2021 April Newsletter

 Seed Packing

Thank you to Karin for generously hosting the seed packing for the Autumn Plant Fair. We divided into two teams. An indoor packing team and an outdoor cleaning team. The indoor team chatted away, drank tea and packed seeds into the envelopes.

The outdoor team chatted away, drank tea, broke open seed pods, picked out chaff, sieved and winnowed to produce more clean seed for packing. This was done in the serenity of Karin's beautiful garden.

Once all of the seed was packed, we had a delicious lunch.

Seed labelling

Sixteen of the seed packers also volunteered to label the seeds on the following Wednesday. The venue was the Old Butter Factory in Bellingen. The group was a mix of experienced hands and new seed labellers and the job was rapidly completed. Just in time for afternoon tea.

Autumn plant fair

A warm sunny day plus the cancellation of last year's Spring Plant Fair contributed to a very busy and successful plant fair. The timing of the plant fair was spot on, as the next ten days were wet, wet, wet. This plant fair was like a rerun of last year; lots of keen gardeners wanting to grow their own food and save seeds. It was our second busiest fair in 12 years. Again, nearly all of our Autumn – Winter seed stock was distributed. Of the 122 seed varieties available, the most popular were: snow peas, sugar snap peas, fennel, lettuces (8 varieties), rocket, green beets, Pak choy, Gai choy, broad beans, climbing green beans, coriander, basils (5 varieties), Red Kuroda carrot, radishes, daikon, chillies (7 varieties), tomatoes (9 varieties), marigolds, cosmos and echinacea. We distributed our entire stock of plant material. Our range of herbs, fruits and perennial vegetables included: Lemon grass, Limes, bell chillies, Okinawa & Longevity spinach, three varieties of sweet potato, strawberries, mint, Thai basil, Clove basil, rosemary, and Jackfruit. Seed Savers’ Handbooks also proved popular. We ran out, but our stocks have been replenished. If you missed getting a copy, email Jeff: seeds@bellingenseedsavers.com

As always, an event such as this can-not go ahead without a huge amount of work by volunteers. I'm sure I'll miss some people, but the list of volunteers includes Jeff for overseeing all of the work getting our seeds together (he does a lot of the other work as well). The people who donated seed, cutting and seedlings. The people who attended the seed packing and labelling sessions. Karin for hosting the seed packing session, Gillian for coordinating the plant fair. Finally, the volunteers who set up,  worked on and packed up the plant fair stall: Jeff, Gillian, Leela, Jeff, James, Tara, Sue, Phillipa, Don, Ella, Nick, Merren, Chris and Michelle.

Diary Dates

Garden visit to Nick's in Repton SATURDAY 24th of April, 10:30 am - 13:00pm Remember to seek out the sign-in sheet on arrival. Please bring a snack plate to contribute to our shared lunch If you have them: Please bring seeds or cuttings to share. Tucked away in tranquil Repton, Nick and family are welcoming us again to see the progress he is making on his second productive patch. Nick is well versed in Permaculture and Hydrology Design, applying the concepts to his evolving garden.  It will be good to all catch up again after the recent deluge and swap soggy stories.   Coming? please click here to RSVP, to obtain the address and so we know who’s attending. Please RSVP even if you already know how to get there. Organiser: Lisa O'Callaghan

Seed & Plant Swaps

Are you looking for particular seeds or plants? Do you have an abundance of something to give away? Email in to news@bellingenseedsavers.com for your search or offer to be put in the newsletter in this section.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jeff for the photos and plant fair writeup. Thanks to Leela for the blurb on our next garden visit.

SEED SAVING DETAILS When donating or sharing seeds, please email in the seed information so we know what we have (click the link, the email has the questions ready to fill out) Email: seeds@bellingenseedsavers.com Or fill in this PDF form. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to fill this out digitally. Remember to save each seed info as a separately named file! Or print it out and fill it in by hand.

Check out the Bellingen Seed Savers blog for recipes, local growing information, Diary Dates and garden visit photos. Bellingen Seed Savers Chatter is our Facebook group where we can talk and talk and talk on all things seed savers and edible gardening. www.BellingenSeedSavers.com is our website.