Fresh food from Karguru

Maggie Williamson eats her greens and explains
why we should too

One of our major projects is the hydroponics, which is for food for commercial sale. Tennant Foodbarn will be the main buyer, as well as the town restaurants - lettuce, basil, silverbeet, a few different herbs as well. It will be an on going project, so we'll be producing here from February to October each year - by hydroponics. The main project here is growing plants for Landcare, that's through the Buramana and CDEP Landcare projects of Julalikari Council. At the moment we do consultation and we find out what plants are needed on communities and reticulation needs as well. The people on the communities tell us what plants they need and then we grow it. We're growing everything from seeds at the moment. From the seedlings in to the tubes, we only grow up to 150ml pots and once they are a good size they go out to the communities where they might be used as wind breaks, shade or dust suppression.
Most of the plants are indigenous to this area. They are mostly Eucalypts, Acacias and other natives.
Some are introduced shade trees such as the Neem trees - they are really popular and so are the Poinciana trees. It's whatever people want really, they might see something in town and say "We want those".
We want to be able to grow from cuttings but we haven't got the facilities at the moment but there is some funding available through CDEP, so we're going to be upgrading the Greenhouse and then we can propagate by using cuttings to grow exotic shrubs and ground cover.
At the moment we buy the fruit trees from Darwin and they are sent down here and are then allocated to communities. The communities want to start growing their own fruit trees for commercial production.
The immediate advantage for the community is the ability to purchase nutritious and delicious produce fresh from our own back yard.