Geraniums and lavender … spring is here!

Did you know we have a compost hub at ACC? It is not huge - just two bins - but they are available for our community to contribute to (if you don’t have your own system at home etc.).

Clare manages them on a Friday … and with a little love (and weekly turning) they are amazingly productive.

We have a collection of neighbours and friends who contribute their kitchen scraps regularly which is just lovely … and we use the compost generated to keep our community garden beds healthy … so we can grow food to share! Like our little seeds that have just been planted and will hopefully pop through the soil any day now.

We’ve got our beans (perhaps a little late because of the tomatoes that had a second run …) and our leafy green pak choy and some marigolds grown from seed in the garden and they’re doing their thing slowly … and on Friday Theresa worked on potting up some cuttings from Clare’s garden … salvias and other flowers 🌺 to bring some pops of colour to our fenceline and garden.

And then after morning tea Corrado and Max kindly stuck around and we started up the (previously checked and safe) donated chainsaw (what a generous neighbourhood we live in) for a heavy duty (and hard work) pruning process - the fruit trees 🌳 on the eastern fence … (we all needed to head home for a nap afterwards!). They’ve now had part one of their two part planned haircut … we’ve tackled the width, next time we’ll lop off the top … to make sure we can reach the fruit 🍎 they produce. It’s just amazing how much they grow each year!

Also … did you see our compost on Instagram last week? It’s teeming with life. Thanks neighbours who contribute scraps … it really is looking amazing!

If you are interested in gardening and chatting to nice people and contributing to our neighbourhood come along from 10am on Fridays. We’re back after the school holidays!

This week we had a donation of apples 🍏 picked straight from the tree delivered to us.

We’ll be using them to make some preserves and to do some community cooking and we also ate some at Morning Tea in the Garden on Friday … and sent some home with those that came along - everyone was very appreciative!

And … any spares will be sent over the the ASRC.

Thanks so much Bella for thinking of us and dropping them in!

If you ever have excess fruit and veggies 🥦 🥕 in your home garden (or on your rural property like Bella) we’re always very pleased to find a use for them - whether that be here - we use them for preserves, weekly morning tea or food relief, or at the ASRC - the donations we send their way go into their fresh food program.

Just give us a call or drop in when we are open!

On Thursday Darebin Council delivered some free compost to us. We used as much as we could on Friday but have about 1 cubic metre left. We’re hoping some friends in the neighbourhood come along and take the rest home … if you are keen please pop past with your spade and barrow or bag … we’ve put out a sign to let people know.

The compost is made from our green bins … so it’s extra nice to be thinking that it is the second life of what we have all thrown out!