Community garden

 And we are off again...........

It feels so good to be gardening together again after a bit of a break. The tunnel house is once again full. These are our first lot of winter seedlings (evicted from the tunnel house as it is full!) hardening off before planting and distributing around the community next week.

Some of these seedlings we have grown from seed saved from some of the first plants we grew at the start of our community gardening.

  

Diversity

My new (only had for three years) pumpkins. I love this butternut as it is so quick to peel and cut because the whole long end has no seeds. They also store well and look really funky.

Over the last few years I have been trialing some new varieties of pumpkins (more variety in the seed bank). To keep seed true to type this has meant developing more isolation gardens (more work).

I love the new varieties so am looking to find some people to help with all of the mahi so our seed bank has a little more diversity.

Lettuce flowers

Lettuce flowers with a Blue butterfly pollinator.

The whole ecosystem benefits from plants going to seed (if it is not an noxious weed).
Flowers for pollinators, seed for next year, soil shaded and fed by living plants for longer, higher proportions of carbon for compost and as the leaves can die back an opportunity to plant your next crop as an understory.

Kibbler

This grinder saves me so much time.

It kibbles my chicken food, and grinds up charcoal for bio-char and pigments for paints and plasters.

This dry clay is being ground for seed balls.

Broad sowing

This bucket of potential is going to be broad sown in a paddock I am working on at the moment. 

It is full of winter legumes, mustard, wheat and some flowers that may take.

In the spring I will sprinkle another mix before pulsing the sheep through the paddock.

Rainy day seed sort out

A rainy day is the perfect opportunity for a seed sort.

All of the old ones from the seed drawers will be fed to the chickens and replaced by new -which have been hanging above the fire finishing their drying.

This years labels are blue so it will be easier to see at a glance how old they are.

Beans

My four new types of beans -thanks to Setha's seeds.

These guys are dried threshed and ready to be stored for winter stews and soups.