Last Thursday, while my fellow volunteers were enjoying gardening in the Food Garden of the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens (RTBG), I had sailed to and was enjoying the wilderness of places such as Port Davey, Bathurst Harbour and Melaleuca in south west Tasmania. Hundreds of photos later and a notebook full of details about that 8 day adventure will be written up and published in this blog in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile I am grateful for notes from Neil and his photos showing their collective achievements last Thursday. This means that for those blog followers who make decisions about planting in their own gardens on the basis of these blog post reports, they need not feel any absence of information. Thanks Neil.

He reported ‘The forecast was for 23C on this unusually overcast Thursday and whilst we never saw the sun – much less than the 23C – the humidity was high and physical work brought on the usual sweat. Weeding continued in the golden marjoram fields below the olive trees and when T arrived the harvesting of the first crop of broad beans was undertaken. Egg plants were replanted in this bed once the soil had been dug over and infused with rich compost. Old brassicas were culled from the bed in front of the kiwi fruit and replaced with a variety of beans around the climbing frame and zucchinis in the remainder of the bed. The row with the giant pumpkins was given a light weeding and several loads of compost were deposited.  A variety of corn seed was planted by R & A into these newly composted beds in between the Atlantic Giant pumpkins. Whilst this was being undertaken a team – Janet, Pam & Leslie – worked on the flick weed issue in the citrus forest. Four + hours of weeding cleansed the hairy bittercress from the area and the girls should be proud of their efforts as it is a difficult weed to pull.

Kiwi fruit flower

Weeding in citrus forest

Eggplants & zucchinis to plant

Broad beans slashed

Broad bean harvest

Eggplants in where broad beans stood barely an hour before

Brassicas cleared for beans & zucchinis; onions left in

Same bed with beans around frame and black jack zucchinis’

Legacy corn seedlings ready to plant

Wilt infecting some of the KY1 tomatoes

Please note, it there are mistakes in connecting photos with information, these will be my fault.

Once again, many thanks Neil. I can see a great deal of work was undertaken and much was achieved last week. These will provide crops for the underprivileged and hungry members of our community via the food distribution charity Loaves and Fishes.  Good job everyone!