What's New in June 2019 BCLN E-news Hello to all of our Landcare members, partners, sponsors and friends throughout the Bass Coast Landcare Network and welcome to the June edition of our E-news. In this edition we share some great events coming up, show you how we successfully grew sweet potatoes in our chilly climate at the River garden in Bass, notify you of upcoming grants, and much more. So grab a cuppa and read on! For all the latest updates follow us on Facebook by clicking here and if you haven't already, give us a like and follow our page! UPCOMING EVENTS Are you Gippsland’s Agribusiness of the Year? Food & Fibre Gippsland have announced their 2019 'Excellence in Agribusiness Awards'. The program recognizes, celebrates and rewards excellence in collaboration and innovation. This is a great opportunity to celebrate innovative agribusiness in Bass Coast and Southern Gippsland. If you think your business is eligible this could be a great opportunity to showcase your story. Entries close on June 14th, 2019. Click here for further information on the Awards and how to enter. Dung Beetle Field Day John Feehan, world renowned dung beetle expert, is coming down to tell us all about dung beetles on Saturday 29th of June at the Kernot Community Centre. John will be sharing how dung beetles make soil healthier and more productive, as well as how to look after beetles on your property. After we hear from John there is lunch (it's a free event, but RSVP's are essential please for catering) and then we head to a farm south of Loch, where we'll release a colony of winter active dung beetles. More details in the flyer above, or email
[email protected] if you need to know more. Hope to see you there! Click here to RSVP your place for this event. Kongwak Hills Landcare Group Planting Days Kongwak Hills Landcarers would love some extra support to put a few more plants into the ground this season. Enjoy a morning with our lovely community, get fit on our hills and join us for the lunch provided by each day’s landholder. The scheduled dates are: • Saturday 6 July – 4,000 plants in large gully • Saturday 20 July – 1,500 plants with wallaby guards in previous plantation area • Saturday 3 August – 3,000 plants across 2 sites on the Foster Creek • Saturday 31 August – 4,000 plants in a large gully • Saturday 14 September – up to 5,000 plants To be added to the email list for further details on these planting days, please contact the Kongwak Hills Landcare Group secretary Marg Hauser on
[email protected] For more information on the Kongwak Hills Landcare Group click here. River Garden Volunteer program for Winter 2019 Come along and join us for a couple of hours on the second Wednesday of the month at the River Garden, (next session July 10 th ), where general maintenance activities will be conducted with help from Landcare Staff. Volunteers will also have the chance to help harvest and share in any produce that is ready on site in exchange for their efforts at these activity days. Volunteers will be led through a simple induction process on their first visit, then get involved in maintaining the River garden's growing spaces. Meet like-minded people, learn from each other by doing and contribute to a great community project! I f this sounds like something you want to be involved in, please click here to register your interest in this Volunteer program. Help shape the future of renewable energy across Bass Coast and South Gippsland The Energy Innovation Co-operative has been busy hosting a series of four ‘Renewable Energy Roadmap’ workshops across our area in the past month. If you were not able to make it there is still a chance to have your say and help shape the future of renewable energy across Bass Coast and South Gippsland by filling in their survey at this link www.surveymonkey.com/r/RenewableEnergyRoadmap1 by the end of July. It will only take you around 5-10 minutes and the ideas and information generated by the workshops and the survey will go into producing an interactive Roadmap. The project team will compare this base map of ideas with grid information to see where some of the most promising opportunities for new generation lie. The Roadmap will be more than a map. The final document will include analysis of the strengths, opportunities, challenges and risks discussed at the workshops, social and technical information on different options for renewable energy and how to pursue them, connections with other work being done across Gippsland and discussion on future options that need further development. The draft will be shared widely and feedback invited before it is finalised. For information on the Energy Innovation Co-operative please click here. GROUP AND NETWORK NEWS Phillip Island Landcare Group at Nature Parks Open Day The Phillip Island Landcare group recently had a successful day doing an educational tube stock planting activity at the Phillip Island Nature Parks Open Day. Their new trailer-caravan had its first outing and was well received. Thanks to Bev and Charles Watson’s regular post watering since the event, the grasses and ground covers planted are now prospering. Pictured are committee members Dean Thompson & Bev Watson educating children and visitors on planting techniques and the benefits of using indigenous plants. For more information on the activities of the Phillip Island Landcare Group click here. Volunteer Week The third week in May was National Volunteer Week, an event where we all get to celebrate our wonderful volunteers (that's You!)and how their commitment to Landcare helps us achieve great things for our local environment. We would like to thank our wonderful Nursery Group, who spend countless hours collecting seed, propagating, transplanting, and caring for our 35,000+ plants. Rain, hail or shine, our dedicated volunteers show up weekly with smiles on their faces and keen to work. We would also like to thank our many, many tree planters who take time out of their days to come and plant trees alongside our Landcare groups. It can take years to see the difference we make on each planting day, but it is so rewarding when you do look back on a planting and say, ‘I was a part of that.’ We are grateful for each and every one of you. We thank our River Garden volunteers, our latest volunteer program, where we have had lots of interest and good attendance on the days which we have held, and we are keen to hold more of these days into the future to help this beautiful, productive piece of land blossom. For more information on how you can be involved in Volunteering with Bass Coast Landcare Network click here. Speaking of Volunteers… Our hard-working Nursery Group received a new tea room recently, delivered on the back of a truck and put in place via a crane. Nursery Supervisor Bronwyn Teesdale did the honors of cutting the purple ribbon to officially declare the room 'open' and now the decorating will begin for them to make it their own. Up until now our nursery volunteers have been using the chilly little dining area in the depot shed for their weekly tea and cake so an upgrade in facilities was due. If you are interested in seeing what it takes to grow healthy local native plants please feel free to come along – there may even be cake! Email
[email protected] for more information. For more information on our Nursery Group please click here. Growing Sweet Potatoes Down South – Our Success Story People have been in disbelief at the individual size and sheer mass of sweet potatoes we harvested from the River Garden this year. Being only our first year of growing sweet potatoes, we were very excited with the harvest, with the biggest individual potato weighing 4.9kg and many others around the 3kg mark. On 14/11/18 the growing beds were mounded to around 400mm and rotary hoed a week prior to planting. Pete Baird prepared the planting site with rock-dust [5mm- basalt gravel], compost and green manure (green manure seed mix). 10 slips in 150mm pots were planted at 1m spacings. The slips were grown from orange sweet potatoes from Penny Mitchell, second generation [f1] from her first crop grown in Kongwak. Each plant was topped with compost and deep watered, with good follow up rains 1 week after [30 to 40mm], and then shallow watered every week. The gravel used helps to retain warmth in the mounds, extending the growing season which results in more tubers. Out of these 10 plants, we got nearly 70kg of sweet potatoes, and took over 100 cuttings from the growing tips, rooting them in water and planting them in pots in our greenhouse ready for next year. We will be roughly tripling our planting, meaning we will still have plenty of plants left to sell in Spring… watch this space! For more information and how to get involved in River Garden activities click here. Renewed Energy for the Phillip Island Community Orchard Horticulture Demonstration Project The Phillip Island Community Orchard Horticulture Demonstration Project is experiencing a second coming, thanks to some further funding support from Westernport Water, the Phillip Island Landcare Group and the Bass Coast Landcare Network. Originally established in 2014, the project continues to demonstrate how to set up and develop an intensive market garden in a peri-urban setting. The Phillip Island Community Orchard site has the luxury of a consistent water source, thanks to Westernport Water providing ongoing access to Class A recycled water. This obviously increases the viability of the demonstration and also allows Westernport Water to promote the Class A recycled Water product to the community. To read the full story click here. Barb Martin Bushbank Plants and Plant Lists The Barb Martin Bushbank has received a signicant upgrade since the Nature Parks have managed its operation. If you are a Phillip Island Landcare Group member you should have received
