The Project Grow 40th Anniversary Party!
September 22nd 5pm-9pm - 2270 Platt Road - Click Here to RSVP!
Project Grow has been gardening in Ann Arbor for an astonishing 40 years! This makes us one of the longest standing community gardening organizations in the country. We're inviting all of our gardeners and community partners to join us in celebration of our history as we look forward to another 40! We will be celebrating at our newest garden located at 2270 Platt Rd. Project Grow will bring games, musical entertainment, and a pig to roast over open flame! Please RSVP and bring a side dish to share.
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Project Grow Summer Classes - Click Here To Register!! Secrets of Organic Gardening - Saturday July 28th 10am-12pm - The Nature House @ The Leslie Science Center - 1831 Traver Rd Ann Arbor, MI, with Rick Weller of Organically Done. Rick Weller, lifelong organic gardener and owner of Organically Done, will present methods, techniques, and tips for gardening in a toxin-free organic environment. Grow robust and nutritious fruits, vegetables, and flowers in a sustainable fashion without concern for your family's health. The following topics will be covered: Benefits of Organic Gardening; Your First Organic Garden; Building and Maintaining Healthy Soils, Working with Organic Amendments; and Natural Pest Controls. All questions and discussions are welcome. The class is free but donations are appreciated. Getting Started with Keeping Bees - Sunday July 29th 10am-12pm - The Leslie House @ The Leslie Science Center - 1831 Traver Rd Ann Arbor, MI with Meghan Milbrath of Sand Hill Apiaries Interested in seeing what it would take to get started as a beekeeper? If you are considering having a backyard hive, a small apiary, would like a pollination boost for your garden, or are simply concerned about the plight of the bees, this class will help you determine a level of beekeeping involvement that is manageable and fun. This class will provide background to help make decisions and plans for many levels of beekeeping: - Benefits of different types of hives, and basic equipment
- What makes a good site for bees.
- Where to acquire bees/ what breed is best.
- How much time is required throughout the year.
- Relevant regulations and further information.
- How to help your local pollinators
Time will be available for questions answer and to examine the Leslie hives. This class is free but donations are appreciated! Learn creative ways to preserve your harvest. Receive instruction and hands-on experience, as well as taste samples of food preserved with lacto-fermentation. Class participants will prepare 1 quart of vegetables for fermentation at home. A selection of spices and a variety of vegetables will be available for you to create you own unique blend of pickles. Ge Zhang and Lucas DiGia, both Project Grow gardeners, will lead the class, which is limited to 10 seats, so register early. Fee to cover the cost of supplies: $10.00 |
Patio Tomato UpdateWe potted up some of our patio tomato plants this year to grow them in real life conditions and here is how they look.  | Left to right, back row: Principe Borghese, Red Russian, Burpee Quarter Century
Front Row: Yellow Canary, Minibel |
The pots are about 9 inches across and maybe 7 inches high which is plenty big for the ones in the back row and more than enough for Yellow Canary and Minibel. Some of the Minibel are already ready to harvest. You don't get many tomatoes, but not bad at all if you live in an apartment and want to grow a few fresh tomatoes on your balcony. |
Keeping Up With Watering
We finally got some rain the first week of July but it has been a dry summer. One of the advantages of community gardens is that your neighbors can watch things if you can't be at the garden all the time. Gardeners at Chapel Hill same up with a great way to know when to keep an eye on their neighbor's plot. If a gardener is going out of town for a couple days they put a couple of those orange flags (the little ones used by utilities to mark lines) at the front of their plot. This alerts their neighbors to keep an eye on things. One gardener at West Park said she just waters her neighbor's plants after watering her own if they look like they need it. Her neighbors no doubt appreciate it and yours would too!
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Morning Glories Yes, Bindweed No
By Kirk Jones
A gardener sent me an e-mail disagreeing about morning glories being acceptable for Project Grow plots. She said that morning glories from her neighbor's plot had overtaken her strawberries and she had barely managed to save them. I did a little research and think what she was seeing was bindweed. Bindweed is a perennial weed that is very difficult to eliminate because the roots run deep and the plant will come back from small root fragments. It can literally take years of pulling it out to get rid of bindweed.
People often call bindweed a "wild morning glory". They look similar - both are vines and both flowers have fused petals, but they are different plants that are not in the same genus (bindweed = Convolvulus, moring glory=Ipomea).
Bindweed flowers are pretty enough, they are white or pink and about the size of a quarter. But don't be fooled, this is a nasty weed and should be pulled if you see it. Morning glory flowers are
much larger, the leaves are heart shaped, and the plant is an annual.I guess the safe approach is that if you didn't plant it or don't know what it is, then it is probably a weed!
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Morning Glory
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Bindweed
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Registration Report
With the addition of our new site, Platt, Project Grow has 18 garden sites containing 269 community garden plots and 41 Discovery Garden raised beds. All the community garden plots and Discovery beds were rented, although we ran some "specials" to existing gardeners to fill up Platt because it opened late.
We had 378 gardeners, 40 in the Discovery Gardens and 338 in the community gardens. Of these, 63% were returning gardeners and 37% were new to Project Grow.
A total of 22 people paid reduced fees and the total subsidy was $1800.
Because we want to serve as many people as possible, new gardeners could only get half plots at a number of sites where demand is high and the number of available spaces is low. These sites included Clague, Hillside, Hunt, Northside and West Park. Wines would have been in this group but everyone returned. Next year we will probably also limit new gardeners to half plots at Buhr and possibly even Matthaei which was very popular this year. Returning gardeners at these sites can keep their full plot if that is what they had this year - we will not turn anyone out of a plot they have gardened the previous year!
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Platt Potluck
 | | Gardeners at Platt had their first potluck on June 24th. |
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Still Looking for Site Pictures
There are new pictures of Greenview to the website and we'd like to get pictures from all the sites by the end of the year. Right now we still need pictures from: Buhr, Catholic Social Services, Clague, Hunt, Lakewood, Mitchell, Platt, West Park and Wines.
 | | Greenview, July 2012 |
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Tomato Tastings and Tomatoes for Sale
In addition to holding a tomato tasting at the HomeGrown Festival on Saturday September 8th, Project Grow hopes to also hold several at the new Cobblestone Farmer's Market that has started on Tuesdays from 4pm-7pm. If things work out we will also have tomatoes like the ones in the tasting for sale at the market. This will be sometime in August, the exact dates depend on when tomatoes start ripening. We will keep you posted! |
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