#BeeChallenge2020

Hello fellow pollinator supporter!
We welcome you on this journey and hope you attract some pollinators. Spread the word to your friends, as we want to ensure all 200 packets get a good home.

Do not forget to send pictures of your journey and any pollinators to be eligible for the prize pool.

The Competition
The competition is simple. Send in photos of your journey and of the pollinators that visit with roughly $500 total prize pool of vouchers for the best photos. There will be a few categories, best picture, best effort, best pollinator etc.
We don’t know what the status of restrictions will be in the next four months. So, we will look at Mitre10 vouchers and Phillip Island Landcare membership vouchers, which includes 10-30 free local plants from Barb Martin Bush Bank.
Competition closes at the end of November 2020, hopefully enough time for some of the plants to flower. The results will be announced the following week on the page.

What is in the packet?
The seeds are source from Eden Seeds (www.edenseeds.com.au). According to their page:
Bee Flower Mix (Beneficial Insect Mix)
Colourful mix of flowers and herbs, annuals and perennials to attract insects like lace wings, lady bugs, hoverflies, wasps and bees. Promotes natural biodiversity. May be planted through-out the garden or in a block of its own to grow wild. 20g will cover 10 sqm when sown in rows about 30cm apart. Includes; Alyssum, Basil, Borage, Buckwheat, Calendula, Centaurea, Coriander, Cosmos, Dill, Gypsophila, Lucerne, Marigolds, Radish, Sweet William, Californian Poppy, Clover, Fennel, Lacy Phacelia, Nemophila, Rudbeckia.
Feel free to plant in pots, or any size area you don’t mind getting a little wild. Plant after last frost outside. We often just cast the seeds out on a small patch and rake them into the soil, no rocket science required 😊.
As these are not native seeds, please ensure it doesn’t get too wild, a non-native flower in a wrong place is a weed (even if it is pretty).

EDIT: Native Mix

Good news and bad news.

Good news: We received the seeds and are working to unpack and repack them in land fill compostable bags (few more days). If you want Native Mix say so when emailing info@wasiak.com.au.

*Bad News: Two non-native seeds somehow made it into the native mix. Notable Alyssum and Canary Nastrutium. Both are pollinator friendly but not native to Australia.

So the packets will be 90% natives but not 100%. We apologise for this, we thought we had ordered only native 🙁.

Why run the competition?
We are in the early stages of building a permaculture horticultural farm near Berry’s Beach, it will not go live for several years.
As a part of our Organisational Social Responsibility Plan we wish to engage with the community to make Phillip Island a better place for flora and fauna. To that end we are planting over 800 locally sourced native plants, shrubs and trees just this year. We also have one bee hive to pollinate our cover crops that are being used to regenerate the hard clay to an organic carbon rich soil. But it will take years of rehabilitation.
Through the prizes we want to support local businesses too, for the island is a family and we should look to help each other as a family.
We had planned to launch next month, but we think given the current issues in Victoria, best to start early and give people an easy iso project. Please forgive us for the typos and hurried documentation.

Who are we?
Family run organisation with friends and the community helping us along the journey to sustainable permaculture farming.
We sponsor via paid membership both Phillip Island Land Care and the Phillip Island Conservation Society but are not affiliated with any organisations. We have no affiliation with the Eden Seeds. We order our other seeds from them and they usually have an excellent germination rates.

Photo Privacy
The pictures may be published to the FB page, to help get the word out about the importance of being pollinators supporters and other promotions, so try to ensure the pictures do not have any things that might identify you or your property. We take privacy seriously. Named photos will only be at the explicit permission of the person sending the pictures.

Data Privacy
You may get the occasional email to track your status during the competition, but strictly no marketing. All contact details are deleted at the end of the competition and never shared with any other organisation.

Communication
Will be posting updates on the FB page and may email you a couple times to see how you are progressing, no marketing material or daily spam.
Please send photos throughout the competition to info@wasiak.com.au. Please select your favourite pictures, please don’t send hundreds of near identical photos.

Kind regards,

Wasiak & Co.
info@wasiak.com.au
#BeeChallenge2020