A mid-winter Permabee at the Dunstan Reserve, West Brunswick
Back in mid-June, the West Brunswick Community Garden and Food Forest held another permabee which turned into an incredibly productive and educational workday!
This beautiful and productive food forest was established in the early 1990’s by local residents and now managed by volunteers from Moreland Community Gardening. We’ve held working bees and perma-parties here before (2017, 2014 and 2013) and they’re always a very productive riot.
Our goals for the day were to prune and shape the numerous productive trees (namely olive trees), plant out a stack of productive perennials, and tidy up the whole garden.
The day started with a bit of rain (as if that would stop us!) but it cleared up and managed to stay dry for the whole working bee. After a quick huddle, we split into groups and got to work.
There were 3 stations on the go: tree pruning, general garden maintenance, and planting & composting.
Karen Sutherland (from Edible Eden Design) ran a workshop on how to prune and shape fruit trees and she more than delighted us with her wisdom on how to clean and sharpen your secateurs and pruning shears – an essential skill for tree pruning!
Karen took us through tool hygiene and stressed the importance of taking care of your garden tools.
Three products are important:
- Wd40 or CRC to clean all parts when they get rusty (if you’re using tools on an irregular basis, they’ll likely get a little rusty…)
- Methylated spirits for sanitizing your tools when switching between trees or orchards. This helps to stop disease transfer!
- Oil – make sure to wipe over the blades and any moving parts with oil to keep them moving smoothly.
These steps will help keep your tools in tip-top shape and lasting as long as possible!
Over in group 2, Libby kept us inspired with her knowledge of the medicinal and edible plants, which was great to hear about as we cleared out the grass, trimmed back any overgrown plants and took care of the weeds.
Then came morning tea – and what a spread! Croissants, home-made quiche, a plethora of teas and biscuits… Absolutely delicious.
And to top it off, we had a quick hot compost workshop with Richard from @brunswickwest_food_forest. I don’t know about you, but I love meeting someone just as passionate about compost as I am!
Can we please take a moment to appreciate how great Richards shirt is?!
I ordered one for myself from the Moreland City Council’s Red Bubble page, and you can too!
If you want to see more photos of the day, check out the full gallery here.
