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Hi All

Just to let you know we now have a faccebook page. Take a look and be our friend

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.233966363311805.52767.170973256277783&saved#!/pages/Te-Atatu-Peninsula-Community-Garden/170973256277783

 

Lee

Its winter 2011 & we are still going…

 

Hi All

We havent gone away. Silke and I are still running the Te Atatu Peninsula Community Garden.  Thanks to every one who has been in contact over the last few months.

The garden is growing strong still. We have had a wonderful late summer, autumn and early winter. the Waitemamta DHB have been visiting us every other Wednesday afternoon with their Whitiki Maurea group. 

Whitiki Maurea is Waitemata District Health Board’s Maori Mental Health Service. We have been working with the  MOKO Services team. Whitiki Maurea is committed to the kaupapa of healing for Maori by weaving together Maori healing practices and Western clinical practice, thereby providing Maori Tangata Whaiora and their whanau with the best possible health outcomes.

Our goal has been to help the team help themselves and get into the garden, and grow their own veges. W have been covering all aspects of gardens from digging a new garden bed to compost, growing from seed, to harvesting their crops they worked so hard to nurture.

In the coming weeks we will be getting ready for the summer garden. We have 25 kg of seed potatoes on the way and another attempt at getting our beehive going. this time we are going to use the top bar hive method. More on that to follow…

thanks again to every one  has been in touch, our helped out in any way at the garden.

Lee Sigley

Our garden in 2010

…it’s almost too late to wish a happy new year, but now while most of you are back from your summer holiday, the TAP Community Garden wishes everybody a happy, healthy 2010.

With the end of 2009 we pulled all our lovely garlic and dried it for several weeks. On a sunny Saturday morning we headed off to the local Market day.

Soon we were surrounded by all ‘local’ sellers & buyers with heaps of questions and lots of interested about our community project.

Thanks to everybody who made the morning so successful and donated plants, veggies, time or contributed in any way.

With our little earning, we managed to buy a few pieces for our irrigation/watering system.

Thanks to the locale “Hammer Hardware” store, who gave Tony the necessary discount for all the bits and pieces.

Tony,Bev, Lee and myself designed and started digging over the past few Sundays and we are almost finished.

If you do make it down to your garden during the week, feel free to turn the tap on for a few minutes.

Our next trip to the local Saturday market will be after our honey gets harvested. We will let you know closer to the date if you wish to join us at our stall.

For now,please save all your empty jam jars and either drop them off on Sundays or leave them at the garden shed door towards the end of the week.

We can use quite a few, as our little bee-friends have been extremely busy over the past few weeks.

Looking forward to seeing you on Sunday between 11 am-1 pm.

Cheers,

Spring is here…

Well, spring is here!

We would not get far without all the effort everyone has put into the garden.

Thanks for your time, labour & donations. Apart form all the digging and planting, we have also had donations of rakes, shovels, spades, seedlings, watering cans, coffee grounds, news papers & cardboard

The banana trees, basil & tomatoes seemed to have survived the late winter frosts and the peas & beans are really starting to make head way. Our potatoes are in, and were waiting for the frist sign of shoots.

 

Over the next few weeks we will need netting to cover the strawberries (yep, we have eaten the first one & it was great!). We are also on the lookout for a compost bin. Failing that does anyone have access to flute board that we can reuse?

Is there anything any one would like to learn in particular? We could try organise something if there is enough interest in a particular subject.

We are about to get a beehive… watch this space

As usual see you at 492 Te Atatu Rd from 11 till 1 on Sundays

cheers

Lee

e. tap.communitygarden@gmail.com

m. 021 3000 67

It was wet, but we made progress

Yummy herbs

mmm… strawberries

A hardy few braved the wet, yet warm, day today to get the strawberry patch prepared and the strawberry plants in.

Silke, Roi, Rob and myself spent about an hour, digging, manuring and planting the strawberries along the side of the shed, and in the end of the first bed. We got about 30 plants in, and are now looking forward to the summer fruits.

Silke also got the herb garden started with mint, coriander & basil. Not sure the basil & coriander will make it through winter, but the price was right (yes, they were free…) so we put them in.

Seeds & seedlings

Sylvia is starting to plant seeds at home to bring to the garden in a month or so. Can anyone else help? We have quite a few containers for the seeds and a few seeds.

What we need is for everyone to grow some, so we have a good supply in the lead up to spring.

Next weekend we should have the containers at the garden for people to take home. If need be you can even take soil home to pot into. As we are still in the grip of winter, and I suspect we have a few frosts to come, starting the seeds off inside, or on the back porch would be a big help. The more seedlings we can get, the quicker we can get into the spring season.

Perhaps you know some one who isn’t the keen on digging gardens any more, but can raise some seedlings for us. Please ask around.

Get together – Wednesday 8 July 09

Like any good group we need to have a meeting. Each time I update the blog, I am sending an update email to about 20 people. It would be great to get everyone together. So…

Wednesday 8 July 09 at 7 pm at the community garden. Roi has promised to let us into the Police Station Just to go over the plan, what we want to achieve, and how we want to go about it. Please bring a plate of finger food to have with a cup of tea. I reckon we should take about an hour.

The compost bin update…

Updates on compost, not the most riveting update ever, but, thanks to Beth for dropping of a heap off coffee grounds for us to add to the compost mix. Since we started the bin it has starting doing its thing very nicely. If you have any kitchen scraps or garden waste you would like to add, feel free.

Next week.

See you all next week between 11 & 1pm at the garden.

Don’t forget to let your friends know about us, and maybe get them along.

Cheers

Lee

Our first veges are planted

 

 

(L to R) Sylvia, Max & Silke plant our first veges – leeks

we now have something to see at the garden

The team at the end of the first day. We now have a compost bin & something to talk about (photo by Silke)

Our garden is underway

A panoramic view of our garden before we started

 

Hi All

We have set up this blog so you can keep up with the goings on at the Te Atatu Peninsula community Garden.

Please bear with us as we come to grips with word press.

The Te Atatu Peninsula community Garden has been set up to encourage sharing of gardening skills and produce within our community.

We are aiming to make the garden a fun place to meet, share and learn.

Where are we?

We are located behind the Te Atatu Peninsula Community Constables station at 492 Te Atatu Rd, Waitakere city.

Whats happened so far?

Well…

Last Sunday (14 Jun 09) we cleaned up part of the back yard and made a good sized compost pile. Sounds a little boring, but it had to be done.

We used the pile of lawn clippings left by the lawn mower guy, wood shavings supplied by Brooke and other garden waste by Sylvia. The “bin” was made using stacked up bamboo we chopped down from the bamboo forest we have in the corner of the section.

Today (21 Jun 09) we dug the first garden bed, and planted our first veges… Leeks. From humble beginnings…

Of course we would all like nice raised beds with lovely edging, but as we have no money, we just turned over the grass, and planted straight into the amazing soil we have here on the Peninsula.

Whats next…

We have kindly been given the use of a chunk of land at the back of the Police station, so the plan is to make another eight beds over the coming months.

During the first week of July we will be meeting in the Community Police Station. Some of the items for discussion are:

1. Let every one know what the plan is for the garden
2. Get some feed back from the community as to what they want.
3. Figure out what our priorities are.
4. See what options we have for funding (if we want to go down that path)

Notices for the meeting will be sent out next week.

Please let your friends know about the garden, any help would be appreciated.

Thankyous

Thanks to our Community Constable Fagaesea Siaki for the access to his back yard. Roi Stephens for talking Faga into it (and bringing her son to help on the first day), Brooke from Eco Matters for the support, and the other start up members of the team, Sylvia Shopland, Silke Sigley & Max Sigley.

Cheers

Lee Sigley

tap.communitygarden@gmail.com