Diamond Harbour

Local Food Group 

The Local Food Production group was set up to provide advice and assistance to anyone in the local community who needs help with growing their own vegetables or even starting a kitchen garden from scratch.

Sourcing local knowledge and mentoring

We would like to provide encouragement for those people not quite sure of how to go about choosing a site and then preparing and planting a herb or vegetable garden.

Helping out with the school garden is something we agreed would be useful and fun.

Soup night in the hall

The Soup, Bread and Crumble evening in the hall on Friday July 24 was a great success.  Around 30 or 40 people turned up to share a delicious selection of soup, bread and crumble.

This was followed by two excellent and informative talks by two very experienced gardeners, Jacques Geerts and Glenda Cheeseborough.

A New Kitchen Garden

A Waipapa Ave family responded to the invitationfrom the Transition Harbour Food Group and called in our help to get them started on a new vegetable garden.

With five children, and limited time, Katie thought it best to have the kitchen garden close by the house. Half an hour was spent in the planning, and a couple of hours later the new garden was prepared and ready for planting in August.

Ben and Katie, along with Franziska and Karen from the Food Group, worked together and were joined at the end by the enthusiastic children to lay the mulch and pea straw. A very pleasant Saturday morning it was too.

We gave Katie a list of things to do when creating other new plots and promised to come back to see how they are progressing. She said it has really motivated her and she can see what needs to be done now.

If anyone else would like the experienced Food Group members to come and talk with them about starting to grow food, please get in touch with us: Joy 329 4119, Franziska 329 4892, Karen 329 3006, or Annie 329 4779.

Inspiring New and Old Gardeners Alike

Helping the Under 20s Trust

On the last Saturday in October we organised a garden crawl and invited both newbie and experienced gardeners to visit some exemplary local gardens to see vegetable gardening in action and pick up some great tips from old hands with green thumbs.

We began at noon with a shared picnic lunch at the Community Gardens in Purau, then went on to visit the inspiring gardens of Karen Colyer and Joy and Colin McLeod in Waipapa Ave and finished up at the amazing veggie garden of Jacques Geets (right).  We began by viewing the impressive compost production system, which Jacques assured us is the key to successful organic vegetable production.