Food For Charity
On any given night in 2023-24, there were up to 689 people experiencing homelessness on the Peninsula. In addition there are thousands of people who are suffering from the cost of living crisis, struggling to provide food and basic essentials to their families.
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We have for a few years now donated any excess veggies to a local food charity, Rye Community Centre who provide a weekly service giving fresh food to locals in need. Our Committee have decided to take this one step further by growing veggies exclusively for charity.
To achieve this we are going to build 2 new raised timber garden beds, fill them with the best quality soil/compost mix and connect them to our automated watering system.
This will be our major building project for this year and we are lucky to have an enthusiastic bunch of members to turn up at working bees.
This is an expensive project for us. Buying food grade macrocarpa cyprus for the timber beds, soil & compost, watering system supplies and miscellaneous parts will cost over $2,000. And after that we still have to buy seeds/seedlings.
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We are delighted to announce that Mornington Peninsula Shire have agreed to a Community Support Grant to help with the cost of this project.
The delivery of timber was dropped inside our garden fence
Building the new raised timber garden beds
The finished new beds after being filled with premium veggie mix. Next comes planting and before the summer heat we will install our watering system.
We have used Macrocarpa Cyprus timber to build all our garden beds. We do not use any treated pine. Macrocarpa Cyprus was commonly used for windbreaks on Victorian farms, where it was planted around 70 to 100 years ago. Several small sawmilling operations in Victoria are processing the farm-sourced timber. It is termite & borer resistant, lightweight & easy to work with and naturally durable & long lasting.
Our timber order for these 2 beds was delivered from Woodys Sawmilling in Hastings. Luckily they had a small truck that could back in between our gates and tip off the timber direct onto our asphalt surface. That saved us a lot of work!
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We purchased 5 cubic metres of top quality veggie growing mix which is a type of soil that is specifically designed for growing vegetables and other edible plants. It is a blend of organic materials, such as compost, aged bark fines, and sphagnum peat moss, as well as mineral components like sand and perlite. This is the first time we have been able to afford to buy premium veggie mix; we know it will give great results.