Lasagna mulching

The next two weeks I'll be doing lasagna mulching at some of the centers. This is an easy way to prepare new garden beds or build soil for older ones, without digging up sod or pulling weeds (although you want to remove some weeds such as blackberry, bindweed, morning glory or quackgrass, which the layering process won't smother).

Lasagna mulching consists of alternating layering sources of carbon & nitrogen. You want to start about 6 months before you intend on planting, to allow the materials to fully decompose. We'll be doing this for the beds we plant in later in the spring.
First mow the grass as low as possible. The you start with layering several sheets of cardboard (a carbon source) over your future bed; this will block out sunlight and smother the grass. Wet the cardboard thoroughly, then add a 1 inch layer of nitrogen, followed by a 1 inch layer of carbon. Repeat the layering or nitrogen and carbon 3 times and end with a layer or carbon. On top of this you can layer some burlap sacks and cover with black plastic. In about 4-6 months, remove the plastic and check to see if the materials have fully decomposed. The burlap sacks will also decompose, but if they are taking too long you can removed and compost them. The rest should like and smell like fresh soil when it is ready. The add some compost and get to planting!

Sources of carbon: sawdust, leaves, corn stalks, pine needles, peat moss, newspaper, cardboard, straw and hay.

Sources of nitrogen: coffee grounds, kitchen scraps, composted manures, alfalfa pellets, vegetable scraps, fresh grass clippings and cottonseed, soybean and blood meal.

We received all our supplies for this project for free:
*Cardboard- in large quantities from Costco
*Coffee grinds- starbucks
*Carbon- leaves (I didn't even have to collect them myself, I put an add on craigslist & someone was happy for me to take their bagged leaves of their hands)
*Burlap sacks- stumptown coffee roasters.

Since I am using coffee grinds as a nitrogen source, it will acidify the soil, so I will be adding lime over the top layer of carbon.

For more information check out the OSU extension's resources:
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=1080&storyType=garden

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/lane/sites/default/files/documents/Lasagna.pdf

Making Garden Journals

The kids made garden journals at Silverton this month. This is a simple indoor winter garden activity that they really enjoyed. We will use these the rest of the year for the kids to draw and write about what they learned in the gardens this year. Supplies needed: poster board, paper, string, a hole punch, some glue sticks and some pictures of vegetables for the covers.

Compost!

Thank you to Portland Metro! They've just agreed to donate four compost bins for our Garden Project, for our gardens in Washington and Clackamas counties. This will be a great addition to our project, giving us a place for garden waste for now, and eventually, a place for the cafeterias to compost all their kitchen scraps.

Everyone should compost! When vegetable scraps decompose anaerobically (ie: buried without oxygen in a landfill) they release methane, which is one of the leading greenhouse gases. On the other hand, when your vegetable scraps decompose in an aerated compost pile, they don't release greenhouse gases, they just turn into rich organic material that does wonders for the overall health of your soil, and therefore, your garden. Try it out! Even if you haven't started a garden yet, you can create a compost pile in your yard- just pile up all your kitchen waste somewhere in your yard closest to that neighbor you don't like (just kidding! aerated compost doesn't smell bad either, especially if you compost using a worm bin). Just make sure you leave out the meats, grease, and oils- these don't decompose as well and can attract pests such as rodents.

Composting can be as simple as piling up kitchen scraps in a bin and letting nature runs its course, or it can become quite an art & science of balancing carbon, nitrogen, and other micronutrients and cultivating an entire microbial universe. For more tips on the different methods of compost, for starting a compost bin, or where to get one, you can check out Metro's composting guide at:

http://www.metro-region.org/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=553

Cover crops and garlic!

Well we've gotten in the last bit of planting one can do this time of year here in the Northwest. At Silverton this kids, teachers and I tore up last year's plants and broadcasted cover crops (winter peas). The kids had a great time tearing up plants and carrying them to the compost in the pint-sized wheelbarrows. They even found some remaining onions and carrots.
Highlight (and lesson) of the day- At one point we had about four or five kids standing in the bed shoveling dirt out of the bed onto the surrounding ground. Note to self- Having a raised bed does not necessarily delineate where to stand in the eyes' of kids. Make sure the kids know too stand OUTSIDE the bed, and keep the dirt INSIDE. It was almost too funny to put an end to, but standing in the beds compacts the soil, which is no good for our gardens.
The last couple of weeks I have been at Silverton, Jose Pedro, Linden & Cornelius planting garlic with the classes, which is about the only thing you can plant this time of year. Most of the kids didn't even know what garlic was. When I asked what it was I heard over and over- "a pumpkin!" (the kids just finished learning about pumpkins), or "una cebolla!"- nonetheless, they were so excited to plant, water, and to have their hands in the dirt. and I was really impressed how many of the kids knew what plants need to grow. These are smart little ones! I think this will be a fun year...

2010-2011 school gardens!

Well just as it is beginning to get really rainy and cold out here in Oregon, the OCDC garden programs are getting their start. My name is Kaitlin Berger and I'll be following in the footsteps of Jeremy as the Americorps Farm to School Coordinator for the 2010-2011 school year (and summer).

I've been busy for the past few weeks getting to know the program, and the folks at OCDC, and we have got some exciting plans for expanding last year's gardens and starting some new ones. This year I will be working with the teachers and staff at Silverton and Linden to expand the gardens started last year. Silverton has so much space available, we have some big plans: fruit trees, worms, compost, winter gardening cloches, maybe even a trellis or a seating area- it will be an exciting year! On the list to get new raised bed gardens are the Woodburn/Settlemeier, Mulino, Jose Pedro, and Cornelius sites. Odell and Madras did amazing jobs out at their sites last year and hopefully will keep up their momentum this year. Finally, I hope to get some container gardens going at Cipriano and Main Street by the end of the year.

Our long term goal is to have a garden at every center and get to where the gardens provide a substantial amount of food for the students. However, this year’s focus will be on continuing to lay the foundation of the program: getting the gardens started or expanded, building soil fertility, solidifying the garden programs role in the classroom, creating a network of resources and support, getting the teachers training in gardening, and developing garden lesson plans. Whew! We will be busy! We have a long list of vegetables we hope to plant come spring, many of them items the kids may harvest and sample after harvest- peas, carrots, herbs, edible flowers, tomatoes, radishes, etc. I can't wait to get my hands in the dirt!

Hopefully, this blog will help the OCDC garden community to keep up to date with each other. Please feel free to post questions, pictures, etc.
and I will be posting more updates about the gardens soon. I'm looking forward to an exciting year!

~Kaitlin

Think BLUE...it is the new Green

HOT HOT HOT. Man what wierd weather we get here sometimes. From record lows to record highs in a few weeks? How about this for a fact- we had a drop of 32 degrees in 40 minutes yesterday on the Coast. Temps climbed to 90+ degrees and plummeted to upper 50's as the sun began to set. 32 degrees!!! That is an amazing feat and says something about the power of our ocean. The ocean makes ALL of our weather so we farmers need to respect the land as much as the ocean. Think Green is so last year. THINK BLUE...it is the new green.

The gardens have been growing well. Our centers have organized some watering schedules and are beginning to take more control over the care of their gardens. Perfect timing really as they need more work now than ever. The centers have begun to plant, water, harvest, and play in the gardens as we had hoped. Looks like it only took some good weather to get them out there using the resource. The goal of creating a sustainable project seems possible though we won't know until we see some of the center's own work next year.

The crops are looking fine though not stellar. We had to use old seed and lower quality starts due to budget constraints and lack of donations. I spent some money buying us some more things that will produce heavy crops with little care. I mostly bought squash, beans, and sun flowers. Sunflowers operate in a simlar fashion to corn (in the three sisters garden) but are better for the bees/bugs, prettier, and readily seed. As they are not governed by GMO crop pollination, I feel like this is the improved three sisters...I call it Tres Amigos. Corn has been sequestered by agtech companies but sunflowers are free from tinkering of that "nature". But I do get ahead of myself. Like I stated above. I purchased some squash, beans, and sunflowers for our centers and planted them. They are growing well and I hope will be the main product from our gardens for summer season. I hope to plant some winter crops here next week when the temps drop. I have a plot in Silverton that needs some vetch removed before it seeds and that is where I will be placing some broccoli, cabbage, birds nest gourds and goblin eggs. If I can get my hands on some kales that would be wonderful.

The year is almost up for me and my AmeriCorps year. With 5 gardens in the ground
and more requests each week from our centers to build, teach, and grow I think our program will continue to expand. The success of this years garden will be measured not in harvest but in interest. In smiles. In understanding. In teaching moments and translated words. Our gardens have grown our centers too. They have a resource now that can feed minds and bodies and I believe they will continue to shape the way OCDC centers operate.


The children have been using big tools in the garden to rake, hoe, dig, and cultivate. It has been a relief for my back and my hands. It also warms those kiddos up for a sweet nap which I know the teachers appreciate. A mind like a childs needs the stimulation of Nature to envelop, connect, and expand those huge brains of theirs. The connectivity of nature is observable BY OUR OWN MEANS of interpretation. Curriculum involves too many other entities that don't reside within our faculties. But nature plays by rules we innately comprehend. These gardens will be a savior for our teachers on tough winter days. Days when curriculum won't work. When kids want to be anywhere but stuck indoors and love to let you know about it. It is my hope that OCDC will be forever changed and will continue to grow gardens to grow minds.




Some great pics. No explanations necessary.

Sow...is it summer yet?

The Solstice has arrived and with it no more predictions for rain for the week. The hot June sun is doing its job by warming away threats of precipitation by mid morning each day and sending those clouds up and out of the way. Warmer temps seem to be reaching normal levels ranging from 55-80 during the days. The gardens have shown signs of improvement as well. The tomatoes have greened up and are starting to spread, the peas and greens are growing well. In Silverton, I made another 200 square feet of gardening space by removing sod and planting vetch and grass. Then I hoed out the grass a few months later and double dug the beds to raise them up. I made one long running bed about 25 feet long and 3 feet wide and 5 raised hills for planting my hot crops and storage crops. The soil was workable and next year it will be better because I will use two types of winter cover crops to give the soil good protection and increase the tilth. Linden's garden has been doing better after receiving the most rain of the other gardens (because of its proximity to the coast).

I gained two more centers who are anxious to get gardens started; they are Jose Pedro and Settlemeier. The buzz about these gardens and the activities our children are doing with them has excited centers all over Oregon. My job is looking busier and busier as the gardens warm up and people warm up to the gardens. Yippee! The interesting aspect to these two new centers is that they lack ground space for food production. Each center at OCDC is individual and take on the terms of Head Start in creative ways. It takes time to analyze what would work best for each center. The centers lack gardening space but they will have some grand container gardens. I am great at container gardening. I hope to dot their outdoor space with massive containers full of food that is visually stunning. I hope to create an ornamental look with a food functionality. So...what plants will I be using. Well I will absolutely be using Swiss Chard because it is my favorite plant to grow right now. They might contain Kale, Fava Beans, Winter Peas, Parsley, Leeks, Cilantro, Carrots and Parsnips, cabbage, and broccoli. We will also be planting blueberries in containers. We hope to create a stable container garden practice for each center. I hope that this new garden style will be applicable to our home garden plots as well as our centers who similarly lack safe grounds for food producing. I hope to show our centers and the readers that space is not the biggest limiting factor for gardening among cost, access to water, creativity and time.

The new crop of kids has been fun. They are all sons and daughters of seasonal or migrant workers who have traveled to Oregon for our busy ag season. The ranges of skills and behaviours these children exhibit is wide so the classes have been a bit tougher. I am adapting the teaching style for these classes to be more camp based. There are crafts, story telling, harvesting, etc in shorter and easier to understand segments. This week we will pick a plant and draw it and write a few words about it on some paper. It will become a book of plants for each center to have made by the children and for the children. It will compromise a series of arts, observations, and literacy work for our children. My Spanish has been getting much better. I am able to understand a lot more of what my children mumble and have been able to communicate better with them and our teachers. I have been excited to use my Spanish in each class. I am looking forward to better weather and bigger crops. Good luck in your gardens and classes!

In the photos that precede this post you can see our children at Silverton harvesting some salad. They gave it to their kitchen to cook salad for them today! What a treat for all of us.

How does your garden grow?
TIME TO PROPAGATE YOUR TOMATOES: You like to pull of those "suckers" right? It makes your plant grow stouter and stronger right? Meh...maybe. Don't throw them in the compost. Take your suckers ( at least 2 inch long ones) and propagate them. With the soft start to our summer providing cloudy and humid days, you have got a great climate for producing some more plants. If you get em now, you might be able to pull off some more tomatoes or replace ones beat up by the rains.

Love Lupines: Need a beautiful native perennial that withstands lots of water and a bit of shade? Need one that fixes nitrogen to improve your soil and your plants health? Need one of the first plants to return from the blast zone of St. Helen's 20years ago? LUPINE BABY! Use it, love it, save the seeds and spread it.

Recipe: Chop chard and greens to chip sizes. Chop some of your beets into bite size coins or dice sized cubes. Crumble in some goat cheese, your fave nuts, a little olive oil, and a citrus squeeze. Eat voraciously or not at all.

Need some gardening advice? Post a question to the blog and we will try and answer it for you.

Enjoy the weather and get outside this week--Garden Guru Katz

Whether the Weather Will Change

It has been rainy. I am glad for the rain for our rivers and the fish in them, for our forests and the mushrooms in them, and our summer and the lack of rain in those days. Tomorrow will determine if this June is THE WETTEST IN OREGON HISTORY. We had 27 days of rain in April. The past 24 days have been wet as well which left us with 10 days of mixed sun/clouds in the past 2 months. So, how is everyone doing? Most people are bumming. Most of us have had just about enough. At least those cool crops are doing well.

The gardens are getting a beating but they are draining very well. We have had low temps and low light levels so most of the plants in our gardens seem dormant. We are fully planted for the summer season but we have not yet planted our squashes or pole beans. The slugs have been unrelenting. Our spring crops have been doing well. The radishes swelled and burst over the past month. They have been a delicious and exciting plant to harvest with the kids. We are always so surprised to see the bright red and white globes come out of the soil. They taste great and are even spicy. The beets, arugula, salads, and peas are doing wonderfully. I already have pods growing. The temps made our arugula GIANT size. I recently harvested almost 10 lbs of arugula and greens to make room for warmer season crops. I munched without using my hands while they were in the ground to make the kids laugh. They of course loved it and repeated it. It has been a trip watching the kids interact with the gardens. I don't mind that they grab, pull, munch, and bust up the garden. When I am there these are learning moments and I encourage the children to discover with their senses (to the shocked faces of my teachers). Exploring the boundaries of the garden is how the children START to interact with the space but they EVOLVE their actions with the garden to meet their own needs for discovery, play, and munch time. I don't like to say "Don't" at any time in the garden. I set up some ground rules (pun intended) that the kids follow. Be safe, Be respectful, Be responsible. Some side rules include Look, Listen, and Be Gentle. When I notice the kids tearing leaves we talk about leaves and how plants grow. How fast can you grow without your feet I ask them? How fast can you grow without food? I try and relate these happenings as they occur directly to our learning outcomes.

Look, I don't want a beautiful garden, I want a used garden. Once children begin to understand how the garden works and why it should be treated a certain way, they become my ambassadors. They begin to tell other kids how to behave and interact with the garden. I watched a kid last week pick and eat an entire bean sprout. Honestly, it looked pretty delicious (but I knew better). He thought he could eat it because I was allowing some students to eat salad like animals. What did he discover? Bitter, prickly flesh and soil chunks. I asked him if he liked it. He said no. I encouraged him to try and pick a different veggie to munch on based on his own way of identifying tasty. What did he pick? Pea sprouts. So I showed him how to harvest and munch on a pea sprout. What did he discover? Sweet, stringy, and crunchy. He even got to eat the flower! What a lost moment it would have been to tell him NO.

When it rains...get outside and play with mud. We are all familiar with mud here in the NorthWest. Mud is fun. We have made mud sculptures, mud houses, mud families. We recently read a story in Spanish titled This House is Made of Mud. It is a great story of a house in the Southwest desert that incorporates and invites nature in and the home out. The kids enjoyed the story. We then went outside and attempted to build some mud structures. It was so rainy though that I couldn't make the right consistency for the mud and it became a mucky squishy mess.

How does your garden grow?

Talk to your plants. They need some encouragement and some of your time. If you haven't been in your gardens (at least on a slug killing rampage) because of the rain then get out there and fool around with your plants. Now is a good time to weed and replant what has been decimated by climate or pest.

Wait Wait Wait to plant things like tomatoes, pole beans, squashes etc. They don't care that they have less days of light they just want nice temps to grow in. You will be surprised just how fast a tomato will grow to harvest size.

Take a hike. Spring mushrooms have had an bonus season this year due to our colder temps and rain. There has been white out conditions above 7500 feet in the mountains. That means we will have some SUPER blooms this summer for wild flowers because they haven't had time to peak at the sun yet.

Garden Guru Katz

Oh MAY Goodness!

OH MAY GOODNESS@!@!

It is time to start really getting to work in those gardens. The weather has still been telling us that it is cold but don't fret my gardening friends. Soon it will change. One way to make the weather better: DON'T believe the weather! Out here the weather can seem way worse on paper (or screen) than it feels on your face as you scramble to plug every hole in your garden with veggies and flowers.

I have to admit something to you now. Garden Voyeurism...I have it bad. I love watching gardeners watch their gardens. We have all heard the idea of "zoning out" and all of its variations. What about Zoned in? When I stare at my garden for hours I am not "out" in the literal sense but "in". I am INto my garden. I am INto my creative. I am IN my nuturing (or is it naturing). Those moments are paramount for me and I am usually IN them OUTdoors. Often people go to the woods or to the space they define as wild to relax and unwind. To "get away from it all". The "it all" in this phrase would be the city grind. I have a different idea about this. I go to the wild for bewilderment and charge. BE WILD. Bewilder. Bewilderment. To me the modern definition of the word bewilderment does not capture the proximal and primordial meaning. This word means to be as the wild are (which to some of us is baffling). The plants in the glory of eating the sun to make manna for animals resting in the shade of the trees. I go to the woods to be charged up enough to use my energy when I return to the city. I am not like the animals unless I am with them. Unlike them, I go to the garden. I go to the mountain. My energy from there is used here.

The harvest I hoped to pick by now is still in the ground waiting for warmer days. The carrots and peas will be growing great until June. I am happy that our plants are ready from ACS; they will be transplanted into our gardens next week. Our gardens will have tons of transplants as well as beans, sunflowers, and other crops hand planted by the children. It seems we never stop seeding around here but I can't wait to start seeing all the growing happen. I am already getting ahead of myself trying to perfectly time my cover crop seeding and I have not even seen a tomato!

The kids played with WORM BINS this week. As you can see; we had a great time.

Things to do: BUY BEANS AND PLANT THEM EVERYWHERE
Harden off your transplants by sticking them outside half the day.
Prune up your perennials to keep them blooming.
Make some compost/manure tea and amend your beds with nutrients including calcium and magnesium for those heavy fruiting warm crops.
WEED WEED WEED!

Things to enjoy: The sun when it pokes through the clouds. For a moment you can feel your skin buzzing.
The ants that take all your surface seeded annuals into healthier tunnels beneath the ground. Nature works for me!
The peas as they fill out those leaves and grip up your trellis with their fingers.

Things to look forward to: Jamaican Sandwich= Slice of bread with butter toasted. Place thick cut garden tomato on bread and thick slice cheese. Melt in oven and consume immediately.
FRESH BASIL!
Swimming in the rivers.

Garden Guru Katz

Shine On Part 2

Yeah! It is raining. I love the rain. It tells me that I don't have to water this week. The gardens are really starting to look good. Silverton is a bit slow to start but I am confident it will pick up in the next few weeks. I was hoping to have some stronger spring crops by May but there are a few reasons that it isn't as strong. In Silverton the straw has not fully composted yet and I didn't remove it for planting. Straw can suck out the nitrogen from your plants in its decomposition so I believe this is happening along side the fact that the bed is a bit rough for seedling germination. I haven't removed anything because in 3 weeks we will be planting most of our summer crops as transplants and they won't have a problem. Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Peppers, etc. We are also planting cucumbers, squash, and sunflowers. In Linden the garden is looking fabulous. With a different soil composition and warmer temps the Linden garden is growing strong. Last week we picked and thinned a bunch with the kids. We ate all of our thinnings ofcourse! Our radishes, spinach, salads, and peas look great there. We built a mudman out in Silverton. A mudman is very similar to a snowman but made with mud. His hair is made from sod and his arms are made from bamboo. He will grow and change throughout the season, eventually "melting" back into the ground.

Our plants will be delivered to Silverton and to Linden with the ACS Plant Project tour. I will be delivering the plants by bus to the center. It will be a great day!
Our Adult Container Class is coming up soon. We will have more information this week about when and where it will be taking place.

Things to do: Dance in the rain. It's fun.
Take kids on a seed walk. Put some yucky old socks on over your kids shoes. Go for a walk in the park, on the trail, or in your yard. Be sure to have your child run and walk all over the weedy areas. Come back inside and take off those socks. Inspect them for seeds and plant what you find.
Gather up some rain water in a bucket for your plants. CONSERVE
Split up your worm bins and gather their much desired castings for your hot crop starts. Place some in the hole you transfer to for some boost and lessened shock.
Eat all of your thinnings.
Eat all of your rosemary flowers. Pick them off and use them as a great decorative and flavorful flare to your dishes.
Take your neighbor's or friend's dog out for a walk.
Begin hardening off your starts and transplants. They should have at least 2 weeks of time spent outside for a short portion of the day.
Save up that space in your garden. You might want to hold off putting anything down if it will just be moved or shaded by your hot crops. Plan accordingly.

Good luck and Get growing.

Garden Guru Katz