Community Nursery News April 2025
The Community Nursery will be running on self-guided activities for some of April/May including this Friday. We will be closed for Good Friday (18 April), Anzac Day (25 April). On other Fridays jobs will be mainly weeding, seed collecting and cleaning, track clearing, Education Centre cleaning. We wont be doing any potting up into PB3’s for the rest of the season. Rationale below.
As the season progresses into Autumn and Winter we will be doing less work in the Nursery. People are planting out their natives in Autumn and the Nursery beds are emptying. Potting jobs are targeted at preparing plants for sitting outside over winter, only potting into small pots ready for their re-potting in spring. Weeds, thankfully slow down their growth but weeding still required and watering is no longer necessary. We are still in the middle of seed collecting and cleaning and will sow all our seeds in June. They will sit out over winter, getting the “cold chilling” or stratifying that books tell us we should do by putting seeds in the fridge. It has generally not been a good seed collecting year with a scarcity of many of the usually reliable seed species. We will also do some cuttings workshops for those who wish to learn or re-learn this technique for propagating plants. We also hope the new pond will be created in this period, before the water table rises again. And so a new project will begin for us.
In the veggie garden the produce has been good this year with very successful onions, zucchini, peas, beans, tomatoes, carrots, celery, chillies, cucumbers. Garlic was a flop for me and brassicas, leeks, beetroot and potatoes a lesser crop than previous years. I did think my giant onions would look good at the Riverton Harvest Festival last weekend but seeing the huge produce table (including Joans massive crops – see pic below) I am pleased I didn’t take mine!!
We have a large variety of apples, mainly heritage varieties, and each year is different. Although not the best year, this year, due to less water availability, the birds were a much bigger problem than previous years and we had to pick many apples earlier than we would have liked. However, friends also picked our cider apples and other apples for juicing and cider vinegar making. There are more to be picked if anyone wants some as we have picked our fill of them.
If you have borrowed books from our Library, please return them so others can enjoy them.
Just a heads up our last day of the season will be 27th June 2025 and we will draw the Jo Ogier Print raffle on that day (there are still tickets left). Then we will be closed for winter.
Posted: 1 April 2025