MEKEM GARDEN
Now is the time to be mulching By ASERA GEORGE SAVEKA
HELLO everyone, my name is Asera George Saveka and in my garden you will find fruit trees including starfruit, lychee, custard apple and now dragonfruit. I also grow my own basic root vegetables, traditional to the Torres Strait region, including taro, sweet potatoes, yams and cassava. I would like to share my passion for gardening through my role as Regional Landcare Facilitator at the Torres Strait Regional Authority’s Land and
Sea Management Unit. In this role, I am committed to helping improve community knowledge and skills in growing their own fruits and vegetables, supporting traditional food plants on different islands and helping with replanting native vegetation. The best part of my job is being able to help communities, schools, industry bodies and government agencies to work together to improve community health, through growing more of our own food in our own backyards, community gardens and
school playgrounds. I feel really lucky to have this opportunity and I’m very excited about restoring and renewing the traditional food-growing methods that our Elders taught us, handed down from generation to generation. In combination with new materials and ways of doing things, I believe we can improve the way our communities feed and sustain themselves, and tackle some of the health issues facing Torres Strait communities along the way. Through educating communities in sustainable gardening, we can
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Page 12 Torres News
12 - 18 August 2013
improve sustainability in the Torres Strait and restore our way of life in terms of growing food and having an active, healthy lifestyle. Some communities are already enjoying access to fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs from established community gardens while others are keen to set one up. Many other people are working across their backyards sharing ideas, cuttings, seeds and produce. Other community activities include trialling hydroponics and experimenting with local materials to make mulch and compost. I regularly make community visits to share my technical gardening tips and advice and learn the traditional ways specific to the island from our traditional elders. Tip - Now is the time for mulching your garden! Mulching is very important, not only for retaining moisture in the soil, but it also prevents weeds and, depending
George Saveka promoting worm farming during one of his community education sessions. on the mulch you use, If unable to rinse, of the plants. for adding nutrients to cover the seaweed with If you have any quesyour soil. plastic or store in plastic tions about gardening, a I use seaweed that has bags and leave in the sun story about your garden washed up on the beach. for a full week to help or traditional gardening It’s free and available decompose the salts in you’d like to share or but make sure you give the seaweed. would like a little help it a good rinse through When you mulch the with your garden, send before putting it on the garden, don’t let the me an email at george. garden. mulch touch the trunks saveka@tsra.gov.au.
Election is the best soap opera on TV
The
ARE you following the probably would be hospitalfederal election? ised for months. You should do. It’s And now a new contender the best soap opera on has thrown his hat into the television at the moment. ring, and this one is not actuIt has all the colourful ally asking for your vote. characters you could wish Rupert Murdoch has sent for, and in true soap opera his senior hatchet man - known An irreverent, satirical (and totally fictional) comment in the media underworld as style, they are all a tad upon the issues of life, by our faceless correspondent. Col Pot - to Australia. exaggerated and quite unbelievable. Like his Cambodian is a hairy chested right winger, Centre stage we have the old ready to sort out boat people with namesake, Comrade Pot does not campaigners, Tony Ears (right) torpedoes. believe in taking prisoners and and Weasel Kevin (left). This is a problem for Tony he is here to ensure that only an We are not hearing too much Ears who has spent recent years acceptable government is elected. from Tony at the moment, partly convincing us he is more conWeasel Kevin clearly won’t because he has said just about eve- servative than Our Julia and do, and the Murdoch papers are rything already but also because it now finds himself out-flanked by making sure we understand that. is hard to talk about policy options Kevin the Hun. Tony Ears, well, maybe. without becoming specific. It all depends on policy. SpeWhat else? News that Bob Tony doesn’t do specifics. Katter and Clive Palmer had sat cifically, on whether the NBN We are hearing a lot more from down some time ago to see if can be crippled or even stopped The Weasel, perhaps because he they could reach an agreement to altogether. has a harder job to do. The nation’s future depends cooperate. He has to convince Labor Both sides agreed that sorting entirely on whether new technolvoters that he is a fine, upstanding out the leadership between Clive ogy is permitted to challenge chap, full up to the ears with and Bob would be a bit like put- Murdoch’s Australian gold mine integrity. He has to convince ting two cats (or hippos) in a sack. - Foxtel, and Col Pot has ways of the rest of the country that he If anything emerged alive, it stopping things happening.
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