Yandina Community Gardens

41 Farrell street, Yandina

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Comfrey Fritters

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Ingredients

1 x cup flour

Water or flat beer

Salt, Paprika or herbs to taste

Oil (olive or coconut)

Method

Choose your favourite flour, make a batter of flour and water (1 cup flour & enough water or flat beer to make a “sticky batter”. You can also add salt, paprika or herbs to taste.
Dunk each leaf into your batter, making sure that each leaf is well covered with batter.
Fry in some oil (my choice is olive or coconut) in a hot pan until they turn golden brown (about 5 mins). Leave some stems on so it is easy to turn them over and pick them up.
You can eat them as they are or add to a meal.

Are mushrooms the answer to our plastic problem?

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Mycoremediation

Imagine all the plastic trash you accumulate from one trip to the grocery store, from water bottles and children’s toys to clamshell containers and cosmetic microbeads. Now imagine enough trash to equal the weight of one billion elephants, and you’ll have some sense as to the amount of plastic we’ve discarded since the 1950s.

Plastics are now humanity’s number one source of pollution, accounting for 20-30 percent of landfill volume worldwide, while an additional 12 million metric tons are dumped annually into our oceans. As each piece can take millennia to decompose completely, our discarded plastics form vast trash islands called “gyres”—there’s even one the size of Texas—where marine species mistake the toxic, increasingly-microscopic particles for plankton and other food sources.

With plastic consumption still on the rise, it’s a fast-compounding problem no one quite knows how to solve, but Peter McCoy is one of many who believe the answer has been under our feet the whole time. “Plastics have been known as susceptible to fungal degradation since they were first manufactured over 100 years ago,” explains McCoy, who founded the grassroots research organization Radical Mycology, which advocates for underutilized applications of mushrooms and other fungi.  Read more about Mycoreremediation…

YCG will be hosting a mushroom growing workshop. Click here to book for the Mushroom workshop

Is Biochar the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future?

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“Biochar may represent the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future. The biochar approach provides a uniquely powerful solution, for it allows us to address food security, the fuel crisis, and the climate problem, and all in an immensely practical manner. ” Prof. Tim Flannery 2007 Australian of the Year

What is biochar?

Biochars refer to the carbon-rich materials (charcoal) produced from the slow pyrolysis (heating in the absence of oxygen) of biomass. Recently, there has been much interest in biochars as soil amendments to improve and maintain soil fertility and to increase soil carbon sequestration. The capacity to sequester carbon in the soil can be attributed to the relative stable nature and, therefore, long turnover time of biochar in soil and is of particular relevance to the solution of climate change. While it is difficult to estimate how long newly created biochar will stay in the soil some suggest it could be for as long as five thousand years.  Read more about Biochar…

YCG will be hosting a biochar workshop with Dave Clark.  To book, click here on the biochar workshop

Saturday, 23 June, 9 – 11 am – Growing Your Own Mushrooms

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Join Urban Kulture for a wonderful presentation and hands-on skill development in gourmet mushroom cultivation. Learn how to grow your own Oyster mushrooms as we take you through the steps of mushroom cultivation with a focus on using urbanly available waste products all in a fun and friendly environment!

Facilitated by local Musician and Fungiphile Kayt Wallace who will be demystifying the amazing process of growing this beautiful variety of mushroom. Kayt will be sharing her passion for mycology and experience both low tech and commercial production methods using a variety of materials in our subtropical climate.

This workshop covers the production of oyster mushrooms using non sterile techniques. You will learn about all the steps involved in mushroom production including how to create your own cultures using nothing but waste stem butts from fresh mushrooms, and how to make mushroom spawn from recycled paper pellets and fruiting blocks using three different urbanly available substrates: Paper Pellets, Hardwood Pellets and spent coffee grounds! Now also covering pasteurised straw techniques and log grows. Workshop attendees will take home items made in the workshop including low tech spawn bag and Oyster mushroom fruiting bags.

Having always had a passion for science, nutrition and growing weird and wonderful things, Kayt Wallace first started growing Oyster mushrooms in 2015 for their incredible nutritional value and out of sheer curiosity. She quickly became fascinated with the process of working with mycelium from it’s very beginnings on Petri dishes in a lab in preparation to grow on many different growing mediums including coffee grinds, sugarcane mulch and other organic waste products. Kayt believes that knowledge should be shared, so it’s fitting that she is collaborating with Australia wide Mycological educators Urban Kulture to deliver workshops in the South East Queensland region and looks forward to sharing this wonderful process.

To book click here

Saturday, 16 June, 9 – 11 am – Beyond Compost – How Biochar & Micro-organisms exponentially improve your soil

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Advances in soil science & microbiology show us how we can eliminate the need for fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides or fungicides in crops and gardens. Soils can be drought-proofed, plant pathogens controlled and both yield and nutrient density greatly enhanced; with reduction of your labour an additional benefit.
For over 25 years local permaculturist Dave Clark has been struggling to bring fertility to his 5 acres of extremely poor soil. Compost and diversity were his initial tools, but he is now finding that it is easier, cheaper and way more effective, to enlist the aid of micro-organisms (using biochar as habitat) in his quest to be a more successful subsistence farmer.
A five day Nutrition Farming course with Graeme Sait (Nutri Tech Solutions) and a host of further reading, plus on-site experimentation has led him to a point where he thinks he has important knowledge to share, in addition to advances in compost making.
To book click here

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biochar chop & drop compost composting Edible Greens edible leaves edible seeds edible tubers Event food waste food waste loop ground cover insect attracting Kids event Kids program know your plants Learning Living sustainably Management Committee medicinal plants medicine member event Morag Gamble native stingless bees Nutrient Dense Food Open garden visit Permaculture Plant plants Recipe Recipes Subtropical Greens Support plants Sustainable Building sustainable living Tropical greens volunteer water plant Wax-wrap making wax-wraps Workshop workshops Worm Farming Yandina Community Garden Yandina community Gardens

Permaculture People

Elizabeth Fekonia - Permaculture Real Food
Anne Gibson - The Micro Gardener
Morag Gamble - Our Permaculture Life
Dee Humphreys - Eatin Garden Edible Garden Tours

Acknowledgement of country

Yandina Community Gardens acknowledges and pays respect to the Traditional Owners of the land, the Gubbi Gubbi (Kabi Kabi) people, past and present and emerging. We recognise and wish to learn from their spiritual and cultural connection to the land.