Visit Marg 20 October 2013

On Sunday 20 October we visited Marg Murray's garden at Howrah
Marg must have told the weather gods to 'shape up', because, after weeks of strong winds and rain, the weather on the morning of this visit was suddenly sunny, warm and perfect.

Around 30 people turned up for this really interesting visit. Marg has a wide variety of vegies, fruit, berries, herbs and flowers. It is amazing how big her garden is when you go on a wander through it and she has really used the space well with an array of garden beds and fruit trees along the fence in the background.

After telling us about her garden, Marg introduced 'the star of this meeting', Max Kregor, who, over the past decades built up an enormous expertise in grafting fruit trees.

Here Max Kregor starts the discussion on grafting after Marg had introduced him

Max demonstrated four types of grafting and his audience was fascinated:

Top or Bark Grafting

Whip and Tung Grafting

Bud Grafting 

Tomato grafting demonstrated on two parsley stalks

Max will be invited to help with a blog post on the subject of grafting so his wealth of knowledge will be on the Food Garden Group blog for all to use.

One of the many bits of info Marg gave us was that she, after her compost heaps began to attract rats, switched to using the compost bins shown below. This is an anaerobic composting system that uses micro organisms and beneficial microbes to break down the food. The food scraps ferment rather than rot, hence avoiding any smell. The use of the bins means that rats now have nothing to look forward to in her garden. 

Many thanks to everyone who brought a truly wonderful array of produce and plants:

.... and helped providing a yummy morning tea.

Many thanks, Marg, for your hospitality, knowledge and preparedness to show us your garden!

Many thanks, Max, for sharing your great expertise in the area of grafting! We all learnt a lot.

This text was previously published on the Food Garden Group blog. It was written by Max Bee.