Tag Archives: gardening

Mark Your Calendar, Opportunities Galore

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I’m sorry so much time has gone by but a life change took all my attention for six months. Now I’m back on track and ready to o help you get on track for 2012. Here are some classes/events/talks you may want to get on your calendar.

ENERGY
Solar Hot Water 103
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Century College, 3300 Century Avenue N., White Bear Lake, MN 55110
$90.00 for members of MRES, $100.00 for non-members
A one-day introductory course for homeowners interested in learning how to design a solar hot water heating system. You will learn to evaluate solar site resource, when solar hot water is the right solution, the economics and incentives for solar hot water, and system design principles. Topics covered include system components, system sizing, solar thermal panels, storage tanks, heat exchangers and plumbing connections.

Build a Personal Solar Station
Thursday, March 22, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
At the Seward Co-op, brought to you by GoSolar!
$50/$45 members
The class will teach you how to build a Personal Solar Station that can be used in your home, cabin, or RV to run 12V kitchen appliances for cooking or lights for a shed. Learn the basics of solar energy and electricity. Solar kits will be offered during class.

Your Longfellow sustainability group (called Transition Longfellow) will be hosting a workshop to make a solar cooker in April of this year. Watch for more info.

CLIMATE CHANGE
HOLY TRINITY READING PROJECT
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church is doing a congregation book read of “Earth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet,” by Bill McKibben. Learn how climate change is/will affect both people and the planet and how we can begin to respond to and prepare for it. Book discussion is held in the Holy Trinity library at 9:55 am on Sunday, March 11. Books are available for sale at the church.

GARDENS/LOCAL FOOD
Community Garden Spring Resource Fair, organized by Gardening Matters
Saturday March 31st
Neighborhood House, 179 Robie Street, St. Paul, MN 55107
Donation
Connecting gardeners with resources, information and people for a successful 2012 growing season. Workshops on topics such as backyard chickens and beekeeping, food swaps and coops, addressing food justice at a local level, and composting options for community gardens. Keynote speaker is Karen Washington, an urban farmer and president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition and founding member of Black Urban Growers (BUGs). Karen has developed abandoned lots into successful community gardens and food initiatives. She will be sharing her work advocating for land permanence for community gardens and the power of working in a coalition to achieve common goals.

Urban Chicken 101 Lecture
Wednesday, April 4, 6:30-8:30
Seward Co-op
$12/$10 members
This class will cover everything you need to know to start up a small flock of chickens in your back yard, with an emphasis on coop design.

It’s harvest time! How far did your food travel?

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Oh Bounteous Garden…

Pickled peppers

August was supposed to be the month we looked at reducing our carbon footprint in the area of transportation. What was I thinking?! I’m spending any non-work hours trying to stay ahead of the garden. We have learned how to can and pickle and ferment.

We’ve pickled green beans and peppers, cukes and beets and cherry tomatoes. We put up stewed tomatoes. I’ve got two containers of tomato puree in the fridge, a big mess o’ green and purple beans, and an abundance of fridge pickles cuz I let the pickling cukes get too large.

Garlic harvest

Produce from the garden

I’m waiting until all the pickling is done before I freeze the remainder of the 16 heads of garlic – absolutely luscious and interesting to experience the drying process. We had to dry them indoors because of the high humidity in July. We’ll be doing that again.

The tomatoes are starting to slow down now in the cooling weather. The peppers are still going strong – we’ll have a big batch of jalapenos and hot hungarians and a few more gorgeous green peppers. The eggplants are still going strong – we have purple and long, thing green ones. Collards look nice but didn’t get very big.

While I was out harvesting, a neighbor came by. I like him a lot and usually think he’s a very sensible guy, but he said he sees no value to gardening. He knows where he can get a tomato any time of the year – at the grocery store.

I pointed out that my tomato only traveled 10 feet, was picked in its prime and was never exposed to toxic chemicals. He thinks it’s a waste of time. While the industrial food system is working, he wants what he wants, when he wants it.

Canning and pickling

My neighbor believes in global warming but he doesn’t think there is anything we can do about it. Getting food closer to home – reducing the carbon footprint of food – is not a meaningful solution to him. On the other hand, he believes we have an “excess population” problem and coming food shortages are nature’s way of balancing.

That’s a pretty scary thought. I would rather be more hopeful and life-loving. I would rather enlarge my garden and learn how to grow more and preserve more. Maybe my garden can’t get us through a winter but let’s see what we can do with my garden and local farmers.

We’re learning. We thinking about issues. And I guess I was paying attention to my transportation footprint after all, in the form of food.

Organics, Nutritional Value and the Effects of Carbon Emissions

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Seward Coop - a beautiful place to visit and shop

Can We Grow Healthy Food in an Unhealthy Environment?

I attended a class at the Seward Coop this morning on “How to Shop the Coop.” The woman who taught the class repeated a claim I’ve heard before that organics have more nutritional value. And furthermore, that food today is less nutritious than in the past.

I wondered what the research was behind these claims so I thought I’d investigate. I found several articles about the research into nutrition past, present and future.

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Experiments in Square-Foot Gardening

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This month the mini-challenge is localizing our food.We’re paying attention to where our food comes from at the coop, choosing Minnesota or Wisconsin-grown, rather than California or Mexico. At our last trip, 24% of our purchase was local.

raised bed garden box

One of our square foot garden boxes

The other big effort – especially this time of year – is in the garden.

Last year we worked with the Permaculture Institute for Cold Climates and had an urban farmer create and work our veggie garden. This year we’re back to doing it ourselves, but with a twist. We’ve planted several square foot gardens in addition to a more traditional vegetable plantings directly in the dirt (the circular bed). The square foot layout is intended to maximize yield while minimizing space, to virtually eliminate weeding, and to generally simplify gardening.

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June Mini-Challenge: Eat Local

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June in Minnesota means gardening!

Our mini-challenge this month is to take steps to make our food choices more local.

Gardening: If you’ve got a yard, you can start a garden. At our house, we are trying out square foot gardening. We’ve planted some plants in the traditional manner. We’ve got some in boxes with our own soil, and we’ve got 3 boxes planted with the special Mel’s mix. We’ll see how they do.

Don’t have space for a garden? Try a container garden on a patio or deck. One group member who had no sun in her yard walked over to a neighbor and asked if she could garden in her spare lot. The neighbor said yes.

Shop local: Maybe you don’t have time to garden. You can still shop more locally by buying at the Midtown Farmer’s market or the coop. Or visit your favorite restaurant and see if they source their foods locally. Consider signing on to the Eat Local challenge.

A group member reported that if you shop the Seward Coop, your receipt will show you what percentage of your purchase was locally grown. She recently took a class on shopping the coop on a budget and reported that it was very informative and inspirational. She realized she could save a lot more money. There is another class coming up on July 16.

Understand Food Issues: Maybe you’d like to get a better understanding of the issues. Consider joining a book group at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The next book the group is reading is Slow Death by Rubber Duck, by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, July 19, 6:30–8:00 p.m. at Peace Coffee Shop. “How a dare between two friends became a revealing lesson about how toxins in everyday products affect us all.”

Whatever you do, happy eating!

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Join the Local Food Conversation

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Growing food as locally as possible is a key component of the sustainability movement and addresses a number of problems:

  • Increasing cost of healthy food due to high cost of fuel to transport
  • Lack of access for some people to healthy food options
  • Better control over food quality (big agri-business practices have created some big health problems)
  • Reduced use of pesticides and herbicides
  • Allows more careful attention to health of plants and soil than large industrial farms

The city-wide group, Gardening Matters, has been very active throughout Minneapolis in getting gardens started. But there are a host of other challenges to increasing urban agriculture.

A wonderful conversation is taking place at Gandhi Mahal restaurant around issues of local food. A group of Longfellow neighbors has been meeting for the past two months to talk about the practical needs people encounter with growing, harvesting, distributing and storing food. Topics have included:

  • Increasing the number of community gardens
  • Garden planning
  • Ways to help existing gardeners share their produce with those who do not have enough to eat
  • How local restaurants can coordinate with local gardeners to increase their use of organic local produce
  • Food preservation — classes for cooking, processing and preserving produce
  • A food storage bank where residents can cold store processed produce for later use
  • Energy efficient greenhouses

Longer-term food storage (finding the right conditions to keep your produce through an entire winter) is one of the immediate projects the group is undertaking.

If you are interested in joining the local food conversation, leave a comment on the blog. I’ll connect you with the organizers.

Sustainable Shelter and Food Activities Around Town

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There are oh so many activities coming up in the next few weeks for folks interested in sustainable, green living. Here are a few you might want to visit.

Bell Museum of Natural History (until July 17, 2011):  An exhibit on sustainable shelter “reveals innovative new building technologies and strategies that can help restore the health and viability of natural cycles.” It looks at energy systems, the life cycle of building materials, an inside view of wall systems, household water systems, and more.

Speaking of shelter, check out the Minneapolis/St. Paul Home Tour, this Saturday and Sunday, April 30 and May 1. More than 50 “ordinary people” type homes will be on display. The online guide lets you find homes with solar or green features (the list is long).

Thinking of going solar at your home? Remember, there is a Community Solar Educational Workshop at Matthews Park on Monday, May 2, from 6:30 pm-8:30 pm. Speakers will highlight a Solar Hot Water/Air Heat Bulk Purchase Program.

Can’t wait to get your hands dirty in the garden (hoping it won’t snow again)? There are opportunities for plant buying and plant exchange galore.

  • Consider a membership (only $10) in the Southside Local Food Resource Hub. Seeds and seedlings will be distributed this Saturday. You can join at the event.
  • Friends School Plant Sale is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 6, 7 and 8, at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand. Nearly 2,300 varieties of plants will be available — at least for the first half hour :). Note that there will be a class on making cold frames for your garden.
  • Dowling Garden Plant Sale on May 14th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Dowling Community Garden at 39th Street and 46th Avenue South. This sale benefits the community garden.
  • Longfellow Garden Club Plant Swap on Saturday, May 21,  from 11 am  to 1:30 pm, at the Sanford Jr High west parking lot. Bring plants to swap. If you don’t have any, make a small donation to the Club’s Speaker Fund.