Hi all,

It has been a while since the last email, and I hope that you've all had productive summers in your gardens, learning many new things and furthering your gardening knowledge.

As the seasons change, it is important for the gardener to reflect back on what you have achieved over the season, considering the successes, failures, and in-betweens, and the possible reasons for why things went well or not so well. It is through this process of reflection and pondering that you will become a better gardener over the years. (Click 'read more' to see full article)

It can often pay to keep a note book on these types of things. Drawing a map of the different sections of your garden and numbering or naming them can help you keep track of which beds have had what crops and what soil amendments added to them. This can help you maintain a good crop rotation system, and ensure that you add inputs (compost, seaweed, lime etc) to all of the different areas at the desired intervals.

Furthering this concept of gardening observations through time,  I would like to invite you all to head over to the Otepoti Urban Organics web forums (www.urbanorganics.org , click 'discussion forums'), to join in discussion on how your summer season went, and what you've got planned for the upcoming autumn and winter. By combining our knowledge, we can learn from each others mistakes and successes. Utilising the networking abilities of this web resource gives its users access to an immense local gardening knowledge. If all of our list members contribute in the forums, we have the combined gardening experience of well over 100 years, and likely much more.

The past few months have seen progress made on several fronts in the Dunedin urban gardening community:

TRANSITION VALLEY 473
A major project on working towards sustainable community has begun in North East Valley and surrounding suburbs. 'Transition Valley 473' (in relation to the first 3 digits of phone numbers in this area) is the local offshoot of the global 'Transition Towns' movement, in which local people implement initiatives at a community level. Focus areas include energy, transport, food, waste and more. Otepoti Urban Organics is having active involvement with the food sector of this project, and anyone is welcome to contribute ideas for this initiative.

Upcoming events include screenings of "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil,", starting today (it's already been sorry) at Normanby Tavern. But have no fear! The video is screening 3 more times at different locations around the valley this week:
Tuesday 17th March: 7:00pm at Opoho Presbytarian Church, 50 Signal Hill Road
Wednesday 18th March: 7:00pm at North East Valley Baptist Church, 268 North Road
Thursday 19th March: 7:00pm at Liberton Christian School, Pine Hill

For more information on Transition Valley visit http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/dunedinnorth

HEALTHY LIFESTYLES WEEK
The week from 30th March - 3rd April is Healthy Lifestyles week on the Otago Uni Campus. Monday the 30th March will see a demonstration on setting up a veggie garden and composting held on the Union Lawn coordinated by members of the OUSA club 'SEA' (Students for Environmental Action)

OTEPOTI URBAN ORGANICS IN THE MEDIA
In the past couple of months we have recieved mention in the Otago Daily Times ( http://www.odt.co.nz/your-town/dunedin/40314/student-working-towards-sustainability ) , as well as Critic magazine's recent 'Rough Guide To Gardening' ( http://www.critic.co.nz/about/features/177 ) . We also had a brief mention in an article on urban gardening in 'Good' magazine. While at times it feels like our group gets lost in the massive tidal wave that is the resurgence of the organic gardening movement on an international scale, I feel that our little network is making a genuine difference to the accessibility of gardening information to Otago people. With each contribution to the web forums or gardening guide, the resources are strenghtened. And with each person you talk to about gardening in real life, be it your friends, family, neighbours or strangers, you help to spread that information and inspire people to grow more veges - which is the main goal of this organisation.

Anyway folks thats about it for now. Good luck with your autumn and winter growing seasons; I am confident that we can all be harvesting decent crops of winter veg despite frosts, snow and short day lengths. Don't forget to head on over to the forums for discussion on autumn gardening, we can pick each others brains!!

Cheers,
Bart

*To sign up to recieve group emails from Otepoti Urban Organics, email us at otepoti.urban.organics@gmail.com