November Valley Voice - it's all go!

Kia ora koutou Aro gardeners,

we had a great working bee this week, as we finally found time to get back to the secret garden. We have been so busy up at the orchard dealing with our rubbish issues, planting natives and getting the compost sorted that our special secret garden was somewhat neglected -much to the delight of the weeds and broadbeans (which are probably almost 2m tall!).

However once we cleared away the nasturtiums and bolting brassicas it was reassuring to find

that all those perennials we planted three years ago now are thriving. The grape vines are crawling along their wires and the espaliered apples are covered in baby fruits (which we had to pull off to help them grow up strong). Our 'crop guardian' strategy (in which different members of the group take responsibility for raising seedlings of different crops) is now coming into full effect as healthy looking patches of tomatoes, yellow pole beans, kamokamo, sunflowers, peas and other spring/summer plants are appearing throughout the three gardens. As we no longer have the safety net of our Fiskars grant to fall back on we have to be a little more self/community reliant in the way we source our seedlings, and while this can mean a little more work for us, it is helping out group to develop better communication and cooperation- which is what community gardening is all about!

Up at the orchard we are thrilled to find that the monster rubbish pile has not returned, as people appear to be respecting the changes we have made and effort we are putting in. However, a few rogue items like office chairs are still popping up in there so we can't rest on our laurels just yet. A big thank you to everyone who has been helping to keep an eye on the gardens for us and spreading the word in the community about what we are trying to achieve with the Kai o te Aro project.

Its come to our attention recently that we can be a little over dependent on email and social

networking for our communications, which means we can lose people who prefer not to use

computers. Over the next little while we will be doing some work to ensure we can be reached in other ways and that our community continues to grow offline as well as online.

It is time of change, in the garden and in society. Regardless of what happens at the upcoming

election we'll keep doing our best to grow kai and grow community in Aro Valley and while we

are apolitical as a group, one thing we will say is - whoever we vote for at the election, lets vote for strong communities :)

Happy gardening everyone

Charles

Ps- as always you can email us at arogardener@gmail.com, or find us outside the Aro Valley

Community Center at 10am on the first and third sundays of the month.

October Valley Voice - Spring is warming the earth!

Kia ora Aro Valley,

Spring is definitely here and the earth is warming up. I am loving watching the tui feeding from the kowhai flowers outside my window, and the bumble bees enjoying my fresias and bean flowers. The three gardens are really livening up, and there are even blossom on the fruit trees in The Orchard (see the picture for our "Black Boy Plum" blossom).

We just can't keep up eating the over-abundance of lettuce, herbs and other greens in The Secret Garden and The Steps. You can see a small selection of the harvest from this last weekend at The Orchard, a red radish, some delicious fresh peas and one of the potatoes we accidentally uncovered.

This is a really exciting time of year for the gardens; we get to plant all the things we want to eat over the next few months and it is getting warm enough to see things grow quickly (vegetables especially, but also the weeds!). If you love a particular vegetable or plant and would like to see it growing in our gardens, why not join in? You could be the latest crop guardian for anything of your fancy, from courgette and aubergine, to blueberries and sugarsnap peas.

We are incredibly grateful for Victoria University putting in a storage space for our buckets and things at The Orchard site. We've also planted some natives in the area that used to attract all sorts of broken furniture and rubbish - and we're optimistic that this area will now be rubbish-free. Thanks guys!

We'll also be putting in new raised beds at The Orchard, so if you have any old materials lying around that could make good boarders, please do get in touch. Bricks, rocks and timber are all welcome.

If you'd like to join in or give it a go, you can just show up to one of our working bees. We meet on the first and third Sunday of the month at 10am outside the Aro Valley Community Centre at 48 Aro St. For questions or to jump on our email list, email us at arogardener@gmail.com

Here's to daffodils, fruit blossoms and long evenings in the sun.

Lillian.

September Valley Voice: Thank you, mulch appreciated!

Kia ora e hoa mā,

It’s been so great to see our community compost bins at 'the orchard' (225 Aro St) filling up over the past few weeks. We really appreciate the people who are bringing their food scraps

down and covering them so nicely with mulch—our fruit trees will appreciate it too in a few months.

At our last working bee we put together a little sign to let people know that they could use the bins, and how we prefer them to be used...not that we're control freaks, we just want to

make sure we make food for the noke (worms) rather than the kiore (rats). If you're unsure about what goes in the bins, check out the sign, and if you're still unsure, flick us an email.

Regarding our fruit trees, you might notice that they've recently been pruned and staked. It’s really important to start a good pruning routine with trees early on, as it’s hard to re-

shape them once they get big, and the distribution of branches has a direct impact on the fruit yields. We are by no means experts on fruit trees, but are certainly enjoying learning. If you

however are an expert, we'd love to hear from you and pick your brains...we promise to share our peaches with you :)

While in general things are going great in the orchard, we are still facing an old challenge—rubbish!! A constant pile of household refuse (old TVs, beds, broken junk etc) miraculously replenishes itself each time we clean it up. This is a real burden to us as it not only takes up valuable gardening time, it makes our garden look shabby and potentially unsafe and toxic. We're working on a solution, closing off underneath the stairs and planting out the dumping zones, but we would love your help with this. If you ever see people dumping rubbish in the orchard, please go and tell them that it is not OK. Not only is it illegal, but it is holding back a project that is there to benefit our whole community. Once this issue is resolved the orchard will really take off. We'd love to get more fruit trees in there, more natives and more raised beds.

On the note of raised beds, we are definitely on the lookout for suitable materials to build them from, so please let us know if you have spare: bricks, timber, concrete scraps, pipes, rocks...or anything else you think might be useful. Please let us know about it first rather than dropping it off though...just to make sure someone doesn't think you're dumping rubbish and tell you off!

Happy gardening everyone, until next time.

Charles,

Kai o te Aro

August Valley Voice - crop guardians and new community compost bins

Kia ora Aro Valley!

Hope you've all been seeing our beautiful posters around the valley, with a spade, a fruit tree and tui. We're excited to have them. At each of our three gardens, The Orchard, The Steps and The Secret Garden, you'll see a sign up too so you can tell that they're Kai o Te Aro Community Gardens (not other amazing private veggie gardens!).

Do you need somewhere to put your food scraps or compost? We now have a community compost bin at The Orchard, and we would love ongoing veggie scraps and dead leaves. Please email us at arogardener@gmail.com and we can give you the details and let you get composting as you wish. The compost will be highly valued to build up our veggie beds and to feed our fruit trees.

At our last potluck planning meeting, we discussed having crop guardians, whereby different people may take a special interest or guardian role over a particular vegetable or plant. Their task will be to note things like what time of year seeds should be sown and seedlings should be planted and what other plants make good companions (hopefully supporting growth and reducing pests). We can then all share this knowledge with the group. My crops are jerusalem artichokes (something I've never grown but am looking forward to eating!) and silverbeet (perhaps not the most popular, but a veggie I love). Anyone keen to join in and be a crop guardian? Join us at our working bees or emailarogardener@gmail.com to get on our mailing list for our monthly potluck planning meeting.

While it's definitely winter and the weeds aren't growing so fast, we're keeping on going with our fortnightly working bees to keep our garden beds in good shape, prepare them with compost, and looking after green manure crops (such as lupins, peas and beans). There's even great things to harvest and, amazingly, we still have an abundance of coriander and other tasty herbs.

If you'd like to join in or give it a go, you can just show up to one of our working bees. We meet on the first and third Sunday of the month at 10am outside the Aro Valley Community Centre at 48 Aro St. For questions or to jump on our email list, email us at arogardener@gmail.com

Cheers, and here's to crisp cold days outside and warm nights by the fire!

Lillian.

June Valley Voice - our vision and Lillian's perspective

Kia ora Aro Valley,

Winter's arrived (my mum

blames my birthday for the

arrival of winter every year!). We've planted broadbeans and lupins to feed our soil, pruned

the fruit trees so they'll prosper next spring, and we've harvested

lots of cauliflowers and

coriander.

In our potluck before last, we had a visioning session which

was inspiring for the group and led us to ask, what do we like about the Kai o Te Aro community gardens? Why are

we each involved? And what's our vision for the future?

So I thought I would share with you my very own personal perspective on why Kai o Te Aro (and community gardens in general) are so phenomenal.

I grew up in Auckland and my parents have always grown fruit trees, but we only ever had a short stint with vegetables when I was young. The taste of my first home-grown fresh peas direct from the garden still lingers in my memory. After leaving home, I travelled and was blessed to WWOOF on a few farms in France and Argentina, for a few weeks each (that is, "Willing Workers on Organic Farms"). I was amazed at how easy and fulfil

ling it was to grow my own food and eat each meal according the seasons and whatever was growing in the backyard (I also learnt to milk goats but that's another story!). Coming back to New Zealand, I wanted to make sure that this new-found love of growing food became part of my everyday life.

So I made veggie plots in my back garden. But being a renter meant that I was moving flats often, leaving behind pumpkins that would be ready in a month, green tomatoes and soil I'd carefully composted. Community gardens were the answer!

Kai o te Aro sprung up three years ago and I heard how it was going through a few friends of friends. So I braved it one Sunday, and joined in at a working bee. What I found was an easy going bunch of people, lots of laughter and people all learning from each other. If I don't know if a little sprout is a weed or a vegetable, I ask and someone will know. If someone has a great idea, we all listen, chip in and run with it. We're a collaborative group that is non-hierarchical which is pretty amazing to see in action.

And aside from the pure joy of watching food grow on trees and appear out of the ground,

we garden organic so I know there's no nasties when I eat it. Eating local food means not eating so much oil - no transport over roads or across oceans. I haven't done the sums, but it feels good to know I'm part of something that is a tiny wee baby step towards reducing climate change.

Anyway, I'm sure there's more or different things others in the group would say, but that's my personal story of why I keep coming back each month or fortnight to the working bees and potluck planning meetings (did I mention that there are some incredible cooks in the group...?).

We welcome new gardeners and passionate Aro Valleyites to join in our monthly w

orking bees. We meet at 10am outside the Aro Valley Community Centre, 48 Aro St, on the first and third Sunday of the month. Just show up to join in! To get on our contact list or find out more about this project please email us at arogardener@gmail.com. You can also find us on our ooooby page www.ooooby.ning.com/group/kai_o_te_aro

Have a good one,

Lillian.

PS. Here's a before and after shot of The Orchard after a recent working bee (and I'm holding a proud potato!)

March Valley Voice - compost welcome!!

Got compost but nowhere to put it? Or perhaps you want to help feed our worms?

We're looking for more compostable materials for our compost bins and food for our worms that live in the bath at the secret garden. All our compost will be used in our garden sites, and the truth is, we just can't get enough. If you have food scraps (not meat), coffee grinds, tea bags or grass clippings that you would like to donate, please get in touch with us by emailingarogardener@gmail.com or phoning 3846998. We welcome other materials, seeds or seedlings - please get in touch with us if you've got something you think we might want.

Of course you could also join us as a gardener - everyone is welcome to come along to our monthly working bees to check it out. You don't need to have any gardening skills, just a bit of enthusiasm, a good laugh and willingness to get your hands dirty. We learn skills from each other every time we garden. Working bees happen on the third Sunday of every month, meeting at midday outside the Aro Valley Community Centre in Aro Park. Just show up on the day to join in.

We're stoked about the progress of all our sites - a bit of sunshine and some decent rain does wonders for all things edible. The steps garden has sunflowers that look onto Aro Street, and I have never before seen so many pumpkin plants. Perhaps our next potluck meeting will be filled with pumpkin pie, roast pumpkin, soup, stuffed pumpkins... (contact us to find out when the next potluck planning meeting is!). We've also been enjoying the harvest of sweetcorn, beans, tomatoes and a variety greens.

The orchard continues and is now definitely looking like a garden. Our fruit trees seem to be doing well in their first six months and some of us are already looking forward to next summer for when there might be fruit! We'd like to see this site being respected as a garden - if you know anyone that is leaving their old desks, mattresses or other unwanted furniture on the site, please kindly ask them to donate it to the Sallies as we don't really need any outdoor office furniture or beds (particularly not when it starts rotting).

The secret garden is just amazing as usual, and the self-seeded plants and herbs just keep on going. We've got fresh delicious coriander coming out our ears, as well as an abundance of silverbeet, kale, lettuce and other veg.

That's all for now! We look forward to seeing you in the coming months.

Nga mihi nui, look after yourself,

Lillian.