut lunch and sleeping bag to the plot anymore!

Cheers

Oriana, Jeff, Ngaire and Louise

February Working Bee

Such beautiful, sunny weather for our end of Summer working bee on Sunday 25th Feb 2018.

Plenty of weeds were removed around the apple, apricot trees and edges of the fence to be composted. Our green lawns were mowed well and the weeds and rockery around the first shed rearranged and significantly improved.

Kendra’s photos below look great! Especially of the hard work from Alan around the garden flower bed behind the kitchen shed. Thanks Kendra!

Short but effective day, and hope that sowing and planting of those Autumn flowers, shrubs and vegetables turn out fantastic.

Selena and Chris

January Working Bee

We started this working bee off early because of the heat. There was lots of weeding, mowing, whipper snipping and some carefully raked Zen patterns in the gravel!

We finished with a lovely morning tea in the shade. See you all next time!

Ruby and Jennie

December Working Bee and Christmas Celebration

A small band of members gathered at FCG for our traditional pre-Christmas working bee on December 17.

It was a lovely evening and ideal gardening weather.

Jeff and John disappeared up ladders with a variety of instruments, in an attempt to repair the wind sail which has stretched, creating a small lake every time it rains.

Unfortunately, their best endeavours came to nought – Jeff will be contacting some specialist help to get quotes to fix the wind sail professionally – quotes to be provided to committee for review.

Jeff and John then emptied the middle worm bath to check the drainage – a blockage was identified which will be removed by Jeff before we recommence the placement of vegetable scraps in the bath.

Anna, Louise and Ruby did sterling work removing half the compost from Bin A and spreading it around various communal and other areas in the garden.

Ngaire did some further weeding around the communal beds – we attempted to weed the area under the wind sail, but it is packed down hard and impossible to do by hand – Eco Oil called for.

Kay dropped in to say hello and we were also delighted to welcome Pete and delicious chocolate cake as well as De Grebner, manager of Tree Project.

A pleasant and relaxing supper was enjoyed by all to end a somewhat turbulent year for FCG in a spirit of conviviality.

November Working Bee

It wasn’t a promising start to the November working bee, as a rainy and grey morning greeted us. However the showers cleared and the rain seemed to give our gardeners a burst of energy. Our small group was very productive, achieving lots of tasks and working together as a dynamic team.

Four hazelnut trees were successfully transplanted, finding a new home along the north fence. The recent rain and warm weather had meant that some areas of the garden were rather overgrown, so lots of good weeding and whipper-snippering helped. We planted out the new communal vegie bed, and even found some space behind the hot house that was perfect for planting pumpkins.

Kay and Peter gave us an excellent walk around the garden, pointing out some of the changes that have taken place across the site. This includes a number of impressive new garden beds, which gardeners will make excellent use of.

We hope to see everyone for our twilight working bee and Christmas party, 6pm on Sunday 17 December.

Kate and Gill

September working bee

Our first Spring working bee dawned cold and very wet especially as some of our gardeners decided to make a very early start, then again it’s never too early to go to a working bee. However,  the rain abated and the cold was tempered by our trusty fire masters – Pete, Malachy and Murphy.

The jobs completed included:

• emptying of one of the compost bays and rescuing the beautiful compost that the rats must have hauled out and munched through on the outside perimeter (they did a great job of it!!)
• weeding and composting of the raspberries on the south side of the gardens (behind the Tree Project potting shed)
• clearing of a plot on the north side ready for planting
• a sortin’ and a  sweepin’ and a tidyin’ of the ‘tool shed’
• weeding and clearing of the outside south perimeter
• weeding of the north perimeter to halt the creep of the weeds
• bracing of the wicking bed that seems to have split its sides
• planting of peas and lettuce into the communal wicking beds

Whew, we did all this in about 2 hours, it was a fantastic effort.  Then it was time for the AGM and … morning tea. It was great to see so many people at the working bee, talking, working, playing, laughing, having fun and eating  a delicious morning tea – some of  the reasons why we community garden!