Inside Cuisine

Right here in my ownbackyard, the city of Sydney, and all over the world, communities are changing.  There is a groundswell of interest in the provenance of our food. People in urban communities are buying green, shopping at farmers’ markets, cooking with fresh local and seasonal food, and some keen gardeners are leading the way for first time gardeners to get their hands dirty. The story of Milson Community Garden is just one of the community groups that are digging together, and growing their own urban food.

Here’s an earlier post from the Milson Community Garden website to give you a taste of what the community garden is all about:

“Sunday 22nd November in the Milson Community Garden was very busy and very hot working in the garden.  We were joined by new people all keen to work in the garden.   It is just so encouraging that we have new people coming each week.
 
This garden was originally the idea of a group of dog walking people.  All of the volunteer gardeners share the quality that dog walkers have i.e. they are true nurturers.  And this is why the people who are attracted to the garden are so lovely.   We all look forward to our time in the garden.  There is such a lovely spirit of camaraderie. 
 
Tasks accomplished this Sunday included deep watering, feeding of all the plants with Bokashi mix, SeaSol or dynamic lifter for the tomatoes, hand picking green caterpillars from herbs and vegetables, shovelling and barrowing in wood mulch to cover the soil under our large Norfolk hibiscus tree, checking the fruit fly lures, harvesting our salad, zucchinis, strawberries and herbs, planting rainbow chard seeds in punnets, spraying of tomatoes with eco-naturalure and other plants with Yates “Success”, covering the plants with shade cloth to block out some of the sun due to expected temperature of 40 degrees.
 
We have some more tomato seedlings to plant, as well as pineapple sage, garlic chives and lemongrass donated by a local gardener.  We will plant these next week, as well as the cos lettuce seedlings, cosmos, marigolds and sunflowers raised by Jan.  As we cannot use the land behind the garden beds due to its polluted nature, we plan to grow companion flowers such as sunflowers, hyssop, French marigolds, comfrey and others.
 
Ashraf, the chef from the Ensemble Theatre, has offered us many plants from his garden.  He has over 15 different types of basil and other exotic herbs and vegetables.  They are currently growing in his garden but, as he is moving, we are invited to dig them up and move them to the MCG.
 
This week we are attempting to eradicate whatever is heating our silver beet and carrots at soil level.  We are going to boil up a mixture of chillies, garlic and tomato leaves and pour it on.  We will keep our fingers crossed that this will do the job.  It is also time to plant more rocket (arugula), spring onions and carrots.   The 1802 “lazy Housewife” beans are growing like Jack and the Beanstalk bean plant.   That Bokashi juice is just marvellous.  The plants streak ahead when we give them a feed of it.
 
The watering roster has ensured that we have had very little loss of plants.   We hope that we have sufficient volunteers to water over Christmas and New Year which will be critical.
 
‘Til next week……Carole”
 

What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning, digging in the garden, working together with neighbours you might otherwise only nod to as you pass on the street. I was truly impressed with the sense of community and common purpose. Many of the group live in nearby apartments. “Living in apartments can be quite anonymous” one of the group told me. And “if we grow nothing other than friendship” then the gardening group will still have been worthwhile.

Chatting with Carole, I could really relate to skills and interests being developed as a child, digested in the family. Her childhood Sunday’s were spent visiting her grandmother for lunch and part of the weekly ritual would be for the three generations to work together in the garden. Carole’s foundation came from the comments her mother would make, about what work needed to be done in the garden during the following week. Every plant received a comment on its progress.

Community gardens, like this one, also give our next generation, the opportunity to participate and learn. Just like the knowledge Carole soaked up at her grandmother’s and mother’s elbows.

The group shares more than gardening now. On the Sunday when I visited, I was offered a choice of three different teas. Refreshing lemon myrtle tea, home brewed from the home grown native, hit the right spot. I had to have a second cup! Herb butter from the previous week’s herbs was brought by another. And, when the digging was done, the day’s harvest was distributed, and recipes discussed. Last week Carole even posted a recipe for her White Beetroot Pesto on the group’s website.

You can follow Milson Community Gardens on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MCGgardeners

Filed under: produce , Australia, community, gardening, Kirribilli, locavore, Milson Community Group gardeners, Sydney