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.