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many of you know that the Community Growers Network (what many of  you joined this spring) has a Council. The Council leads the Network – the activities, events, projects, and resource
distribution (think compost!)

we are so proud of our Council, but we need more of you! the Council meets about 6 times a year, while breaking up into committees to work on events and projects.  there are lots of perks to being on the Council – if you’re interested, please let me know and we can chat more about it.

we’re having a Council Social Hour to meet the present Council and also meet potential Council members on Tues. May 22nd, 5-7pm at our office.

we’ll have wine and snacks.  lots of fun will be had!

Please Join us for the work weekend, tomorrow Saturday, April 21 (9-2) & Sunday, April 22 (10-2). You are welcome to come early or stay later.

There is a whiteboard on the back side of the bulletin board where chores will be marked.

Remember this time is meant for tending the entire garden, not your own plot. Please wear sturdy shoes, gloves and work clothing.  If you have extra cordless power tools to bring, please bring them. Hammers & hand saws are also appreciated.

I’d like to have a general garden meeting around 11 on Saturday.

If you decide to come earlier in the day:

• Weed around your plot(s) and at least one plot outwardly in all directions.
• The perimeter of the garden may be weeded
  • do not cut back any of the raspberries, blackberries nor grapes.
    
• Remove any trash from the area.
• Please do not put garden waste in the trash cans. They are meant for regular trash.
• Put garden refuse in the leftmost compost bins only. Break down large woody stems into pieces no longer than 6″.
• Everything in the shed needs to come out and be organized
• The shed needs to be swept out / reconfigured.
  • If anyone has an old, smallish chest of drawers that they want to get rid of: this would be a nice thing to donate to the shed.
• weed and fix bricks around the terrace

I’m sure there are plenty more things to do, but this is just a preliminary list if you prefer to work in the early hours. There should still be the notebook in the shed to record your time spent at the garden. Remember that every member is required to donate at least 2 hours per month outside of their plots in the garden.

If the weather turns terribly sour tomorrow and Sunday, we’ll postpone the work weekend for the next weekend. If it’s just a little rainy (sprinkles and such) the work weekend continues.

I look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow.

This year we know that the Grower’s Network is only planning on using Rhode Island Resource Recovery (RIRRC) compost, which is fine (more below); what we need to decide is if we want to join it or fend for ourselves.

Here are our options for what we can do:

OPTION ONE

Join the Grower’s Network with the South Side Community Land Trust

The compost they are providing this year is organically-certified; however, it is mostly composed of leaves, grass clippings and wood chips with little in the way of nutrition. This means that:

• The compost from RIRRC is great for conditioning the soil quality
• The compost from RIRRC is not a nutritious compost.

The way I see it is that we have our own compost already that consists of much of these things and the RIRRC is very inexpensive, so I think we could probably agree to cooperate to get whatever we need from RIRRC on our own time schedule.

Joining the network costs the garden at least $500.

The price of the RIRRC compost is about $30/yd

OPTION TWO: An Opt-in.

Allow the gardeners to opt-in together to buy compost from Earth Care Farm, which is much more expensive but also nutritionally dense, removing the need to add continuous extra fertilizer. In this case, those that would want the compost would opt-in, therefore the price would be reflective of how many people want collective compost. For most plots, an additional $10-$20 should suffice, but it will give the individual gardener the power to choose how much or how little s/he can afford – or would like – to put into the pot.

Pricing Info

Kurt Teichert (resident since 2011, new board member) did some research for the board to help us come up with some solution to our composting issue. He writes:

Hi All,

I spoke with Mike Merner yesterday at the composting conference about prices and delivery.

Earth Care Farm compost is $54/yd and delivery is about $240 and the truck can haul a max of 20 cu yds. http://www.earthcarefarm.com/pricing.htm

My rough estimate is that this would allow for ~ 1 inch of compost for each of ~130 plots. This equates to $10 per plot for gardeners to add 1 inch of compost to a 4 x 8 plot.

I think 1 inch is the minimum that should be applied.

—
The Class-A compost (now also organic) from RIRRC is listed at $30/yd http://www.rirrc.org/resident/composting/residential-compost-sales/

For those of you that were with us through the 2010 season, recall that we were given the Earth Care Farm compost; Last year we were given the RIRRC compost.

So I want to open the discussion up and see if we can come up with a plan.

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It is less than one week until we hold our second annual Seed Swap at the Portuguese-American Social Club, 32 Sheldon St., Providence, RI.  I hope all of you can come because along with seeds to trade, we will have two speakers, Michael Bradlee (EcoRI) and John Kenny (Big Train Farm)  joining us to talk about soil building and composting.

Other than yourselves, what to bring:

• This is a semi-potluck event. If you want to bring some kind of appetizer or snack food, please don’t hesitate to do so. It should pair nicely with bar drinks as there is a cash bar downstairs that supports the P-ASC, so please support them responsibly   It is not required that you bring anything, but it is appreciated.
• If you are bringing seeds, please try to include as much information about them as you have, for instance, how long they take to grow, if they are annual or perennial, any special care (shade or full sun), etc.
• If you are renewing your plot, please be prepared to sign the new contract and bring your dues by way of a check made out to Fox Point Community Garden.
• We are not handing out open plots yet, so if you are on the wait list, there is no need to bring payment. But we’d still love to have you come to the Seed Swap and get to know your future neighbor gardeners. FYI: I’ll be starting to assign plots around St. Patrick’s Day after the bulk of our resident gardeners have renewed.
• If you are receiving this email and you DO NOT want to renew, please let me know so I can open up your plot for assignment in March. You are still welcome to the Seed Swap, and I hope you come!
• If you will be out of town for the seed swap and want to renew, do not fret. We will meet up at another date to take care of it. I am just trying to get the bulk of the resident gardeners renewed so I know what’s open, but I won’t give away your plot without communicating with you first.

To download a .pdf of the Seed Swap flier for your fridge, click here.

Happy pre-Spring, yo’s!!

k

Print a flyer for your fridge! PDF File HERE

So this weather, right? It’s amazing.

And it’s been getting me down into the garden regularly to check on things. I’ve seen a few of you down there, too! I did notice several plots that have not yet been “put away” so I want to emphasize that plots that are still harboring tomato vines & cages are going to be considered abandoned and will be given out to gardeners on the wait list. I highly suggest that if you haven’t already cleaned up your plot for winter, that you do. Really, with weather like this, who can even complain about doing it?

Onward for more lovely subjects:

We are compiling recipes for our Community Cook Book. It would be great to see recipes submitted that primarily contain food grown from the garden. If anybody is interested in working on this project with me, I’d love to have “a crew” to talk about how it might be best organized (i.e. seasonally, by ingredient, alphabetically…etc) as well as submit ideas and drawings or whatever ideas you might have, let’s make it a community effort!

But wait! There’s more!

We can talk more about the parameters of the cookbook project at the 2ND ANNUAL SEED SWAP, scheduled for February 29th at the Portuguese American Social Club, 32 Sheldon St., Providence. We will be renewing plots for the 2012 season, as well as doing sign-ups for greenhouse space at the event.  More info coming on that very soon. Until then, please send your recipes to me via email with COOKBOOK as the subject line. That will keep all the recipes in one thread so none get forgotten.

Also, because the weather has been so nice, I want to remind people that you all are free to use the greenhouse throughout the winter. Grow some microgreens!! Peas! Lettuces! Kale! Whatever! But please: use it.

I hope you all are enjoying a fantastic New Year and I look forward to seeing you again very soon!

Warmly,
k

PS If there are questions, please post them there in the comments for everyone to see. I will answer them through comments.

I want to first express my deepest gratitude for all the hard work so many of you have put into the garden this year. In my almost four years at the garden, I have never seen it so tidy and well-kept in general and this is clearly due to all your hard work.  So thank you so much, truly.

Many of you were at the Harvest party the on October 20, just a bit more than a week ago now. It was a super-duper family fun time! If you weren’t there, truly, you missed out on some great music, great food and a lot of general good will. But you guys already know that; I don’t need to rub it in.

We had the KC Moaners, semi-official garden Jug Band on site. If any of you get the chance to see these guys play, please do yourself a favor and take the time to go. They’re a hodge-podge assembly of home-made musicians, including their instruments. There aren’t many bands like this around today, so I hope you have opportunity to see them at some point.

The annual harvest party and fundraiser provides us with the means to better the garden. This year we were able to acquire the materials and the green house with the funds we raised at 2010’s harvest party. It also pays for a number of smaller things like replacement locks or watering cans, new hoses, etc. I only mention it because I want you guys to know what we do with the money we raise.

I know it was a little disappointing this year to not be able to offer honey from our garden. When Angel harvested the honey in 2010, her helping crew said they’d be surprised if the bees lasted the winter because they were suffering from Colony Collapse. To move that to a more literal statement, the hive actually collapsed during a windstorm, so even if they had made it through their own disease, they didn’t survive the elements. So Angel put in a new hive. And that is why we don’t have any honey this year. The bees need a certain amount of honey for themselves first, so what little is there needs to be left for them.

On the compost front, Hannah has done an amazing job of clearing and moving the debris and turning it into usable soil. Many people at the garden have expressed their gratitude for her taking the time and effort to reconcile our sorry-when-she-started position of the compost bins. I would like to bring up a couple reminder points about the bins to keep the system moving smoothly.

1) The bins are in an order specific to their decomposition. The order moves from left to right, the same way we read. All eligible debris should be put in the leftmost bin.
2) All eligible debris should be cut into small pieces for quicker decomposition.
3) Anything with seeds should go into the drowning buckets in front of the compost bins. We need to drown the seeds so that they don’t germinate next season.

On a similar note, the city has been picking up our trash and our brown bags (ineligible debris for compost). They have expressly stated that we cannot throw entire sunflowers into the trash. Sunflowers must be cut into reasonable lengths before being composted or otherwise disposed.  I think this length is between 3-6″. So please do not put any kind of plant matter into the trash bins without cutting them down. And really, beside the sunflower heads, the plant should really be composted in the leftmost bin of either compost station.

We have our next garden workday scheduled for Saturday, November 12. If you like to come earlier as opposed to later, that is fine, but be sure to mark your time/ plot# in the book located in the shed. The workday will officially begin around 10am. Poor weather date will be Sunday, November 13.  I

This will be a good date to plant your garlic for next year. I will have some garlic cloves available for gardeners at the workday. Whatever is left over (if anything) I will plant in the kid’s plot to grow as seed for next year for the gardeners.

You are welcome to use the garden throughout the winter, even the greenhouse or you may build a hoop house on your plot, but please remove all dead summertime plants, tomato cages or any kind of supports for summer fruits in preparation for next season on or before the workday, Saturday, November 12.

In February we’ll be having a seed swap & renewal at the Portuguese-American Social club. This will also be the place for signing up to use the greenhouse for spring. We will not be charging any money to use the greenhouse, but first serve will be given to those at the seed swap. Any spaces that are left over will be doled out afterward. We assume that people will be fair with space and usage and will respect their neighbors on an individual basis.

The seed swap will be in the later part of February; we’ll organize it according to the public school schedule so we can make sure that the most people have access to the swap. If you were at the swap last year, you’ll remember how much fun it was and what great seeds we were able to exchange and talk about. We hope to see you there!

Over the winter, also, we’ll be collecting recipes from the gardeners to put together a Community Cookbook. More information on this project will come with the first reliable snowfall In other words, more soon.

For now, that’s all I can think of to talk about. Any other additions will be commented on the website. Please post your questions on the website as I don’t check the email all that often. I will answer questions directly on the website to provide answers for everybody in a central location.

Thank you all again for your continued hard work in our lovely community.

I’ll be doing a recap of the party (great success!) and some other news in the next week or so.

Warmly,
K!
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A couple things…I think I left a red and white checker dishcloth at the potluck on Monday…any chance anyone picked it up? If one of our gardeners didn’t is there someone at the club I can call or email?

Also, I was at the garden yesterday and found TWO blackberry cellphones. They both seem to be missing SIM cards and one is missing a battery. One of them was actually in the compost pile so my guess is that one of our gardeners didn’t lose it, but that someone simply threw them into the garden from the parking lot in an attempt to get rid of them. Not sure if you want to email the garden and see if anyone is missing them, however unlikely it may be.

Evan

We’ll have raffle items from the community available from the gardeners and local merchants. What better way to support the local infrastructure of our community by hanging out with them.

We’ll also have a potluck of deliciousness created by our very own. Be sure to prepare for at least 8 people. If you have opportunity to bring your own plates, silverware & cups, please do, but the garden does have re-usable dinneware available.

We’ll also have the KC Moaners again with their usual jug-band style. It’s sure to be a good time. I hope you all can make it.

A reminder: The party is not at the garden. It is at the Portuguese-American Social Club, located at 32 Sheldon street in Providence. This is 1 block up from Wickenden Street, off Traverse street. My best directions say to go to the Coffee Exchange and then up Traverse (the street next to the lot associated with Utrect).

If you have any dead corn stalks or other decor from your plot, email me (use the contact form so I don’t overwhelm my box with spam from putting my address here).

See you soon!