Seedy Sunday Workshop

Our final gathering for 2012 is Sunday, 2nd December and you're welcome to come join in some seed sharing, plant swapping, seed processing and saving activities. Join in the FREE Workshop which teaches you skills relating to propagating edible plants - this varies with the season and seed/plant material available at the time so it's always changing and something new to learn!

Blowing chaff from seeds to clean them before storage

Last month we had lots of eager visitors and regulars getting involved in processing seeds, swapping plant material and taking home goodies for their garden.

We shared what was happening locally in everyone's gardens - an enlightening experience and it was clear the extended dry period is causing water problems for many locals. With water tanks running low or dry, we talked about the benefits of micro gardening in pots and container gardens as they require far less moisture and effort to maintain and are a perfect solution for warm dry seasons. 

A huge range of food crops grow well in container gardens

With the warmer weather, pests are making their appearance in many vegetable patches including bush turkeys, grasshoppers and caterpillars. We discussed some of the organic solutions we can use when these visitors turn up to ensure we get our fair share of the crop.

With so many people now interested in saving seeds from their garden, we will have more to process next meeting so whether you have some or not, please come along and enjoy the skills we learn and information we share about growing a wide variety of food crops in our local climate and soils.

We also have lots of packets of seeds processed from last month that need labelling.

What to Bring on the Day

To help with seed processing, it would be greatly appreciated if you could please bring:

• a funnel (or make your own from a clean plastic drink bottle) - these are handy to tip clean seeds into the tiny packets for storage.

• any spare shallow trays or plates (this enables us to sort and blow off chaff)

• sieves & strainers (kitchen sieves of any size are useful to remove chaff from seeds)

Metal or plastic strainers/sieves and shallow oven or kitchen trays are useful processing tools.

• teaspoons (for measuring into bags)

• artist's or pastry brushes (for brushing away fine chaff from seed)  

Flat plastic plates and pastry brushes are always useful

The more of these materials we have, the more people can get involved in seed processing.

Plant & Seed Swap/Share 

• Any seeds, cuttings, plant material or excess produce from your garden you would like to share. A pair of scissors and secateurs are also handy tools for taking extra cuttings on the day.

 

Snip cuttings fresh if possible and bring some extra newspaper to wrap around them to keep them from drying out

• A plant you know how to grow or cook - we'd love to hear your experiences. This helps build the group knowledge-bank. 

Aloe vera plants - a great medicinal herb for the garden

We'll all go home with fresh seeds and plant material and as usual will be distributing free seeds from the Seed Bank so BRING A BAG to take your goodies home!

Sweethearts Cafe offer us a large space to meet for free (saving us a hall hire fee) but as a business are in effect hiring out that area to us for a couple of hours. So as a courtesy please remember to at the very least order a tea/coffee or a meal, to support the cafe. Thank you!

See you soon.
by Anne Gibson