It was a pleasure to welcome the girls, leaders and parents from the Rochedale Girl Guides on 8th September 2013.

The weather was sunny and coupled with a sunny feeling amongst us all the afternoon proved to be a winner. The girls were led on guided tour of the garden. It was great to experience the responses from the girls and I would reckon that there may have been a future horticulturist or two in the group.

The afternoon tea provided by the members of Rochedale Community Garden was well received by the girls. The afternoon was rounded off with the girl guides bringing their own supplies to build a scarecrow as a lasting memory of their visit. Baden-Powell would have acknowledged, I am sure, that the Rochedale Girl Guides came with his words resonating – BE PREPARED!!!  as they built the scarecrow!!

To maintain a productive garden it is important to have pollinators present. Pollinators are many and varied including birds, butterflies and most importantly – Bees!!! Bees are many and varied including the European bee which is probably the most common. However there are many other varieties and it was interesting to have a workshop conducted at our community garden on 28th July by Len Kann, a passionate Native bee keeper.

Len’s passion was ignited when he worked as a plumber for the Brisbane City Council and encountered native bee hives in water meter boxes. He quickly became the council’s go-to person for bee enquiries!

During the workshop participants looked at the species of colonising native bees that are found around the Brisbane area along with some of the solitary species.

Rochedale Community Garden has its own hive of Tetragonula Carbonaria bees and participants had the opportunity to view the hive structure and see how the bee separate the honey and pollen store from the brood. The participants all completed the workshop and left with sweet tastes in their mouths by sampling 10 different varieties of native bee (sugar bag) honey with all their different varieties!!!

Enjoy your garden and BEE HAPPY!!!

At this time of the year the garden is saying to you “Please organise your autumn garden, now, if you want superb winter vegies!!” The members at Rochedale Community Garden listened to that advice and commenced organising the garden about 6 weeks ago in early April. The garden is now exploding with produce as well as colour!! The first crop of lettuce has been fantastic and the tomato bushes are loaded with an abundant crop!!

Producing explosive crops is all about POSITION, POSITION, POSITION and PREPARATION, PREPARATION, PREPARATION!! The gardens at Rochedale Community Garden receive full sunlight and are watered on a regular basis by our enthusiastic members. When it comes to preparation Rochedale Community Garden has its own dedicated compost area and this rich compost is dug in to the soil along with other soil nutrients to prepare the gardens well for the plantings.

It is anticipated that the gardens will continue to explode over the coming months rewarding its members with an abundant crop of winter vegies!!

Happy gardening and may your garden keep BOOMING all winter!!!

It is that time of the year again when our members come together and celebrate the festive season!! Our celebration took place on 24th November.

As gardeners we all love to hear the sound of rain falling on our garden except when you you are holding a celebration in the middle of your community garden. The heavy showers didn’t deter our celebrations and the community joined us to enjoy the delights on offer. Whether you were enjoying a coffee in our cafe or a sausage from the barbecue a great time was had by all with the sound of jazz adding to the atmosphere.

We were joined by the Rochedale Girl Guides who distributed pancakes which were made from their recycled fruit tin hotplates! Apart from our craft and plant stalls there were also visitor stalls participating in our celebrations including Inspiration Garden and the Bee Man.

Of course it wouldn’t be Christmas without a visit from “the man in the red suit” and like last year he arrived on the decorated ride-on mower handing out sweets to the children and the “big” children as well!!

On behalf of all the members at Rochedale Community Garden we wish you the compliments of the festive season and we all look forward to “growing in our community garden” in 2014!

For many the 30th June is the day for stock taking whether you own your own business or are employed where stocktaking is important being the last day of the financial year.

In Rochedale Community Garden the 30th June marks the end of our first year of life! In the last 12 months the garden has grown from a bare patch to a thriving, vibrant “paradise” of colour and produce. Life now thrives in our garden!

The 30th June is an ideal time to take stock of the changes that have occurred in the garden and what better way to celebrate our 1st birthday than to hold an afternoon of celebration in the garden. All are invited to celebrate with our members. There will be a sausage sizzle, live music, cold drinks, plant sales, arts and crafts, home baked goodies and cafe.

Come and celebrate our birthday and you too can take stock of our garden by joining garden information tours.

In the interim take stock of what you can grow in your garden this winter!

We are holding a working bee on Sunday 29th July commencing at 1:00pm.

Tasks scheduled for the afternoon include:

• Building the first 6 private garden beds
• Setting out boxing for the storage shed slab
• Finishing construction of the potting bench / sink
• Planting pumpkins and chokos
• Potting some loofa and asparagus seeds which have been ‘acquired’

We probably need one or 2 more wheelbarrows during the afternoon to move soil and compost around if anyone can fit one in their car.

Ian Walker, State member for Mansfield dropped into the garden on Sunday 23rd for a look around and chat with the garden folk.

Ian showed considerable interest in the project and was able to give us some tips about funding that may be available locally.

Following our official opening on the 9th September the Rochedale Community Garden has recieved a steady flow of enquiries for membership and sponsorship involvement in the project.

The Honorable Ross Vasta, Federal Member for Bonner was a last minute fill in for Adrian Schrinner on opening day was apparently quite impressed by the projects progress and made a 3 minute speech about it in the Federal Parliment on the evening of the 17th September 2012.

A copy of the hansard transcript is available for download.

Ross Vasta planting the finger lime under the watchful eyes of  Steve Griffin and Nina Schrinner.

We are moving ahead in leaps and bounds!

Last weekend saw lots of progress in the garden. Carolyn manged to secure a 6000 ltr water tank for zero dollars which is now on site awaiting installation. The garden members spilt up into groups at the last working bee and created a Tumeric garden, built the central spiral for the herb spiral, planted the first 4 fruit trees which were kindly donated by Turner’s Garden Centre, positioned and filled an aquaponics pond for a waterchestnut crop and built most of a community garden bed in the shape of a pizza slice (we are looking for a sponsor for this one). All in all a fantastic effort.

This coming weekend should see the erection of the storage shed and possibly a green house which is to be ‘acquired’ thanks to Linda Brennan of Ecobotanica.

This Sunday’s working bee kicks off at 1:00pm with a meeting at 3:00. We are in need of a few helper to dismantle and relocate the greenhouse from about 11:00 on Sunday if anyone is available please contact me at rochedalecommunitygarden@gmail.com.au for details