Forest Gardens, Kombucha and Setting up A Community Nursery
On 3 July 2020, Geoff lead a “Forest Gardens” workshop where we stared in the apple orchard and worked our way back past the fruit bushes and nut trees discussing the merits of different systems. From apple pruning or not, shade tolerant vegetables, perennial vegetables and fruit bushes. Back at the Nature Centre Eleanor gave information about making kombucha – she brought along a live “scoby” and some delicious kombucha drinks for us to try. See the Kombucha information sheet.
On Friday 10 July Chris lead a session on setting up a Community Nursery – with people from Lumsden, Bluff, Pahia, Invercargill and Otatara. Over the years the Southland Community Nursery (SCN) has welcomed the chance to pass on the knowledge of growing native plants and quite a number of local community nurseries have been set up to serve the projects in their local communities. Passing on knowledge is a way of ensuring the SCN project keeps going strongly into the future. We started in the Nature Centre where Chris explained the “first get to know your local native plants” – with references to – “SCN Plant ID resources”, “Ecosourcing”, “Using reference sites”. Then outside to the “structures” part – linking the essential structures (standing areas, water, plant frames, potting shed) with the nice to have – e.g shadehouse, raised beds. We didn’t have the luxury of building everything at once so had to prioritise and build as resources allowed. A trip to the pond to look at plant tolerances to water table completed the morning. It was great to share knowledge and hopefully see more Community Nurseries springing up as a result.
Chris
Posted: 15 July 2020