Make your own hand sanitiser

22/3/2020

Personal hygiene is an important measure in preventing illness from cross-contamination of bacteria or viruses.

This recipe for making your own hand sanitiser is from Mandurah Community Garden members Pamela and Tricia.

You will need:

3/4 cup rubbing alcohol (or methylated spirits)
1/4 cup aloe vera (we pulped it fresh from the plant)
10 drops of essential oils

Blend it together in your food processor or bullet until well mixed then pour into a sterile dispensing container.

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Artists in the Garden

9/3/2020

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The Mandurah Plein Air Group is once again visiting our lovely gardens to work their creative skills on Tuesday 10th March 2020 from 8:30am to 12 noon.

Mandurah Community Gardens is the place for soothing the soul! We know that gardening is good for us, and we know that art lends her healing brush to our hearts as well. They make for a perfect combination of healthy activity!

For more information about the Mandurah Plein Air Group, visit their website at https://mandurahpleinair.com/

Members are welcome to come down to the gardens and interact with the artists.

Pictures from the day posted as a video slideshow on Facebook

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Garden to Plate Workshops 2020

1/3/2020

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Our Garden To Plate workshops are back again in 2020!

Planning Your Garden - Saturday 7th March 2020
presented by experienced local gardener Chris Lampard

The first workshop for the year held at Frasier's Landing in Coodanup.

Come and learn how to make best use of the space you have to design a beautiful, practical garden that combines food production, attracts birds and bees, and looks great all year round!

Free to attend. Gold coin donation for tea and coffee. Bring a plate for morning tea.

More coming up!

Future workshops will be held on the 1st Saturday of each month. They will cover a range of gardening topics including growing vegetables from seed and seedlings, how to improve your soil, the secrets of great compost, and tips for native gardening.

For more information please contact Mandurah Community Gardens info@mandurahcommunitygardens.com.au

or visit our Facebook page for event announcements.

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We're now on Pinterest

19/2/2020

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With the use of Facebook in decline, Mandurah Community Gardens has decided to create another location for you to connect with us - we now have a profile on Pinterest.

Mandurah Community Gardens on Pinterest is a great way for sharing information and links by "pinning" the post into a topic board. It is like searching for information on Google but using pictures and text to discover information. It also allows you to communicate with us too by leaving comments or sending us a message AND you can easily share our profile, a topic board or a pin to anyone else.

Currently we have organised our pins into 3 different boards:
Group Activities - promoting events and showing pictures from the latest events
Community Food - with recipe ideas, Foodbank information and healthy food information.
The Gardens - gardening tips, gardening results, generally what members are doing in the gardens.
We may add more boards later on to help organise everything to do with Mandurah Community Gardens in a meaningful way.

Pinterest is a friendlier and more interesting social platform than the others, being more informative than opinionated, it offers a more considerate way of sharing with little to no trolling (anonymous rude critics). It also collects much less personal information than other social platforms do, and it does not manipulate what is shown to you as some other social media does.

Previews from posts on our Pinterest profile now display in the column to the right of our news page.

If you don't already use Pinterest, give it a go! You can get the app for your iPhone or iPad from the App Store. The app is also available from the Google Play Store. You can also use Pinterest in the browser on your computer without needing to install anything.

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Reviews

18/2/2020

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Why are reviews needed?

Reviews help us know what we are doing right or what we need to do with our online presence make it an interesting and enjoyable experience for you.

Passive Vs. Active Involvement

The feedback received from reviews and seen by others helps make the virtual world of the internet more real for people visiting, its a proactive step beyond the quick click on a "like".

Through the sharing of information, creating discussions, giving suggestions or our sharing of ideas, we are communicating. A community works much better together when it communicates with each other, but the passive viewer who doesn't interact causes our group to have less significance in this modern world, and we disappear off the radar of Facebook, Google and other online platforms.

The alternative method to getting our message out there is to advertise, and that is what the online services would prefer us to do. But for a nonprofit organisation like the Mandurah Community Gardens, letting people know that we exist by paying money would only serve to make us operate like a commercial venture, rather than the community one that we all value and love. We rely on the generosity of you and others to exist, and in turn our volunteers offer their time and efforts to help continue providing a great service to our community.

We value your words of appreciation

So, we rely on your patronage and help in spreading the word about us. If you can help us out by giving us your review and more importantly, some feedback with it, everyone in our community will know the value of Mandurah Community Gardens and be reminded that it is always there for them.

Watch the video below to see how to give your review on Facebook

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Good for the Heart

18/2/2020

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Mandurah Community Gardens is showcased with the Heart Foundation's advocacy program that reports on healthy built designs benefiting the hearts of communities. Their website, Healthy Active By Design, showcases purpose built designs that are shown to help keep us healthy and maintain the good health of our hearts.

On their website page titled Mandurah Community Gardens, the Heart Foundation has published a study of our community group detailing how it was formed, who was involved and how it was financed. The purpose and function of Mandurah Community Gardens is assessed for the many good values it provides our society, categorised by the kind of benefit given. The Heart Foundation explains how Mandurah Community Gardens plays a vital role in our community, and how it provides an important contribution to maintaining our community's health.

Recommended reading for anyone who would like to know more about the Mandurah Community Gardens and how it helps us all.

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LOAF USING STEVIA

17/2/2020

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When I was trying to think of a way to use my Stevia to best advantage for the Friday Tasting at MCG (14/2/20), I remembered an old loaf tin recipe that I used for the kids lunch boxes back in the Eighties when sugar wasn't considered bad for your health. This was the recipe...

1 cup of self raising flour
1 cup of rolled oats
1 cup of sultanas
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of milk.

How easy is that to remember!!!

However, I decided to replace these ingredients and create a more healthy version as follows..

1 cup of Green Banana Flour (or choose your own)
1 cup of Organic Rolled Oats
1 cup of Sultanas (The healthy ones - snigger 😜)
1 cup of Walnuts (optional - I like nuts)
1/4 of a cup of Stevia
1 cup of Soy Milk

Bake for about 30 minutes.

This recipe is from Lara, a member of Mandurah Community Gardens

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Some info from our friends at Earthwhile Australia

17/2/2020

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In their latest news:

Some questions for members of the Mandurah Community Gardens
Recently on the Podcast Sabrina's Dirty Deeds
What Bonnie did with her soil to get great results
EA Workshop Classes coming up for March

February 2020

A penny for your thoughts Mandurah Community Garden , celebrities, compost dancing, learning opportunities, and more ..... read on

Win a prize pack!

What would you like us to share with you in the coming year?

We'd love to hear from you - two minutes of your time and a chance to win a great product prize pack.

Click here to take the survey

Dirty Deeds Podcast Recording

Look who we caught up with recently - yep, Sabrina Hahn invited us to come and have a chat. We had a great time checking out Sab's garden and discussing growing food using microbes with her and Jamie. Keep a look out for the upcoming release of the podcast at Sabrina's Dirty Deeds.

Bonnie's Compost Making Adventure

Recently, my hubby became slightly compost obsessed. He counts down the days until he can “turn the pile” and goes so far as to demand (with great pride) that everyone stick their hand in to feel how warm it is!

From a microbial point of view, he somehow managed to make one of the most active composts I've ever seen! Needless to say, it got used up pretty quickly topping up existing garden beds and preparing new garden beds that were basically just sand as a starting point. So this weekend, when we were pulling out old and gone-to-seed plants from one of our vegetable gardens, the decision was made to keep all the greens and stick them through a mulcher to then add to our new compost pile. Thus began the adventure.

It turned out that we actually had way more “brown” than “green” and as we were working towards a 2:1 green to brown ratio, hubby went on the hunt for more green! This paddock turned out to be perfect for the job (anyone remember the tune: “one man and his dog... went to mow a meadow!”)

In addition to the mulched green “waste” from our garden, we commenced layering 2 parts green to one part brown in the metal cage my dad created for this exact purpose. As the layers were added it was watered and stomped down to ensure compaction. This is to give the microbes as much crushed surface area to work on as possible .... we continued on until we ran out of all brown, removed the cage, and were left with this perfectly layered, ‘cake like’ compost pile! What now!? Well now we wait... wait for it to bake into a chocolatey goodness compost that will feed our microbes, that will build our soil and grow healthy plants.

Learning Opportunities

"The knowledgeable and passionate team have inspired me to learn more and already I am passing that knowledge on and putting it into practice. My work as a horticulturist has become easier and more exciting through a better understanding of the soil food web. Thank you Earthwhile Australia!"
Kathy (Horticulturist)

"Brilliant. I had the absolute joy of recently attending two classes with EarthWhile Australia, including their ‘It’s The Soil That Counts Master Class.' I can’t thank EarthWhile enough for taking my love of gardening to a whole new level."
Andrew ( The Kalamunda Plant Company)

Check out our March Workshops

Byford Foundational Class 15th March

Margaret River Foundational Class 28th March

Byford Master Class 22nd March

Margaret River Master Class 29th March

Microbe Trivia

What do you think this fellow is?
Is it a nematode? If yes...
Is it likely to eat plant roots?

The answers are 'yes' and 'yes' ... although most nematodes are beneficial we are seeing a few more of these troublesome ones as ground is becoming dried out and compacted over summer. Gently aerate (e.g. with a garden fork), dribble compost/compost tea down the holes formed, moisten soil and mulch to improve plants strength and resilience to pests and diseases.

This one is a bit special cos it looks like it is about to moult or grow into a bigger skin!

For a bit of fun

Here's a colouring activity - thanks to the American Museum of Natural History.... and you can print it from here or colour online here

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Malabar Spinach Fritters

9/2/2020

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For all the Foodies!

Malabar Spinach is a beautiful climbing plant that can also be grown as a perennial ornamental vine. I have been growing this Asian Climbing Spinach from seed for only a couple of months, so it hasn't reached its full height of about 10 feet. This spinach plant is a staple in countries like India because, unlike most other spinach varieties, it grows in summer.

It is often eaten raw but I wasn't overly impressed with the texture. I probably should have picked the leaves sooner for use in salads. Anyway, before deciding whether I should grow Malabar Spinach as an annual next summer I decided to get the members of the Mandurah Community Gardens to take a vote and tell me what they thought. To this end, I cooked Malabar Spinach Fritters. One of the reasons I chose this recipe was because it required Chick Pea Flour. If you heard about this or tasted it before, your way ahead of me.
It is MARVELOUS!!! You can use this flour like you would any other - including pancakes. I found it at the bulk foods shop outside Woolworths in the Forum. It isn't as rare as I thought so you can probably buy it from regular grocers.

The Malabar Spinach Fritters was a HUGE success. Everyone seemed to love them - so I will share the recipe. Although you may also like to try it fried with garlic.

1 cup of Chick Pea Flour
Pinch of Baking Powder
1/2 cup water
Salt and Pepper.

Mix ingredients to make a batter. Dip the Malabar Leaves in batter and fry until golden. Since I'm not a cook my battering skill needs work, but that didn't affect the flavour and a good time was had by all.

Shared by member, Lana - Plot #20

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HOW TO BUILD HAPPY SOIL FOR HEALTHY PLANTS: GARDEN 2 PLATE WORKSHOP SERIES

1/8/2018

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Garden 2 Plate Facilitators: Nicole Ingham (Foodbank WA Nutritionist) & Chris Lampard (Mandurah Native Gardens).
Guest Speaker: Ellen (Byford Community Gardens)
Written by: Pauline Soucie

Garden to Plate is an innovative project running since 2014, that focuses on improving health and encourages people to become more involved in their local community - for more information follow this link: https://www.foodbankwa.org.au/2014/06/20/garden-to-plate/

Foodbank WA (fighting hunger in Western Australia since 1994) have partnered up with the Mandurah Community Gardens and the City of Mandurah to offer these fantastic free community courses, where participants learn about the value of including fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet and are armed with information & resources aimed to help them growing edible gardens at home. Once you get a taste for growing food organically, it becomes such a satisfying and rewarding experience, to harvest your own food and enjoy the nutritional and taste benefits. You will never want to buy “fresh” fruit & veg from supermarket chains like Coles or Woolworths again…and hey just think how many plastic bags you will save in the process!

Today’s topic was all about SOIL… the importance of building healthy soil for happy plants. Oh and did I mention Nicole made yummy homemade soup plus fruit and other tasty treats from the garden?? All free and delicious I might add! (on a side note; Nicole also runs an AWESOME community cooking course called Food Sensations through Foodbank WA which is also free! To find out more &/or book on an upcoming series, email nicole.ingram@foodbankwa.org.au). As an informal “icebreaker” we mingled to introduce ourselves, describe our favourite vegetable, plus name a vegetable that we’ve never tried before (seems artichokes won the ‘never tried’ award, but not everyone agreed they’d like to try eating one haha). Then it was game time: Name that Vegetable (to be followed up with “Eat that Vegetable” – a take home challenge to try every vegetable listed before next month’s workshop). Given most of us are pretty keen gardeners I think everyone breezed through the naming game – however it would be interesting to see how well kids and/or say, staunch pie eaters would go identifying approx. 25 different types of vegetables by (unpacked) pictures alone.

Which leads me to question: how in touch “we” are with our food these days? The more immersed I become in gardening & learning about organic growing methods, the more I realise how out of whack & disconnected from food our society in large has become. In my own experience, just a few years ago, I actually would not have been able to tell you how a lot of fruits & vegetables grow (for instance pineapples! Oh and how about peanuts?! P.S. if you don’t know, google it yo) - let alone giving much thought as to where the produce I was buying came from (i.e. if something is not the season for growing but it's available to buy, chances are it’s not local and therefore not as good - but hey that is another blog topic in itself me thinks). Especially true in remoter areas (such as Karratha, WA) where as a local for several years I had just figured the only smart option was to buy snap frozen vegetables wrapped in plastic bags…something that nowdays you would rarely - if ever - catch me eating that frozen mushy crap! Yup, now I eat straight from the plant if I’m hungry in the garden and WOW is it good!

Many people question why bother growing their own food - and hey I get it - in this fast paced consumer driven "convenience" bandwagon the world has become stuck on, we have almost lost the ability to survive should society as we know it collapse. Seriously though, it’s not that hard to break free from that kind of consumerism mentality! I suggest to start small, with stuff you like to eat, choose easy to grow crops based on your location, lifestyle (and cooking styles) – whatever works, go with that, start there & see what happens! It’s good for the soul to run a little wild with nature every now and then, feel the sun on your face (okay pretty hit or miss this time of year I will admit), embrace the beautiful bees & bugs, get your hands dirty, feel the soil and get that earth connection. I promise the more you seek, the more you will be amazed!

Meanwhile back to why good soil is important…
Healthy soil = better tasting, healthier plants with more nutrients
(and no nasty chemicals and pesticides!)

By putting more effort into the prepping the soil’s biology, you will also find less need to “feed the plants” because you have a network of microbial organisms teaming up to work for you and your beautiful plants. Using these techniques combined with crop rotation & effective composting methods you will not only get bumper crops, but will extend the life-cycle of your garden bed (this means less work in the long run!). Ellen (from Byford Community Gardens) spoke about Soil Biology, organic gardening principles, biological planting to feed microbes/micro-organisms & explained how all these elements make up the ‘Soil Food Web’.

Fun Fact: Grasses harbor Bacteria; Trees love Fungi – but Vegetables need a blend of both, held together in harmonious balance by Nematodes (these act as a delivery system for nutrients).

Next Chris dished the dirt on Composting & worm farming (check out his great visual below to explain to the process if you're more of a picture person)

DIY is always best when it comes to composting because it's literally ALIVE with organic matter. Not only is composting and worm farming super fantastic for the soil biology but it's so affordable, practical & will cut down your household waste! Think WIN WIN!
Compost piles LOVE a feed of worm wee/poo "teas" (not to be confused with a cuppa tea hahaha) – and again, the DIY approach will produce maximum results and is affordable and easy (however brewing compost & worm teas may also need a blog of its own). Using whatever ‘ingredients’ you have available and a few simple new household habits, it won't take long to get your compost festering along nicely...

So, the two main types of composting discussed today were Sheet Mulching and "Insitu" Composing:

Sheet Mulching (based on permaculture principals)
So this is a super easy and affordable way to start, however consensus seems to be split on the effectiveness, especially if you're talking about areas typically infested with grass or weeds. The process basically entails mowing the lawn area or removing the weeds then smothering with thick layers of cardboard - just be careful not to leave any gaps else may find weeds/grasses escaping through to your garden bed later down the track. If you really wanted to be sure your weeds die and don’t come back, you could go hard and dig out the grasses or if you have the time/money to spray, try a glycosate based product (however I highly recommend keeping the chemicals away from anything edible and if spraying chemicals allow several weeks before preparing the affected area).

"Insitu" Composting (chop and drop method)
This is by far Chris' preferred method (and hey if you have the time and space it really doesn't get any easier than this!) It's all about layers and using available organic materials to prep an area you would like to set up as a vegetable garden in the future. Start with a layer of green manure for Nitrogen (oats, peas, vetch & mustard are some of the most nutrient dense but you can use lawn clipping or any other clean green waste), then a layer of brown matter for Carbon (sawdust, woodchips, straw etc). Next is a lovely layer of poo (worm poo wins hands down but sheep & chook poo are also effective), another layer of green materials, another brown layer then heavily cover with mulch and give a big 'ol drink before covering up that badboy with a carpet to keep all those stinky juices warm and contained. Leave to stew for 1 month then smoosh it all around with a pitch fork and leave 1 more month...and then voila...you have made compost! Spread the resulting black gold around and hey presto it's time to sow some seeds.

Most Mandurah local gardeners know from experience, that our soils are typically sandy, with little to no nutrients or water retaining capabilities. So Chris finished up by answering the question on everyone's lips...how do I turn my sandy, water-proof dust bowl into a lush organic haven for microbes and such??

SANDY SOIL REMEDY FORMULA
Bentonite Clay (2-3kg)
Compost (20L)
Manures (10L)
Minerals like Rockdust (few scoops)
Wetting Agent (handful)
Worm Castings (1/2 bucket)

I'd just like to add in closing, that it has been a massive blessing meeting & joining the passionate team at Mandurah Community Gardens and plugging into a wonderful wealth of knowledge (& plant) sharing. With so many exciting workshops and events happening this year, I won’t blame you for being interested or wanting to get involved! If you want o know more &/or become a member email: info@mandurahcommunitygardens.com.au

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Forward>>

Make your own hand sanitiser

Artists in the Garden

Garden to Plate Workshops 2020

We're now on Pinterest

Reviews

Good for the Heart

LOAF USING STEVIA

Some info from our friends at Earthwhile Australia

February 2020

A penny for your thoughts Mandurah Community Garden , celebrities, compost dancing, learning opportunities, and more ..... read on

Dirty Deeds Podcast Recording

Bonnie's Compost Making Adventure

Learning Opportunities

Microbe Trivia

For a bit of fun

Malabar Spinach Fritters

For all the Foodies!

HOW TO BUILD HAPPY SOIL FOR HEALTHY PLANTS: GARDEN 2 PLATE WORKSHOP SERIES

Focus Story

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