Sad news, our volunteers arrived at the hub on Tuesday morning to broken windows at our Hub at the Korumburra Railway Station building. As we rent this space and our lease holds Grow Lightly responsible for window damage repairs, we are now having to not only pay for glass disposal and replacement windows but we're looking at different options to prevent this happening again in future. This is not what a not for profit wants to spend our limited funds on, and it's tiring and

The Grow Lightly 2026 AGM was moved to August this year to accomodate more attendees from the usual November schedule which is usually the busy end of year season. The meeting began with an acknowledgement of country. Grow Lightly acknowledges and pays respect to the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation, The Traditional Custodians and Elders, past and present and emerging. We acknowledge their continuing connection to this land, sky and culture. We welcome the progress of Trea

On Thursday 16th July, the Food System Alliance invited our local community of growers and producers to attend a free event in Korumburra. Bringing together small-scale and independent growers for a practical, no-nonsense planning workshop focused on turning big ideas into something that actually works on the ground. If you're interested in reading about the current legislation around leafy green vegetables, berries and melons, HERE is the link to the Info Sheet from Agricult

The Grow Lightly AGM will be held on Sunday 20th August 2026 with new board member positions and volunteering roles including delivery driving roles becoming available. Becky Banks, our Grow Lightly chairperson is stepping aside from her current role to welcome a new face, yet to be detemined, as the position of chairperson, she's very keen to continue her involvement with Grow Lightly but in a different capacity. Becky's work as initiative lead for the BCSGFSA Grow Lightly p

The Bass Coast South Gippsland Food System Alliance have organised an upcoming course at Milpara Community House in Korumburra. Presented by 2 fantastic teachers, Piggery Road Permaculture, Penelope Swales is an experience Permaculture educator, and Carolyn Rowson is a founder of the Kongwak Nursery and community garden. There are still places available for this course which is quite an affordable option, for such a comprehensive course. Learn about Permaculture, different te

You are invited... to the Grow Lightly AGM on Sunday 30th August 2026, starting at 12 noon sharp for a quick AGM, followed by a light lunch and housewarming celebration of our new Grow Lightly Hub, located at the Korumburra Railway Station Building, Station Street, Korumburra 3950. We have sent invitations via email to our current mailing list, incase you missed it see below for more details. If you'd like to join our mailing list you can do so over on our website HERE. This

As you might well have heard, Grow Lightly have moved into our new hub, located at the beautiful Korumburra Railway Station building, and have a 3 year lease with VicTrack for a section of the building, the left side from the breezeway when standing in front looking toward the building on Station Street. This includes room for a much larger refrigerated cold room, to store the produce to help ensure quality and freshness, as well as some storage and basic office space for the

Whether you spell it as 'Lasagne', or 'Lasagna', either way it's delicious and you can change it to suit almost any dietary requirements. Gluten free, dairy free, vegan, vegetarian, low fod-map, nut and seed free, the list goes on. We've embraced the seasonal food available in winter and made a Vegetarian pumpkin and spinach lasagne. You can go the easy route and purchase lasagne pasta sheets that do not require pre-boiling, and select from a range of wheat based or gluten fr

The Grow Lightly Shop Team, had the last Tuesday delivery day at our Coal Creek Hub before our big move to the new location, The Korumburra Railway Station. With local growers and producers popping by to drop off their goods, ready to be picked and packed for customer orders the following day. Lucy, our super duper shop manager was busy sorting out and receiving deliveries and the amazing team of volunteers, lead by Helen, got to work as they do each week, but with both a lit

The Grow Lightly hub will be moving this June 2026, as the council has ended the lease at the Silkstone Road building and it is set for demolition. After months and months of hard work and negotiations the team has secured a new 3 year lease with VicTrack to call The Korumburra Railway Station home. A huge shout out to Grow Lightly Chairperson Becky Banks and the Grow Lightly board members, for the enormous effort facilitating this new lease, and finding Grow Lighty's new hom

Starting a compost pile might seem like a daunting task for new gardeners, but the benefits are worth learning how to turn your garden and kitchen waste into garden gold. Compost can be complicated if you choose to dive deep into the science, but it doesn't have to be difficult if you just want to start somewhere small to use up your kitchen scraps and garden cuttings. Like most things, compost is about getting the balance right for the best result. Nature has its own ways of

With both warm and cool days and the amount of rain we've had lately the army of snails, slugs, earwigs, slaters and their hungry friends on the march and they're probably headed right to your seedlings and growing vegies! You don't need to use harmful synthetic chemical pesticides, in fact our Growers are required to sign a Growers' Charter which can be found HERE to agree that they will not use synthetic pesticides in the production of the food grown for Grow Lightly. So ho

I recently visited Garry, a local Grower in Loch who kindly gave me a tour of his vegie patch and as we wandered up and down the rows, he gave a tour describing what he was growing at the moment and his plans for future crops. We enjoyed talking about growing different varieties, success from past seasonal crops, the local growing conditions, rainfall, gum trees and their impact on different neighbouring plants, and all the different flavours of citrus fruit he has. Speaking

Apples are an abundant autumnal seasonal food, some varieties can be grown throughout different times of year but for the majority of varieties, the fruit is harvested in Autumn. One way of ensuring your abundance doesn't get wasted is to first protect the crop from birds and insect pests like coddling moth, and once harvested, to use safe food preservation methods, such as dehydrating. Julie recently shared these photos, dehydrating the beautiful Red love Apples. Dehydrating

Those that attended the Foster Agricultural Show back on the 28th February and took home a kit from the Bass Coast South Gippsland Food System Alliance to conduct the citizen science project for Healthy Soil, Healthy People initiative called, "SOIL YOUR UNDIES" will be almost ready to start digging up their undies to see the results, make sure to post a photo of your results to the Cotton Info Map, found via this link HERE . Did your soil eat away at the cotton undies and alm

Chestnuts can be a lot of work to prepare if you don't know the easy air fryer method! Chestnut season begins in April and peaks in May in South Gippsland, our region has many large established trees dotted along the fence lines of paddocks and in people's gardens. Chestnuts have a spiky outer shell, which needs to be removed, and around 2 or 3 nuts can be found inside each one. Use gloves, garden tools or even your shoe to help to separate them from their spiky chambers. Sto

Fertiliser is a hot topic at the moment, with the many situations in the world and some of the Aussie farmers saying they're expecting to reduce their crops by up to 40%-60% this season due to rising fuel and fertiliser costs, it's the perfect time to be proactive and start growing, or grow more of your own food for you and your family, and selling to your community, through local enterprises like Grow Lightly. One of the simplest ways to make a zero cost or low cost fertilis

Recently a member of the Korumburra Permaculture group showed the group around her property (we'll call her M) with a key focus on worm farming and the methods she uses. In a beautiful greenhouse, in South Gippsland, is a haven for worms. The best worm restaurant in town! Because M doesn't just feed her worms any old scraps from the kitchen, she's set up an insinkerator that she travelled to Melbourne to buy, in her greenhouse to create a special wet food pulp for her worms,

Worms are one of the most important creatures in our soil and gardens, not only do they eat organic material such as old fallen leaves and turn them into new soil, they add air and fluff up the soil as they move around in it, creating a healthier, and better environment for their microbe friends who also live in the soil. Recently we discovered a new Melbourne based company called Wormly , who make worm hotels for small and large gardens. With sustainability in mind, their mi

Grow Lightly founder Gil Freeman sadly passed away after a short illness. We are very sad to share this news with our community, we are taking this time to reflect on the positive changes Gil made to our community and the moments we shared together. We are proud to have known him and honoured to continue his legacy. We pass on this message from Gil's family as published in The Age - Obituaries: On the 25th of March, we lost our beloved husband, father, father-in-law, grandfat