HOW CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT WHAT WE GROW, WHEN WE GROW AND WHAT CAN LIVE HERE?

Is climate change in the future or is this winter a sign that there is  new normal?  Here is an interview of Jim Barilla, a writer whose new book My Backyard Jungle. Jim experimented with different plants in his backyard and concluded that there a disruption.

Here is the link:
www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=14-P13-00019&segmentID=4

Using Container Gardening To Solve A Multitude of Problems

"After every storm the sun will smile; for every problem there is a solution, and the soul's indefeasible duty is to be of good cheer." -William R. Alger, American Writer

Have you been intimidated from gardening because you lacked gardening space or the space you have is too shaded or you have problems with rabbits?  Utilizing containers can help you get around those concerns.

When I started the garden at the Community Day Center, I was inspired to create a garden at home. My children built three 8' X 4' raised boxes for me.  My goal was monetary, I wanted to raise enough fresh vegetables inexpensively to feed the homeless community at the Center and to have the guests contribute to raising the food that they eat. As a city girl, I didn't realize how invigorating and intuned with nature I felt being outdoors and raising food from the land.  Alfred Austin  said, "The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul." Slowly, I started getting frustrated when my tomatoes grew but didn't produce fruit because they didn't get enough sun.  Then as soon as the leafy vegetables and beans grew, the rabbits would eat all the plants down to the stems. 

But every problem has a solution(s).  Catherine, my blog partner, told me she grew her beans in a hanging basket.  Actually, she grows all her vegetables in pots on her porch.  She even makes her own organic fertilizer.  I'll ask if she'd give us her recipe.  Two weeks ago, I planted the pea shoots that I germinated in a hanging basket.  With all the rain we had, I didn't even have to water it. Once they are 3 to 4 inches, I plan to pinch them back for salad or stir-fry, depending on how much I have. Here is what they look like three weeks later:

Since the pea shoots are out of reach of the rabbits, I planted a second basket.  This time I have strawberries and different mixes of lettuce. I read that strawberries do well with lettuce.  I also read that borage is also a good companion for strawberries.  The bees are attracted to the borage and helpful to the strawberries.

Many plants require 6 to 8 hours of sun.  The best spot for them are the front of my house which is south facing. So today, I pulled out my grow bags and placed them between the bushes.  Last couple of years, I grew potatoes in them.  Since potatoes are inexpensive, I've decided to grow herbs and vegetables in them this year.

In this bag, I grouped basil, flat leaf parsley and tarragon around the plum tomato plant. These plants like sun and moist soil.  They are also good for making a red sauce with chicken.

In the second bag, I grouped Thai basil, sage, oregano and marjoram around a cherry tomato plant. These herbs like some shade and dryer soil.

In the third bag, I have a sweet pepper plant and Japanese eggplant plant.  When I purchase a fourth bag, I plan on planting beets.

Another idea to deter the rabbits, I purchaged these tents to put over the boxes.  They cost $88.00 for three online at Home Depot.  If I was more creative, I could have built my own fences, probably less expensive, around the boxes. I plan on starting with cold weather vegetables. In the early spring, there are less pest to harm the vegetables. They are salad vegetables, kale, collards and cabbage family.  I have been germinating seeds and will plant them today.

If you'd like to communicate with me or Catherine, give us ideas or advice, write to uas at director@communitydaycenter.org.  HAPPY PLANTING.

Growing Pea Shoots in Containers

For the past three years, I have been growing vegetables in my raised containers that my children built for me to supplement the harvest for the Community Day Center of Waltham.  As soon as the seeds germinate and new growth spout, the neighborhood rabbit family literally eat the plants down to the stub.  One day my garden box is green with growth and later that day I can only see soil.  After two years, I have been looking for alternative ways to grow food that would be out of reach of those rabbits.

This year for Mother's Day, my husband and children promise to build me a fence around the boxes. Until then, I have decided to grow pea shoots from a hanging basket.

I selected a fast growing peas: Micro Greens Peas for Shoots Organic HEIRLOOM Seeds from Botanical Interests.  I germinated some indoors.  After I filled the basket with soil, I planted the young sprouts.  I also sowed additional seeds densely around the plants in a single layer.  I added half an inch over soil to cover all the seeds.  I placed the basket in a sunny location and high up enough to be away from the rabbits.

Once there are at least two layers of leaves, I plan to harvest them.  Hopefully, there will be other plants growing in its place so I will continuously have pea shoots to harvest. 

My family and I love stir frying the pea tendrils with garlic.  In the past, we could only get them during the summer and they would be expensive. Now the pea shoots are showing up in markets and restaurants. The tender  pea shoots impart the sweet taste of peas that they could be added to both fresh and cooked dishes. Enjoy.

Year 3: Preparing the Garden in Your Backyard

I am feeling nostalgic because this is the final year we will be able cultivate the garden in back of the Community Day Center of Waltham at 34 Alder Street.  In a few months we will be moving to our new home on Felton Street, where there is no room for a garden on site. At that time, we'll look into alternative ways to cultivate food for our table.

This winter was extremely harsh and long. Our entire focus in programing was to bring our guests out from the cold by expanding shelter hours, providing timely life-saving knowledge and outreach to those living outside and networking with our community partners to expand our resources.

With spring and the warmer temperature, it is such a pleasure to getting back to nature and to raise food from our back yard. I am so lucky to have such great volunteers from our guests and the Brandeis Be Our Guests club.

Oswaldo,Luis, Roberto

Eddie

Brandeis, Be Our Guests Club

Preparing the Garden

April 1

Once the snow all melted and spring showers lessened, Oswaldo and Roberto cleaned out the old growth from the garden. That same week the students and Day Center guests tilled and aerated the soil and pushed the soil to form beds. Since this is our final year, I plan to increase the sizes of certain beds, utilize our green bags and explore lateral growing so we can increase our produce capacity.

Next, we will be sure to add new top soil on the beds before we sow seeds or plant seedling.  Since our garden is organic, we won't use any fertilizers so the  nutrients that were in the soil were likely to be depleted after last season.

Plantings 

To stretch out the harvest season, we plan to space out the germination/sowing so the plants will grow and mature at different times. Katie Moran, Oswaldo and I plan to germinate some seeds indoors.

April 15
In our area, we have two growing cycles for cold weather plants and 1 cycle for warm weather plants.

They are 2 groups of seeds -- cool weather and warm weather.  For the cool weather seeds, we probably can just sow directly into the soil, as germinating them in-door now won't save us any time at this juncture.  We will sow in batches on weekly intervals, so if the nights got very cold in the next few weeks, we won't lose everything.

Here is our list of plants, in no apparent order:

Cold weather plants -germinating indoor now for mid-April planting or sow directly outdoor mid-April

            -Swiss chard (Rainbow, used as greens) 

            -Swiss chard (Bright lights) 

            -Swiss chard (Fordhook) 

            -spinach (Tyee)

            -spinach (America) 

             -spinach (Bloomsdale long-standing)

            -collards 

            -kale –(red winter)

            -kale (Red Russian)

            -kale (dwarf blue curled scotch)

            -mustard green

            - mustard (Florida broadleaf) 

            -pai tsai 

            -broccoli raab (rappini) 

            -Chinese cabbage 

            -Chinese kale 

            -beets (Golden)

            -pea shoots 

            -lettuce (Mesclun) 

            -lettuce (Black seeded simpson) 

-lettuce mix

-lettuce (bowl red)

-lettuce (Bibb)

-arugula 

-basil (heirloom) 

-basil (sweet)

-basil (Thai Siam Queen) 

-basil (Genovese) 

-basil (mammouth)

-oregano

-dill

           -microgreens

 Warm weather-germinate mid-April for mid-May/early June planting outdoors

            -tomatoes (Gardener’s Delight/cherry)

            -tomatoes (sweetie-cherry)

            -tomatoes (VF Hybrid)

            -tomatoes (Roma)

            -cucumbers(straight eight)

Catherine and I are excited to start our garden and will be posting our progress.  We hope you will enjoy bringing nature into your backyard too!

A day in the strawberry fields seems like forever

For those of us interested in healthy and fresh food.  A back yard garden may be a heart-felt and hands-on response to the question of “where does our food come from?”  Outside of our garden fences, that simple question increasingly begets complex answers.   Anyone who pondered this question in the context of school lunch may have been surprised by the vegetable identification test that Jamie Oliver administered to a group of first graders (see,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiShJt2XVdw), who seemed to believe that french fries came fully formed from restaurants.  Readers of Michael Pollen’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma (http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/), may be astounded by his accounts of large scale, industrialized, chemicals-dependent methods of food production that keep our super market shelves full.  Yet, few would mention the migrant farm workers who pick our nation’s fresh produce when explaining where our food comes from.  This is why we want to call attention to Hector Becerra’s article: A Day in the Strawberry Fields Seems Like Forever. (http://www.latimes.com/news/columnone/la-me-strawberry-pick-20130503-dto,0,2988343.htmlstory).

Becerra is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and the son of a migrant worker.  His article is based on recent experience spending a few days picking broccoli and strawberry in the vast agricultural estates of California.  Freed of sermons or diatribes, Becerra makes plenty clear that our food comes from the relentless, back breaking labor of farm workers.  More important, his article is sweet and poignant portrayal of these workers as individuals with skill (try sorting and packing just picked strawberry into clamshell containers while keeping pace with a moving machine), perseverance, extraordinary work ethics, kindness, humor and dreams.  At a time when our nation’s discourse on food policy focuses exclusively on the consumers and our political debate on immigration verges on demagoguery and demonization, we are grateful that Becerra’s article gave us the full humanity of those who help to put food on our tables.

The Repeated Refrains of Nature

The (Second) Season of Hope:  A Community Day Center Blog on Food, Gardening and the Human Spirit

May 5, 2013

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter – Rachel Carson

Like the returning swallows of Capistrano, we were back at our garden behind the Community Day Center.  Just as assuredly as the day lengthened, the air warmed, we knew it is time to begin planting again.   Last week, the students from Brandeis took a break from studying for exams and cleared out the last vestige of winter-- removing the tattered cloak that once fitted so snugly over our little somnolent plot to reveal the expectant soil that no longer wishes to lie dormant.  The following day, we spread about 150 lbs. of top soil on some raised beds and seeded them with salad greens, leafy Chinese veggies and peas.  For the rest of the weekend, we cursed Shakespeare for propagating the myth that "April hath put a spirit of youth in everything."  Instead, we preferred the simple truth from Margaret Atwood (http://www.margaretatwood.ca/) that "in the spring, at the end of the day you should smell like dirt."  

In our first grand tour of the new gardening season, we went to the beetroot patch where we had a great harvest last year and planted more seedlings of baby beets in the hope that success will deign to repeat its refrains this year.  Then, we found that, reprising their performances from last season, the oregano, sage, lemon balm, and tarragon are already in full swing.  To these stars, we added a new chorus line of basil, parsley and chive.  Watching a greenness overtake the remaining brown spots in the herb garden, we, who are not known for our Victorian sentimentalities, found ourselves agreeing  with Jane Eyer that as April “advanced” to May, “hope traversed [through our garden] at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.” (http://www.online-literature.com/brontec/).

Then to our utter surprise and amazement, we discovered that during our winter absence, the half dozen or so of collards and kales left in the ground have not only prevailed over the harsh challenges meted out by nature, but also grown into stout shrubberies of knee height.  Bathing unabashedly under the sun, with splayed leaves and budding florets, they are but the most exuberant of survivors.   We nibbled on some leaves.  They are tender and tasted sweet and nutty.  If flavor is the language of vegetables, then these plants surely could speak; and they do speak, boisterously, raucously, in the plain language of physical existence.  To us, they say: 

When spring knocks at your door…. run, do not walk to that door, throw it open with wild abandon, and say, "Yes! Yes, come in! Do me, and do me big!” (https://www.facebook.com/TheNatureOfThingsNavigatingEverydayLifeWithGrace ). 

And, yes, we fancy Charlotte Bronte blushing! 

By far the most special part of our “garden” is the area reserved for our guests.  Like the garden, the Day Center is a place of recovery and renewal for our guests.  It is as much a place of respite as a place of growth, a place of sustenance as a place of acceptance.  Since its inception, inclusion and stability have been the focus of the Community Day Center.  These values guide not only what services we provide, but also how we provide them; namely, with respect for the needs and dignity of each guest.  Although we have been criticized for our open door policy of accepting everyone as they are, we remain true to our values to:

§  offer acceptance and respect

§  hear those who feel unheard

§  create accountability to our guests

§  foster inclusiveness and mutual respect

§  work with the community to remove barriers

For we know, as gardeners, that when “you open your… space to admit a few, a great many, or thousands [who would] exude charm, pleasure, beauty, oxygen, conversation, friendship, confidence, and other rewards should you succeed in meeting their basic needs.” (Tom Clothier, http://tomclothier.hort.net/).    

Thus, over the course of our work with the guests at the Day Center, we have found that there is no “cookie-cutter” solution to stability; instead it is necessary to take a “holistic” approach with each individual and work closely with him or her to overcome the impediments that are holding the person back.  This approach is consistent with what homeless individuals themselves often understand as the root cause of their problems. Their needs are, not only, limited to lack of shelter, but also, appreciating that they need help on multiple levels.

 As gardeners, we know that the moment of planting is not the time to measure the amount of the harvest, so we don’t expect immediate and tangibles results from providing hospitality, non-judgmental listening, companionship and trust building.  We know a garden will give back more than it receives (attributed to Mara Beamish) as such is the generosity of nature, so the lasting impact of our services will be felt by our guests even as they struggle to make and sustain progress.  We know that to garden is hope.  And, where humanity sowed faith, hope, and unity, joy’s garden will bloom (http://creativethinkersintl.ning.com/profile/Angelscribe22.).  Sowing is what the Community Day Center does, not just for a season, but for every day of every year.

Making a Seed Bank at the Library

The seed library is a partnership between the Basalt Public Library and the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute. Seed packets encourage gardeners to write their names and take credit for their harvested seeds. Photo by Dylan Johna

While we are waiting for spring, here is an interesting article in NPR. A library in Colorado is loaning seed packets. In return, the borrower will collect seeds from the best of  his/her crop and donate them to the library to loan to another person.  It is fascinating that in one generation of planting, those seeds will have the traits that could resist pests, droughts, etc. of that location. Here is the entire article.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/02/170846948/how-to-save-a-public-library-make-it-a-seed-bank