Urban Gardens and Sustainability
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2010.
Coop Extension Agent Jamie Dockery will be on hand to demonstrate proper pruning techniques for young trees. Please let us know if you plan to participate in this event so that we can tell Jamie how many shears to have on hand. Here are the details:
What: Pruning Demonstration
When: Tuesday, March 23rd, 10am
Where: the London Ferrell Community Garden
RSVP: seedleafinfo@gmail.com
Rebecca and I recently had a chance to visit with our young friends at William Wells Brown Elementary about what seeds they wanted to grow this coming season. Some of the things on their list included
So I guess we have our work cut out for us. Here are some of the pics from that day. Visit our Flickr site to see more. And stay tuned for upcoming opportunities to help. Speaking of help, does anyone want to help me explain to a six year old why we’re not planting pizza trees?!
So maybe a hoop HOUSE isn’t the first thing you’d think of relating to hoops at this time of year, but it should be (all love and respect to UK basketball aside!)
A hoop house is basically a low-tech greenhouse, one that uses passive solar energy to get a jump on the growing season, helping seeds to grow into warm, nourished seedlings to later be put into open fields, or even to extend the growing season in winter by shielding established plants from the harsher winter conditions.
A sample hoop house
It’s our hope that Seedleaf will be building one of these fantastic structures downtown in the near future, but in the meantime, what better way to experience the process than to help someone else build theirs (read, make your mistakes on someone else’s project!).
Enter Jeremy and Karissa Porter and their heroic farming efforts for Eden’s Gate CSA.
Located on a picturesque piece of land just beyond Midway, Jeremy kicked off his CSA later in the growing season of 2009, but he’s ramping up in a big way for the 2010 season. As part of this effort, he organized a group of friends and family to help build his inaugural hoop house.
Think of it like a traditional barn raising, with perhaps a few more unknowns, a lot less experience, but no less determination and fun!
We gathered this past Saturday in the morning, each of us anxious to learn about the process and hopeful to lend a helping hand. It wasn’t our intention to complete the structure, but we got a great start.
While it started frosty, with the ground frozen solid, it wasn’t long before we’d worked the 20 foot by 50 foot area of land into a muddy mess. We hope we left more dirt in the field then we took home on our boots! But all in all, it was a terrific experience and the camaraderie throughout warmed the mood long before the temperatures followed suit. Not the mention the hearty home cooked meal of beans and cornbread they fed us!
Alas, I couldn’t stay for the entire day, but I left not only with the pleasure of having helped in the creation of the hoop house, but charged with excitement as I envisioned the future for this chosen patch of sheltered land.
Don’t worry though, there will be plenty more opportunities for you to get involved, both with Jeremy’s effort and for Seedleaf’s hoop house in town.
Stay tuned, but in the meantime, take a peek at these videos to give you just a taste of what it what the day involved.
Kentucky Life is a program on KET. They recently aired a piece on an event that happened this past fall at Three Springs Farm, their 10th Anniversary Dinner. This celebration was a long time in the making, but this video glimpse tells the story of a meal that was, as Michael Pollan says, both good to eat and good to think.
Click here to see David Wagoner and Arwen Donahue describe their home place and how it has shaped their life together. Ouita Michel of Holly Hill Inn speaks elegantly about what her art has to do with place. I am really excited to share this with you–it was a truly beautiful event. (And get ready to skip through a story on some helper dogs–the feast story begins at about the 10:34 mark.)
All this snow is probably keeping you indoors, by the fire, looking at those seed catalogs again. If you want to brave the elements with us, do think about coming to the London Ferrell Community Garden for a seed exchange. Here are the details:
Thursday Feb 18 6:30 at London Ferrell Comm Garden/Sexton’s Cottage (3rd street)
Feel free to email or call Ryan (859-967-8865) to confirm that we’ll be there.
