[UrbanCropCircle] Gardening Program for March Gathering 3/22

Wed Mar 3 18:07:04 PST 2010

This is what's happening from City Fruit wsdhom I've been involved with picking fruit an Ballard.  I met Gail long ago when she came to speak at a meeting, but she has a wealth of info about all things city and fruit.
paula

The calendar quote for March reads:  "all we have is our hands and a hole in god's earth". . . Federico Garcia Lorca.  Sometimes that seems very true.

Already lots has happened in the world of fruit trees, and more is about to.  Here goes:  

Mar 6   Pruning Grape Vines   9
am - noon. Learn to prune and train grape vines from Larry Davis,
WSU-King County Master Gardener. $15 members/$20 general.  Register at Brown Paper Tickets or send a check to City Fruit, PO Box 28577, Seattle 98118.

Spring Fruit Shows.  Take your choice: travel north to Mt. Vernon, March 6, for the Western Washington Fruit Research Foundation Spring Show,
where you can buy scion wood, see grafting and pruning demonstrations,
hear talks on apple pests, and roam through the extensive orchard of
heritage apples and pears. On March 14, the Seattle Tree Fruit Society
's Spring Fruit & Grafting show offers lectures on grafting, summer
pruning, mason bees, cider making, rootstocks and figs, as well as
selling rootstock, scion cuttings, maggot barriers and other supplies--and sharpening tools.

NEW!   Tree Care Hand-outs Available.   Our new Pruning Fruit Trees and How to Plant a Fruit Tree hand-outs provide basic information for lay growers.  Each features a set of clear and beautiful drawings (courtesy of Tabitha Borchardt) that illustrate exactly what you need to do.  Download these Quick Reference Guides at www.cityfruit.org .

144 People Completed Survey. With
a 28 percent response rate to our online survey, we got a good handle
on some key organizational issues. The biggest surprise—to me—was that
a quarter of the respondents had four or more fruit trees, and three-quarters had at least one tree.  Of
those who had trees, more than half had apple trees. In terms of
classes, people want pruning (60%), canning (49%), espalier (46%) --
also fruit drying, grafting, cider-making, picking in the wild and
growing fruit in apartments. Other requests included:  Wholesale
price access to books and tools. Urban agriculture political advocacy.
Urban fruit tours. Get togethers for canning, cider-making, and
harvesting.

In
terms of joining City Fruit, many people wondered why they should pay
to join an organization that has been providing ‘free’ harvesting and
fruit distribution:  in other words, “Why do you need money?”  We realized that the costs of harvesting ‘free’ fruit are invisible to many people, and that education may be the first step.

Blog.  A reminder to check out the Blog at www.cityfruit.org/blog/ .  James keeps adding new  videos—How to Espalier.  Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move launch.  Jamie
Oliver’s TED lecture (Jamie holds up a beet in a classroom and asks "Do
you know what this is?" The kids take a stab: “Carrot?”)  Will Allen in Seattle. Growing grapes.  A clip from the documentary The Greenhorns.

Pruning fever.  
Led by Don Ricks, twenty-five volunteers from City Fruit, Holy Cross
Lutheran Church and the Compass Center pruned two dozen apple, pear,
Asian pear and quince trees on the church's property -- part of the
church's new urban ag project.  And the Marra Farm orchard -- about 50
trees strong -- was pruned by a group from City Fruit, Seattle Tree
Fruit Society, and Lettuce Link: "The ground was flat, the sun was out
and there were about 50 trees. . . . It is amazing what you can do with
11 people working on the same general task,"  says John Reardon, lead
pruner.  City Fruit volunteers armed with pruners and loppers have
worked at Bradner Gardens and numerous private homes.  If you want to
get some hands-on, real world experience pruning fruit trees, let me
know.

Facebook/Twitter:
If you're on Facebook and Twitter, follow us! Find out the latest about
City Fruit in both places and find links to developments across the
country in urban farming and other food news. Friend us on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/cityfruit and follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/cityfruit.

Local Urban Ag Initiatives
A new Regional Food Policy Council has been created as an advisory committee of the Puget Sound Regional Council.  The group will “. . . identify
gaps in the region’s food system and . . . help our region move towards
a food system that supports healthy people and communities and
environmental sustainability.”  It’s members will be food producers, distributors, processors, consumers and others.  Contact Olivia Robinson at orobinson at psrc.org if you’re interested in participating.  In February, a City of Seattle Web site --  http://seattle.gov/urbanagriculture/  -- was launched to herald 2010 as the Year of Urban Agriculture.  Seattle initiatives are listed on the site.

I've attached a handout on Fruit Trees: What to Plant and Where to Buy It and a calendar of March fruit-related events.  Also, if you would like your name removed from this update, let me know.

Support us!  And,
of course, we appreciate your support.  Join City Fruit online or send
a check to City Fruit, PO Box 28577, Seattle, WA  98118.  Memberships
are $30 for individuals, $50 for households.

Take care!

Gail 

Subject: Re: Gardening Program for March Gathering 3/22
From: jenny at sustainableballard.org
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:45:57 -0800
CC: admin at lists.sustainableballard.org; pjjenson1 at hotmail.com; andrea at sustainableballard.org; rhonda at sustainableballard.org; urbancropcircle at lists.sustainableballard.org
To: ingela at qwest.net

Alright -  Let's drop admin and UCC off this thread and have Jenny, Ingela, Rhonda, Paula and Andrea coordinate.  We'll get you all back in the loop once we have the plan set.
On Mar 3, 2010, at 10:33 AM, Ingela Wanerstrand wrote:Wow! this is great to see so much support for gardening in SB!
Of course I'm willing to help put the March program together-especially when I don't have top do it all myself :0)
and with support from our president even (when I didn't hear back from you I figured you were really,really busy,so thanks!)
I think having Seattle Farm Coop is great.
Permaculture too-I can ask Jenny Pell since I need to get back to her about a project plan I'm reviewing for her that  I'm sure she'd like the opportunity to tell folks about.
If we could get Conlin,great!
I'd also add City Fruit - for all things happening w/ fruit in the city.
Love the idea of having UCC folks,Laura & her garden sharing,Michael etc tell their stories. 
Seattle Tilth would be great for us too,of course, but I wouldn't be too disappointed if they decline again.
Being the Mothership of sustainable gardening is Seattle with classes that fill up fast,
and focusing their outreach efforts on the East side of the lake where there is more need,they don't have much need to come.
I think of groups like ours as picking up the over flow and extending their efforts,like mycelium does for plant roots.
Also doing things that they don't like having UCC groups or Edible Garden Tours.
As a member of Tilth wanting to support them, what I've done in past programs,
classes etc is to make their class lists,Nat garden Hotline cards etc available to folks.

I've been asked to do a gardening program for the Subset Hill Community Center's meeting on March 31st.
When we get the program finalized,I'll let y'all know and send the info out to UCC & SB.
Hopefully we can get flier for the Edible Garden Tour by then to hand out too.
Thanks everyone!!
~Ingela

On Mar 2, 2010, at 5:53 PM, jenny heins wrote:

I put this as the intro for the newsletter.  Fulvio, can you make it format right?

On Mar 2, 2010, at 5:18 PM, Andrea Faste wrote:

Here's the March poem,   from Mary Oliver's  New & Selected Poems

Children, It's Spring

And this is the lady                                       to be picked by careful fingers,
whom everyone loves,                         young fingers, entranced
Ms. Violet                                                     by what has happened
in her purple gown                                  to the world.

or, on special occasions,                           We, the older ones,
a dress the color                                          call it Spring,
of sunlight.  She sits                                   and we have been through it 
in the mossy weeds and waits                      many times.

to be noticed.                                             But there is still nothing
She loves dampness.                                  like the children bringing home
She loves attention.                                  such happiness
She loves especially                                     in their small hands.

On Mar 2, 2010, at 3:02 PM, jenny heins wrote:

I'm loving Garden Month and wrapping these 3 together.  
I sent out these 3 emails:
Richard Conlin - City Initiatives (Local Food, Urban Ag, etc)
Amy & Charmaine - Seattle Farm Coop
Liza Burke - Seattle Tilth

we'll see what turns up.

On Mar 2, 2010, at 2:38 PM, Andrea Faste wrote:

 Ingela didn't mention the 3/31 event yesterday at Urban Crop Circle, I'd not heard of it before just now, but I don't see any great conflict, either.

 What I do know is that Mayor McGinn will be addressing the "green" infrastructure on March 14 at the Groundswell annual meeting, so I like Julia's idea of calling March garden month.

I'm in favor of focusing our MG local GARDENING RESOURCES like TILTH.org so that people are aware of the solid gardening support there is in the city.  I don't know if Jenny is doing her SmallWonder starts, but that's another resource.  Also, Walt's Organics, and other local businesses.  I'd also love to just have a relaxed conversation about the inedible joy and wonder of growing things and playing in the dirt.  All that poetic stuff summed up by Voltaire....'there's always the garden.'

On Mar 2, 2010, at 12:55 PM, Julia Field wrote:

What if we made it gardening month, and focused the MG on some other aspects than what Ingela is covering in her talk?  Get Richard Conlin to come talk about all that the city is initiating?  And maybe also some brief examples of how to grow food when you don't have a yard, like Michael talking about claiming a neighbor's spare space, Laura McLeod on her garden share, someone on growing food in containers (for apt/condo dwellers)?  

Doing something else quick - screen a movie and have a discussion?  Serve popcorn.  City Chickens came up as a possibility - this could tie into growing food, sort of....  Or Kathy was talking about End of Suburbia 2 or something? 

On Mar 2, 2010, at 10:51 AM, jenny heins wrote:

Obviously not.  I knew I should have sent those Advance notes out earlier!!  I got them all posted right away and then got stuck by the fact that they are in a protected board space and I wanted to make them accessible to everyone.  

I knew that Ingela and Carol Beers had been talking about doing something collaboratively around gardening at SHCC, so this must be the first result of that discussion.  I had only heard that they were talking about another learning garden.

Not just us - Apparently Paula who is in the Garden Guild is not aware either - she just replied to my email asking for help with the Monthly Gathering saying that she would like to help, but didn't mention this.  Maybe we can spin this as "March is Gardening Month for SB"?

This also serves as a reminder of why we need to make sure that all the key people are able to come to Advances.  So glad that we have set the dates for the rest of them for the year.  Amy, can you take  responsibility to ensure that we have a rep from every guild at all the upcoming advances?  And, if not possible, initiate date change so that we do?

Or, does someone have a completely other topic for March, quick?  There were some that we piled all together like kids & families, bees and 20 ways to get to know your neighbors, or barter fair and sustainable economies.

FYI - here is the link to the Advance notes.  We need a discussion about how to make them accessible to all participants if not to the whole SB community.
http://sustainableballard.org/wiki/index.php?title=Board:Advance:_February_2010

Jenny

On Mar 2, 2010, at 10:10 AM, Julia Field wrote:

Hi Admin,

I just saw this in the Groundswell newsletter.  How is it that we have scheduled two similar events a week apart?  Do we know what "we" are up to? 

Wed, 03/31: Edible Gardens

This is a gardening program co-sponsored with Sustainable Ballard. Ingela Wanerstrand of Green Darner Garden Design will discuss many topics to get you started gardening--tools, soils, garden books and other resources; and especially edibles. We will also have a few vendors, offering starts, fertilizer info, seeds, and other gardening goodies.
 Time: 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
 Location: Sunset Hill Clubhouse
 Contact: Michael McCutcheon, 271-2265

For more information about Groundswell NW and these opportunities, please contact Andrea Faste,  amfaste at comcast.net or 783-6963; or Dave Boyd, dave.boyd1 at comcast.net or 498-6636.

Please explore our web site: www.groundswellnw.org. Click here to change your email address or unscubscribe.

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