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Project Grow Plant Sale
We know we've been announcing it since February, but now Project Grow's annual plant sale is just around the corner! The sale will be held on Saturday May 21st and Saturday May 28th from 8am to 2pm in front of the People's Food Co-op at 216 N. Fourth Avenue in Ann Arbor, right by the Farmer's Market. Our sale offers organically grown heirloom varieties. We are offering everyone's favorites from previous years - 49 different kinds of tomatoes, 14 pepper varieties and 5 kinds of basil. You can see a complete list of the varieties for sale here. As in previous years, the plants are organically grown using organic soil mix and organic fertilizer. In many cases the seeds are saved by local organic gardeners. The plants are in 3.5" pots and cost $3 each. Also, Scott from Old House Bulbs has agreed to offer one free Dahlia with purchase! (While supplies last)
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Last Chance to Join the Project Grow Potato Pledge
The Project Grow Potato Pledge "Main Event" was on April 16th, but if you missed it and would still like to participate, we will again have seed potatoes available during our Plant Sale on May 21st and May 28th from 8am-2pm in front of the People's Food Co-op at 210 4th Avenue in Ann Arbor. Please come by the plant sale and make your pledge!
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Volunteers Needed for the Plant Sale
We rely on the help of our amazing volunteers to manage and setup this event! We still have a few slots open for this weekend, please e-mail Lucas at volunteer@projectgrowgardens.org if you can help!
Friday May 20th 4pm-5pm and 7pm-9pm at Dogma Catmantoo (208 N. Fourth Ave)
Saturday May 21st 6am-9am, 9am-12pm, or 12pm-3pm at PFC (216 N. Fourth Ave)
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Interested in making a difference with Project Grow? Come join our first All Volunteer Meeting for 2011 at the Leslie House on June 5th! This will be a potluck, so please let us know if you will be attending by filling out the RSVP HERE. We will be introducing the new volunteer coordinators, learning about the volunteer projects and goals this summer, and getting to know each other! It's OK if you can't make it, just check our upcoming volunteer events and volunteer positions and let Lucas at volunteer@projectgrowgardens.org know if you're interested!
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New Volunteer Calendar
We have launched a new volunteer calendar through Google Calendars. Here is the link to the Calendar. Please subscribe to this Calendar so that you can have our events added to your Google Calendar automatically!
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2011 Registration Update
At the time of publication, nearly all the gardens are open. We are still installing a water system at West Park and are hoping to manage to plow some of the perennial gardens at Greenview, which were previously abandoned and are terribly overgrown. Chapel Hill is also still not open. Space is still available at Airport, Dicken and Greenview, as well as the Discovery gardens at County Farm and Leslie Science Center.
Because of the exceptionally cold and wet Spring, the Project Grow Board decided to open many of the gardens without waiting for a spring tilling. This was not done to conserve money. The Board decided skip the Spring tilling where possible because people were anxious to start gardening, and at most gardens, stake out (placing the stakes that identify where the gardens are) cannot be completed until after plowing. A few people contacted Cindy saying they were unhappy with this decision, but the Board felt that as many people, if not more, would have been upset by having to wait even longer before they could start gardening.
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2011 Classes
Project Grow's Spring classes are over but we will be offering soil improvement classes in June and food preservation classes (once our gardens start producing things to preserve) in August and September. If you're interested in learning about composting, vermiculture or terra preta, canning, drying, lacto-fermentation or seed saving please continue to check the website's class listings.
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Locally Sourced Blogs - corinnaborden.com
Our locally-sourced blog this month is corinnaborden.com. Corinna's blog, I dreamt of Sausage, is subtitled Corinna Borden on life, on eating, on earth. She first attracted our attention with the Farm to Fork series where she visits local farms and shares what she learns. Her latest visit was to the Tilian Farm Development Center, an inspirational project to help farmers enter the organic and sustainable agriculture community. Her detailed post is very interesting and informative, thank you Corinna for sharing your experience with us and we look forward to hearing about your next trip!
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The New Gardener Shindig
Many of our new gardeners joined us at the Leslie Science Center on April 23rd for an introduction to organic gardening and free lunch! Former board member and avid gardener Royer Held led the class, helping our new gardeners begin to understand the methods and principles behind organic gardening including pest control, soil amendments, and seed starting practices. We had a great turn out and great weather for the event, thank you to all the board members and volunteers that helped make this event a success!
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Garden Pictures Still Wanted
We've got some great pictures on the website of the Project Grow gardens at Hillside, Northside and Matthaei. If you'd like pictures from your garden site added to this illustrious gallery, just send them to Kirk@GoodScentsGardens.com and we will post them as soon as we can!
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Volunteer of the Month - Joet Reoma
This was, hands down, the easiest month to pick a volunteer! Joet first joined us at the Discovery Garden opening work party, blowing us away with his hard work sorting the compost pile and awesome attitude. Then, he e-mailed us offering to help build a new compost bin and even a worm bin to boot! When West Park needed fast-acting volunteers to help move multiple yards of compost at a moment's notice-- Joet jumped at the chance and even brought his own two-wheel wheel-barrow. I recently asked him some advice on a broken tiller and he offered to help fix it! I can't figure out what he WON'T do for us... an amazing problem for a volunteer coordinator to have! Thanks Joet, we appreciate you!
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As part of the Neighbors Building Brightmoor nonprofit, the Youth Garden is an opportunity for kids in the Brightmoor neighborhood to run a community garden and sell the produce at local farmer's markets. Located on the west side of Detroit, this is a neighborhood with almost 70% vacant land. The Brightmoor Youth Garden has done it's part to help organize the neighborhood, spreading to several sites in the area. When we heard about these gardens and the amazing volunteers that make it happen, we knew we had to help. We will be donating heirloom tomato seedlings from our plant sale and hopefully they will produce tasty fruit for the kids to take to market! We will stay in touch with them and let you know! Check them out on Facebook and see how you can help!
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Neutral Zone Green Group Presents Waterlife
The Michigan Theatre on Sunday, May 22nd @ 2PM
The Neutral Zone's Green Group is screening Waterlife at the Michigan Theater on Sunday, May 22 at 2 PM. The film, Waterlife, is directed by Kevin McMahon and illustrates both the beauty of the Great Lakes as well as the threats it currently faces.
The screening is free and open to the public, however a five dollar donation is suggested. Narrated by The Tragically Hip's Gord Downie, Waterlife tells the story of the largest freshwater source on Earth and what needs to be done to save it. A source of drinking water for 35 million people, the Great Lakes face pollution, contamination, invasive species and dropping water levels making this a most pressing issue in Michigan. The film includes music by Sufjan Stevens, Brian Eno and others. Waterlife was released in 2009.
Green Group is a youth-run environmental organization at Ann Arbor's Neutral Zone. For more information about this topic, please contact Marissa Solomon by calling (734) 330-0807, or e-mail nzgreen-group@googlegroups.com.
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Pole Beans
by Kirk Jones
I don't grow that many vegetables compared to many Project Grow gardeners, so I tend to focus on things that I really like or things that are fairly easy. Pole beans qualify on both these counts and for the past few years I've been growing them. The first year I had a contest between two popular old heirlooms, 'Blue Lake' and 'Kentucky Wonder'. I preferred 'Blue Lake', not just because I preferred the flavor to 'Kentucky Wonder', but because the beans were usually straight, and for some reason curly green beans drive me nuts.
After my competition, I have just grown 'Blue Lake'. I'm not an heirloom vegetable expert like Marcella or Royer, but because 'Blue Lake' is an heirloom, and I was only growing one variety, I saved seeds last year. With beans, this is pretty easy to do. Just let a few beans grow to full size and dry out. Then shell the dried beans and you have seeds for next year. Eleanor Perenyi, the author of Green Thoughts, actually saves these dried beans and uses them in place of navy beans. I'm sure they are terrific, but shelling beans is time consuming, and unfortunately too much work for this gardener to expend on a measly 50 cents worth of dried beans. For now, green beans plus a few seeds for next year is all I'm up for.
I grow my beans on a cattle panel trellis. I read about making cattle panel trellises on the Vertical Gardening forum at GardenWeb. You just need a single 16' cattle panel and bend it into an arch. A single panel is sells for about $25 at Tractor Supply (there are nearby stores in Saline, Whitmore Lake and Jackson Road near Baker Road in Ann Arbor). As you'd expect, cattle panels are tough and last for years.
I grow the beans on the outside of the trellis. It is about 4 feet wide, so a single panel grows about 8' of pole beans. I really like the look and love the idea of the traditional ways of growing pole beans, on little bamboo pole teepees or on sunflowers. Unfortunately, I never actually used either of these methods in my garden, not trusting myself to construct the teepees correctly or get the sowing timing right for the beans and sunflowers. However, the cattle panel trellis looks pretty great, too!
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