Tuesday, September 6, 2011

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

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