A round-up of the week's events!

Saturday morning was clear, hot and humid. Wandering in the garden after letting out the clamouring ladies, I suddenly espied a very yellow rhubarb plant, followed upon closer examination another one and several very pale sick looking lettuces. Consternation! What could have happened? Those readers who have followed my delight with our flourishing rhubarb plants will know how devastated I was feeling. As I wended my sad way home I mused on the causes and suddenly thought, that looks like poison. From flourishing plants the night before to this! What else could cause such disaster?

Later in the day, I went back and my eagle eye spotted some tell-tale signs of drooping castor oil plants at the back of the garden over the fence. Those who have visited realise that our little plot is precariously poised on a built-up bank of concrete as high as the roofs of the surrounding light industrial area. Suddenly it all became clear. Our industrial neighbour, tired of the burgeoning wonders had obviously hired someone to stand down below and spray upward onto the plants as they clung to the wall. Well of course that someone either didn't realise or didn't want to realise that the drift was going to affect a lot of the growing veggies in our garden. My worst fear was confirmed as during the working bee we extracted many sickly, yellow looking plants. My google search on round-up showed that we should not plant anything for seven days and that anything even remotely touched will take the poison systemically into the plant through the leaves into the roots. Everything dies! What a great chemical to have lurking around our neighbourhood, don't we love the companies who promote its wonder? Plants' demise may take overnight to three weeks so we still do not know the extent of our losses.


On a jollier note, as mentioned last week, our garden, with the help of an Ideasman erected tarpaulin, became a perfect wedding party venue. The sun shone very hotly and everyone was glad of the shade it cast, even if by the time the event started most of the shade had slid into the veggie garden itself!
We ate, we drank, we talked and ate a scrumptious cake which Ms Mova and Ms '2011 will be my year' made together and lovingly shaped into hearts.
Today it has rained, the tarp is becoming an additional catchment into a barrel. I am glad I am not camping! Mr Ideasman will sit drinking his tea, jumping up every now and then to slide a pole up or down to cascade the collected water. Remembrances of things to come! Is January going to be the wettest summer ever? Good for the garden as respite from the audacious heat but not good for dry bedding and food!

Ms Mova and Ms Tagalong are doing a presentation this week on a pictorial of the progress of the garden. Ms Tagalong can't remember who it is for but I'm sure all will be revealed. We have also been cajoled into dictating our stories for the PlaceStories project by Jenny Cameron of the University of Newcastle. We are very excited about Costa coming to launch this sometime in early December. So as we head towards the Christmas season come and celebrate with us, watch The Power of Community, drink some cocktails at the end of the month and sow some more seedlings! I must add that we are in receipt of a large rhubarb plant as a wedding present - and a bag of smaller ones to create a new and spectacular rhubarb patch!

Prestigious venue!

How we are moving up in the world. First a patch for vegetables, then a venue for a wedding party! Ms Tagalong's not son-in-law Mr Debonair has been looking for these wonderful venues for events all over the world. His favourite so far is the Community Garden. Well I think that's what he said, maybe he said continue to use it for gardening and don't get above yourselves. Hard of hearing these days! Decorations have begun. This morning Ms Tagalong spotted some calendulas placed artfully amongst the green of the bathtub plants, floating like Monet’s waterlilies. Some fairy lights would be lovely, any donations of solar lights gratefully received. What a delight they are as they softly grace the feathery fronds of ferns and outline ghostly twigs.

Cocktails in the garden, our regular monthly occurence is gaining a difference this month with the addition of showing a film. Outdoor cinema. Not a drive-in, a walk-in more like it. Even a drop-in centre perhaps! The first showing will be The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil an inspiring film with its focus on food growing. Mr Ideasman will aim to have the projector up and running by dusk, so bring a cushion and a comfy chair if you wish. Ms Tagalong has visions of an ice-cream vendor strolling down the aisles…any takers? Just don’t expect any remuneration! Maybe a mint plant…we have lots of that floating in buckets ready to be placed where it won’t overrun the rest of the garden.

We obviously have the best chickens in town. Have you ever heard of a swap meet? Perhaps this is an American phenomenon but not one we wish to introduce into the Community Garden! Our chickens are happy in their run and do not get out of the garden. They are laying well and seem none the worse for wear for trying out another chicken run. A note to those well meaning people who find chickens wandering around George Street, they belong to the house on the corner of the park. They are the sleek, darker looking ones. We do have one we would be happy to exchange. The poor bald looking one. Her apparant moulting seems to have turned into something else. Anyone got any ideas on this one? She seems happy but looks worse than a bedraggled rat in the rain.



On our away weekend we were meditating, meditating on all things garden as usual I took some photos of the vegetable garden. Nothing too out of the ordinary, mostly lettuces and varieties we seem to grow but a little more ordered than ours which is probably not a good thing as the slugs or pesties have more on the banquet table. Small groupings of similar plants is ok. Long beds or rows can be problematic. And of course companion planting can be the way to go. More on that next time. Oh and the prestigious marriage party celebration. Now... are we going to be Mr and Ms Ideasman or Mr and Ms Tagalong?? I know we will remain as our own individual identities. What a novel idea.

Let's connect with food

Ms Tagalong recently attended a Fair Share Festival. Did she take some of the abundant produce from the garden you may ask? No she didn't but she and Mr Ideasman came back with produce of another kind. She came back with some interesting ideas on Food Connect which certainly had us thinking that we should really be investigating some of the box services available here in Newcastle to supplement the veg we grow here in the garden. Beanstalk also had a representative there, so check them out and let's see if we can give them some business.

We also had the pleasure of meeting the two young lads who run Tree Frog Permaculture. Keen,enthusiastic and irrepresibly cute they are very interested in coming to our garden to offer a workshop offering up some of their knowledge to the local yokels. Expressions of interest are requested so that we may make it worth their while. They did say that they had plenty of friends who could come if we didn't have many people!! So come on uni students in the area unite, friends invite friends and let's generate a wonderful experience.

So how did everyone enjoy the rain? The tanks are filling and the tap is not leaking. Be frugal of course and let's hope for a good growing season. Look at those cucumbers grow! If you don't they might be exquisitely drawn by Ms Botanical who is carefully nurturing them.

Ms Tagalong will be otherwise engaged next weekend to be able to blog. I like the expression, very a propos, actually she will be unengaged. Ha ha!

Have a great couple of weeks and keep those chickens happy. One scruffy one is enough!

An ill wind...

Ms Tagalong didn't tag along this weekend. She missed out on a very windy 'garage sale' day and the postponement of the working bee. Apparently her absence was noted but Ms Mova said she liked it because she could take all the accolades about the garden singlehandedly. No wonder she was smirking this morning on the cycle to work! Ms Nimble Fingers had asked for no rain but she forgot to mention wind and so wind came along in huge great gusts, or gale force bursts lifting the merchandise off the tables and into people's bags. So I am not so sure that it blew no-one any good and I was not there to witness if some strange faces appeared when the direction changed!

The garden had received donations of prickly cactus of which not one sold. No succulent collectors in our suburb, then? Ebay might be the next method of raising funds for the garden.

Ms Lady with the Broom felt the absence of said artefact and managed to wield a hand mower with great eclat. There were also rumours of auditions for Pirates of the Caribbean!

So really did Ms Tagalong need to be there? It is good sometimes to feel the reins taken out of your hands and for the horse still to be galloping.

I have yet to ask whether the chickens got their legs oiled. No, I have been assured that this is not in preparation for some delicious recipe, this is for medicinal purposes to combat those pesky mites. So this is not a myth, treatment can be oiling with vaseline but oh, every two days? Keep your eyes open fellow gardeners and chicken husbanders for those nasty little bloodsuckers.

The wheel of life rolls on

My Dad didn't know much about gardening, or so my Mum claimed. I remember years ago when I was still in single figures laughing about his fixation with mulching. We all thought it was such a funny word and what did he know anyway? Well of course, it turns out, mulching is the way to go to ensure moisture is kept in and protection is gained. He was also a drastic pruner; the hacking my parents' poor lemon tree had to endure every two or three years is no-one's business.

Again, some plants really need the ruthless touch. Those of you who have noticed our kaffir lime tree on the verge will see its beautiful bronze-mauve leaves sprouting after one of our members pruned it to within an inch of its life.
I could never have the courage to do that and that is possibly why my own kaffir lime is scrawny, spindly and clinging tenaciously with some underdeveloped limes also hanging on for dear life.

It is wonderful to walk around the garden after the wet weather and see the new plants growing up in haphazard ways, taking an opportunity to sprout their carelessly cast seed. We should be able to keep all our seeds from our winter crops, radish, lettuce, spicy and mustard lettuce, rocket, coriander and broccoli. How wonderful, we just need to keep them dry and secure for next year.

Peeking out of one of the piles of horse manure was a feathery plume of asparagus I had been observing possessively. But horror of horrors today I went hot and cold when I saw it had gone! Errant chickens? Greedy locusts? Someone jumping the gun and serving one piece on toast? Ms Mova was with me, I saw her face as I said, "Oh no the asparagus has gone!" She grimaced and slowly very slowly said,"I thought it was a weed. They are not supposed to come up until next September!"

So how does asparagus grow here in Oz? Was this front runner normal? Looks like you just ignore them for a few years, just keep piling on the blood and bone, manure or seaweed and watch the fronds grow. I would like to add that there is another frond emerging, watch out for frantic weeders!

Water is filling the tanks, yeah! The taps are nearly ready for use and the blackboards and pinboard are attached and ready for notes. Blackboards and chalk, a drawer's delight, the children are relegated to drawing on the portable blackboard or of course if they have gigantic aspirations on the concrete!

The rhubarb continues to grow. I pointed the three plants out very pointedly to Ms Mova with their burgeoning leaves and stems. Rhubarb and ginger crumble grows ever nearer!
We are also the recipients of two rather dusty, shabby and possibly old broilers who are beginning to enjoy their new surroundings and scratch about in the garden.let's hope that this one soon regains a red comb!
The chickens certainly are complaining about the time change! Ms Mova and I met on her step with bedhair and sleepy eyes on Sunday morning as the ladies were complaining so loudly from their pens. "Let us out, there are only so many hours in the day for us to forage!" Lack of foraging might have caused the new girls to have scaly legs. Ms Mova reckons gentle massaging with sweet-smelling oils, well vaseline anyway, might improve this. A lovely task for the working bee!

Companion planting

We plant companionably and we plant companion plants. Now there is a mouthful for you. A recent visitor to the garden was quizzing me on the bright orange and yellow flowers putting on such a good show. Are they marigolds? Calendulas? Mmm, I'm not sure I answered but I am sure they were planted to be companions to some other plant. They might have been planted to deter some of the nasties which decide they want to eat our hard won vegetables.

So a little investigation led me to this pagewhere the flower certainly doesn't look anything like the ones in the garden. So I searched further. This site has a few more photos of different marigolds but still not one resembling the flowers in our garden.

Now move onto calendulas and see if this is what we have. Ah, the photos here look much more like what we are growing and they still have properties which control sap-sucking insect pests (such as aphids, thrips and whitefly).

I like the tips about hanging the dead flower heads to harvest more seeds for next year when I will be able to talk with much authority about the calendulas and the pests they deter.

We plough and we scatter!

Won't be around this weekend to check on the lush growing space, otherwise known as our Community Garden, so I will muse on the goings on this week. Sunday saw Mr Ideasman scrambling over the strategically placed barbed wire affectionately guarding our own Gulag as the key was missing! I think that Ms Mova had been up early and not being quite awake had left the key in the garden. As she had beetled off down to Sydney for a family birthday gathering, we resorted to carting along two ladders and up he scaled. Ms Tagalong was glad she was there to shout out warnings as the barbed prongs threatened her upcoming nuptials!

The lushness of Spring is around the corner and seedlings are asprouting as are the weeds. A cautionary tale: please look carefully at marked seedlings before plucking out the offending weeds. We all cherish our seeds we plant and like to admire their growth and then plant them out. Sometimes people remove them by mistake and that is all part of being in a community garden but those who have marked their seeds need to be applauded and noticed!

Poor Ms Mova looked long and hard for a stevia plant and now she will be looking longer and harder because although the plant marker is there in all its multicolour plastic glory, the plant isn't! Another victim of an enthusiastic weeder perhaps?

So take care those planters amongst us, use the plastic markers or write a lolly stick with the seed name or even use the seed packet and a stick. I don't think it will be necessary to stand a moonlit guard with a bent stick but....

There are a lot of toilet rolls in the potting shed. Someone has been busy! Many seedlings have been replanted in these to be able to sell on to raise money at the garage sale in October. Wonderful, biodegradable, you just plant the whole lot! So if you are looking for a job in the garden please make sure these are kept moist at all times as they will dry out pretty quickly.

Happy planting!