Community Garden News

Community Garden News

Introducing our Global Gardeners

We have welcomed our  2019 cohort of students into the garden space, and symbolically into the worldwide gardening community with a flower lei greeting. Many cultures use flowers as a greeting, as personal adornment and as spiritual offerings not just as food or garnish for a plate.

SunSmart

Continuing the global theme, we’ve had a parade of SunSmart hats used by gardeners from various countries. All share similar solutions to the problem of sunburn by featuring wide brims, natural fibres that breathe and high crowns for ventilation.

Students have revisited the “slip, slop, slap, seek and slide” Anti Cancer Council message with a  discussion on how we could use a shade cloth cover to protect our sun blistered tomatoes in the garden.

The second fortnight we harvested our coriander seeds to be used in our nut free dukkah recipe. We discussed that Dukkah means "to pound" as not everyone has electricity to make food. It is eaten from Egypt right throughout  the Middle East and Persia where growing food is even more difficult due to harsh hot climate than Australia. We also made sunsmart drought tolerant seed balls with our harvested coriander seeds from clay and compost. This is a valuable seed planting method for planting in arid situations and for a climate change future.

The third fortnight we harvested produce, mountains of tomatoes mostly and looked at how different cultures use different food buddies eg Italians match tomatoes with basil and Turkey might use a variation of our dukkah. We also noted how important seeds like our pumpkin and sunflower are important in vegetarian cuisine.

Last week we utilised the talents of the 5/6 grades to commence our garden arch welcome walkway into the garden with our recycled baths. a great legacy project for them to view as their contribution to the garden master plan.