Winter Garden Tips & Inspiration!

Hello dear friends of the Sharing Gardens and welcome to our February Digest with timely "How To" articles on: Growing Peas, Onions, Kale, Milkweeds and other Winter Crops from Seed and Grape Pruning. (Image, left: Llyn Peabody 2020).

And, even if you're not so interested in gardening topics, be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post for links to "An Amazing Synchronicity!" and a short video about the connection between 'sharing' and the 'experience of abundance'. Both are very inspiring and thought-provoking!

The back of our house, workshop, Oz-greenhouse and garden shed.

Here is our latest new post on Starting Early Spring Crops from Seed (lettuce, kale, cabbage etc) (but wait a bit on broccoli and chard because if they're kissed with frost they have a tendency to 'bolt' - got to seed). In it we offer step-by-step instructions using our method of starting seeds in re-purposed tofu-containers with holes drilled in their bottoms (left) inside a grow-tunnel or greenhouse.

We've also been having a lot of success starting seedlings directly in the raised-beds of our greenhouses (left). Read here about our methods.

PEAS: There's just nothing to compare with the delicious sweetness and crunch of edible-pod peas. Many years ago we discovered a method to get a head-start on pea-planting. Read this post to learn how: Valentines Day - Time for Pea Planting!

ONIONS: Some years we have better success than others in growing onions. With gardening, there are always so many variables so, what works one year, may not work the next! Here are posts that outline the methods that have yielded the best results over many seasons:

Onions - Growing from Seed - Using heat mats and shallow pots

Onions - Growing From Seed - deep pots 

The following article was written in the heart of summer but the first part of the post details onion harvesting and curing so we include it here. Growing Onions from Seed - It takes a Village

Kale is one of the easiest plants to grow in the Pacific NW; it is hardy through the winter and, if mulched and watered sufficiently can even withstand the hottest parts of the summer. Along with Collards it is the most nutrient-dense food per calorie! Unfortunately, it is also one of the most highly pesticided plants as well. Follow the links below to learn:

Why it is so important to only eat organically grown kale: Kale again in the "Dirty Dozen" - 2024  

Excellent info on the nutritional value of Kale and tips on growing it! "The King of Vegetables; 'Kale' to the Chief!" 

One of the pleasures of growing your own food from seeds is to begin to save your own seeds. With most varieties, it's not difficult and the seeds you save yourself will naturally select/adapt to be more perfectly suited to your local climate and conditions. Saving seeds also contributes to having a greater sense of local food-security in case there ever comes a time when seeds are not distributed over long distances, or there is a seed-crop failure in another part of the country. Read here for more tips on Growing Kale and Saving and Storing Kale Seed.

Cathy, Danielle and Llyn with Red Russian kale - a powerhouse of nutrition!

Another important mission of the Sharing Gardens is to provide habitat for the wild species of flora and fauna that call this land 'home'. Though we are at the very farthest northern reaches of the Western Monarch population we have established three perennial patches of Showy Milkweed, the host plant for the Monarch (and sole diet of the Monarch's caterpillars). We've yet to see a Monarch in our yard but there are plenty of other pollinating insects that just love it's sweet nectar. Here's a How-to post for growing milkweed from seed: How to help the Monarch Butterflies - Starting milkweed from seed

Adri and Kaylyn with Showy Milkweed plants

February is grape-pruning time in our area. Below is a link to two resources we've found to be incredibly helpful in learning the proper ways to prune grapes. The post includes both a video and an article with excellent pictures and descriptions to guarantee your success!

In previous years, we had experimented with different methods of pruning. Our theory was: the more fruit spurs we left behind, the more fruit we'd get from them. It can be a bit anxiety-producing to cut off a lot of plant material and reduce your grapes to just two canes and two renewal spurs (for next year's growth)! In truth, by cutting back the plants so radically, you may get fewer bunches but the ones you get will be larger and more filled out and easier to harvest. Click here for The Best video and article (we've found) on Pruning Grapes.

A fraction of our harvest following the cane method of pruning.

And lastly, we read an inspiring article about a woman who has been living without money for ten years. She said:

“I actually feel more secure than I did when I was earning money, because all through human history, true security has always come from living in community and I have time now to build that ‘social currency’. To help people out, care for sick friends or their children, help in their gardens. That’s one of the big benefits of living without money.” (To read the full article, click here: An Amazing Synchronicity! (and a woman who's lived 'money-free' for ten years!)

And, if you've any doubt about the connection between 'sharing' and 'abundance', please enjoy this marvelous, short video by our friend and partner in sharing Nick Routledge:

(In case this newsletter was forwarded by a friend, or you've just stumbled on our website for the first time and you would like to be added to our list to receive future newsletters, send us an email at the Sharing Gardens: shareinjoy AT gmail.com) "Bee" well!  Chris and Llyn

Sharing Gardens Founders and Stewards: Chris and Llyn

A New Video!

Here is a short 4-minute video about the Sharing Gardens made by a student from Oregon State University who volunteered with us as part of a Service-Learning class in  2016. Enjoy! As Chris says, as he summarizes the philosophy of the Sharing Gardens, "A main element of the garden is, it has to be fun!" We hope that your explorations with growing food continue to expand this year, bring you joy and that you grow enough to share with friends, or neighbors or people in need in your community. Llyn and Chris

OSU students with a big lettuce harvest to donate to the Food Pantry. Here is a LINK to a sweet info-video made by an OSU service-learning volunteer in 2016

Can We Create Social Change Without Money?

We're up to our eyeballs in harvesting and food-preservation so haven't had time to publish something new in awhile. This is a re-publishing of a post from October of 2015. Still as relevant as ever. Enjoy! Llyn and Chris

Here is a video and transcript of a Ted-Talk by Nipun Mehta, a pioneer in 'sharing' and the true gift-economy (giving without thought of receiving). Nipun beautifully articulates the community-building, healing power of generosity. We decided to post this on our Sharing Gardens site because our project is deeply founded in the principles outlined in this video. Enjoy!

Can We Create Social Change Without Money?

--by Nipun Mehta, Oct 28, 2015

Can we create social change without money? I don't have a conclusive answer but just holding that question can raise some very interesting insights.

Since we're talking about money, I thought I'd start with a story on Wall Street. One of my friends was running a venture fund on Wall Street. They had a great year, and his boss calls him in to congratulate him and offers the proverbial blank check, "What would you like?" He looks his boss in the eye and says, "What I'd love is a minute of silence before all our group meetings."

Wow. The boss is thinking, "In a context where people are billing every three minutes, a minute of silence to do nothing? That's like wasting time." He refuses. "No. Anything else?" he asks. No. After sleeping on it, though, the boss comes back to say, "Look, if you really want that minute of silence, fine, I'll give it to you." They start meetings with a minute of silence. That minute turned into two to three to five minutes. Today, they do thirty minutes once a week, and even have their own meditation bell.

What was my friend thinking? On one side he could've asked for a monetary raise, but on the other side was very different kind of capital — mental quiet, connection, trust. He is thinking, "I don't want to meet people in a space of rush. I'd rather meet them with a bit more peace." It changed his relationship to himself, it changed his relationship to other people and certainly with his boss. And it didn't just stop there. It changed how everyone related to each other. It changed the whole culture of their office space. And that was something he valued more than the financial capital.

How do we broaden our lens to include alternative forms of capital? This is a question, this is a possibility, that we all have access to but in our current world today, we're very biased towards financial capital.

In theory, our society is supposed to balance all these biases. We have three big sectors. The private sector is rooted in extrinsic motivations like money, power, fame. On the other end, we have the voluntary sector that is rooted in very intrinsic sort of motivations. Compassion, knowledge, purpose. And then there's the public sector that is supposed to regulate between the two and work on both sides of the aisle.

This is how it's supposed to work in theory. In practice, though, the private sector starts to take over. In fact, it starts to dominate. We do have a public sector, but the public sector is increasingly being controlled by the private sector. There is a small voluntary sector, but these days, in the name of the sharing economy, even that is being commoditized. Courtesy of the "sharing economy", your lawn mower can get you six bucks a day, and you can rent out your Hermès purse for a hundred dollars a party and your dog for five dollars a walk.

When we have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. If money is the only metric we have, we start to put a price tag on everything.

The problem with price tags is that we start to lose connection with the priceless. We start to lose connection with our intrinsic motivation.

What does science say about all this? Edward Deci at the University of Rochester has been studying incentives for over forty years. After thousands of experiments, he categorically asserts that the carrot and stick model doesn't work. This idea of a contingent reward — if you do this, you will get this — doesn't actually work.

For example, he studied people who loved to solve puzzles. Initially, they would solve puzzles just for the love of it, just for its intrinsic enjoyment. Then he started to pay them to do the same thing. So far so good. Then, at a later point, he stopped paying them. As soon as he stopped paying them, you would think they would return to that original state, right? It turns out, though, that they were no longer interested in solving puzzles at all!

What his research shows is that money desensitizes us. What science is actually telling us is this: Don't show me the money. When you're working with intrinsic motivations, financial rewards can backfire.

At the Max Planck Institute, researchers have been studying 18-month olds. These toddlers are just playing and all of a sudden they see a bunch of strangers who are putting clothes out for drying. In the process, they drop a clothespin and need help getting to it. The toddlers see that a person is in need, and immediately go out to help. They pick up the clothespin and hand it to the strangers. Now, at that age, they haven't yet been taught kindness or compassion but they're still moved to help. They're still moved to cooperate.

What science is telling us is that it's natural to give, that we're wired to care. In fact, not only is it guiding us to "don't show me the money", but it's saying to not offer any rewards at all. It's just not necessary.

The question we are left with is this — what designs emerge when we don't lead with money? What designs emerge when we lead with something subtler or something internal? We have many examples that offer insight into this inquiry.

Mother Teresa, of course, is an example that all of us know about. Someone purely motivated by intrinsic motivations. One of my friends, Lynne Twist, is a world-renowned fundraiser and author of a book titled, Soul of Money. She knows money. Many years ago, she had a very interesting conversation with Mother Teresa, whom she knew personally. "Mother Teresa, what's your fund raising strategy?" she asked. And Mother Teresa, with her big-hearted compassion, simply replied, "Oh, I just pray. Whatever I get is what I need."

It was simple. Here was a woman who had 400 centers in 102 countries and she's kind of like the CEO of this whole operation and she is saying, "I have no fundraising strategy." Or rather she is saying, "My fundraising strategy is to be rooted so deeply in intrinsic motivation that external security is not even a concern."

We have many modern examples as well. Linux rivaled Microsoft Windows purely with a distributed army of volunteers. Wikipedia did that with Encyclopedia Britannica. On Wikipedia alone, through those micro-edits that volunteers made, hundred million volunteer hours have been donated. CouchSurfing, similarly, allowed strangers to stay on each other's couches and disrupted the hotel industry.

As we look closely, we see an entire spectrum of motivations. It starts with extrinsic motivations on one side and goes all the way to intrinsic motivations. On the extrinsic side, there's money, power, fame; somewhere in between you have things like fun, learning, growth and purpose. Then on the intrinsic end of the spectrum, you have these very profound motivations like healing, forgiveness, inner-transformation and ultimately compassion.

On that extrinsic end, we have thousands and thousands of examples, but on the other side, on the side of intrinsic motivations, we don't have too many. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, is a completely decentralized, distributed, and a never-monetized effort. It points towards the other end of the spectrum, but we have an opportunity to create a lot more examples here.

Back in 1999, we started ServiceSpace that rested squarely on the intrinsic end of this spectrum. It started with four of us, building websites for non-profits. Underneath the work, though, what we wanted to do was to anchor ourselves purely in the spirit of service. Over the last sixteen years, we've organized around three core principles that have kept us rooted in that intrinsic motivation.

The first one is that we are volunteer run. Many people look at that as scarcity of paid staff and ask, "How will you scale?" What we noticed was that we actually had an abundance of social capital. Imagine that you're trying to raise a million bucks. You could get it from one or two people, or a dollar from a million people. Which is stronger? A million people saying, "Yes, I believe in what you're doing. Yes, I care." The cumulative energy of that is profound. It's powerful. That's what we were experiencing with small contributions of time from many volunteers.

Similarly, our second principle is to not fundraise. When you don't ask for resources, you naturally feel a lot of gratitude for all that ends up in your lap. You learn to creatively work with what you've got, and you start to cooperate. Incredible synergies emerge, particularly when working with non-financial capital.

Lastly, our third principle is to focus on small. It wasn't about big things outside, but rather it was about the subtle on the inside. Being in the change you wish to see in the world starts to attune us to the subtle. The resulting awareness, in a very profound way, ignites our deepening understanding of interconnection.

With these three principles, ServiceSpace manages to create lot of impact in the world. We started by building websites for non-profits and we ended up helping thousands of efforts come online. Then we started building portals like DailyGood and KarmaTube. Every year we send seventy million emails, and not a single one of them has an ad -- or even a reference to buying something. It is purely non-financial.

Still, how far can we push ourselves while still operating solely on the strength of these intrinsic motivations?

We started this game of kindness called Smile Cards and it spread to over a hundred countries. In local communities we started these gift-economy experiments like Karma Kitchen where people are redefining what it means to engage in transaction. In living rooms around the world, Awakin Circles started. In all, more than half a million members were co-creating something that was engaging the attention of millions -- all without ever raising a single penny, and moved by love, service and our innate connection to each other.

It's not just that you can do a lot with this. We often take metrics from the extrinsic side of the spectrum to measure the impact on the intrinsic end. That puts a very low ceiling on its potential.

Operating with the power of intrinsic motivation alone fundamentally changes the way in which we relate to each other. It gives birth to a whole new realm of possibilities.

Karma Kitchen is like a regular restaurant, except that at the end of the meal, your check reads zero. It's zero because someone before you has paid for you and you get to pay forward for somebody after you. You are trusted to pay forward whenever you want. When people are just giving for the love of it, it changes the way they interact in that collective space. It's a profound idea that has worked wonders in seventeen places around the world.

What works, though, isn't the intellectual idea -- it's actually the experience. It's actually realizing that when you walk in, the greeter is a volunteer. The person who is waiting on your table, the person who plates your food, the person who's bussing your tables, they're all volunteers. That guy doing dishes in the back, who signed up to be on his feet for six hours, to just do dishes so you can have an experience of generosity, is also a volunteer. When you realize this, it begets a very different kind of generosity in you. A flow of deep compassion emerges. It's very natural.

Minah Jung was a student at UC Berkeley when she first volunteered at Karma Kitchen. She was so moved by the concept that she decided to study it. In fact, her research on Karma Kitchen and other gift economies became her PhD thesis. With eight different experiments, she poured through data with academic rigor, and came out with a seminal paper titled, "Paying More When Paying For Others." If you create a strong context, people respond to generosity with even greater generosity.

Richard Whitaker runs his art magazine in the same way. He was running it for fifteen years with the traditional subscriber model, and then he ran across ServiceSpace and said, "Wow, this is great. This is how I want show up in the world." He offered refunds to all his current subscribers and said, "From now on, the magazine will operate only offerings of gratitude."

Similarly, Thuy Nguyen is experimenting with this pay-forward model at her acupuncture clinic.

I want to end with this story of one of my friends, Uday-bhai. He's a rickshaw driver. By all traditional metrics, he would probably be a UN statistic on one of those poverty charts. He's a humble rickshaw driver but he has another kind of resource. He believes in love, he believes in people. Uday-bhai decided to run his rickshaw on a pay-it-forward basis. You sit in his rickshaw and there is no money meter. Someone before you has paid for you and you get to pay forward for people after you, whatever you moved to offer. He trusted that goodness in people, in the sixth largest city in India. Naturally, many asked him, "Is it working?" He says, "Here's my ledger. Point A to point B, point B to point C. Yes, some paid more, some paid less. On the whole, it evens out."

Then he adds, "Let me also show you this other notebook. This is where I ask people to write down how they felt sitting in my rickshaw." Imagine sitting in Uday-bhai's rickshaw and being completely caught off guard by the generosity of his process. This is not a billionaire doing philanthropy, but an everyday hero putting his entire livelihood on the line -- for love. It moves people to tears, people take vows for life. It's just deeply transformative and you can see that in all the notes.

Uday-bhai didn't have money, but he had a deeper kind of resource. Through that resource, through his belief in our innate generosity, he created a massive ripple that is certainly changing the world. He is redefining what it means to have capital. He's diversifying that portfolio of wealth. When you do that, when you really start saying yes to that idea, you are essentially saying, "It's no longer about the CEO, it's about the everyday Joe. It's no longer about fundraising, it's about friend-raising. It's no longer about price tags, it's about the priceless."

All of this sits on a single idea — what we will do for love will always be greater than what we do for money. May we all lead with love and change the world. Thank you.   

---

Nipun Mehta is the founder ofServiceSpace.org, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of gift-economy, technology and volunteerism. You can read more of his talks online.    
This video and article were copied from the Daily Good site, a free service that sends out emails featuring inspiring, uplifting news from the world free of charge and with no advertising. LINK

"Sharing Gardens" for Local, 'Plant-Based' Food Security

 A unique and viable approach to establishing local food self-reliance while building stronger communities.

Sharing creates abundance!

We've been watching the dramatic weather world-wide: floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves and record snows! In recent years, every country that grows food has experienced repeated significant crop-failures. Pests, weather and super-weeds are all taking their toll. It seems more important than ever for people to learn to grow, at least some, of their own food. At the Sharing Gardens (MAP), we demonstrate a style of gardening that builds soil fertility using locally-generated, renewable and sustainable materials - like leaves and grass-clippings - that are commonly considered waste products. This model also fosters trust and a sense of community at the neighborhood level; relationships that can be called upon in times of social, or environmental stress. It by-passes "business-as-usual" in that it generates a bounty of "organic" fruits and vegetables feeding far more people than it takes to run it and no money ever changes hands. We call it a "Sharing Garden".

Sharing the bounty - garden helpers "shop" for their week's vegetables. 

What makes these Sharing Gardens unique is that, instead of many separate plots, that are rented by individuals, we all garden together. All materials and labor are donated. The food we grow is shared by all who have contributed in some way. All surplus is donated to local food-charities (like Food Banks and Soup Kitchens). No one is ever charged money for the food that is grown.

Lettuce and other vegetables being donated to a local food-charity.

This model is easily replicated anywhere there are vacant lots with a water-source, and people with enough gardening experience to oversee the project and does not require a large input of money to make it work. It can be adapted to many different scales of gardening; from a few families who live and garden on the same block, to a multi-acre production farm. "Sharing Gardens" help keep materials out of burn-piles and the land-fill (garbage dumps) through re-using, re-purposing and encouraging people to share their surplus.

Overview and Benefits of the Sharing Gardens
Harvest Totals - 2012
Using Leaves and Grass-Clippings to Create Soil-Fertility

Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans

Grow Your Own 'Blue Corn'

 Wish List - To Donate

To view videos about the project, LINK including the the Peak Moment video: The Giving is Growing.
To read articles about the project: Click Here
 

Volunteers from our local university help the gardens thrive!

The Sharing Gardens is a registered non-profit and tax-exempt organization. We exist entirely through donations. If you have found benefit from our project or our site, please consider making a small donation through PayPal. (Click button below.)

Eat it Up!

Our weather continues to be extraordinarily beautiful here in the Pacific NW. Warm, sunny days, perfect for gardening (and naps in our new greenhouse). This winter, we've doubled the number of student-groups coming from Oregon State University to do service-learning projects. We are so grateful for their enthusiasm, energy and curiosity. Yesterday we hosted the fourth, and last group of the winter quarter. One of the students, Trent Toney (far left in pic. below) brought his video camera and filmed a short documentary.

Jumping for joy at the Sharing Gardens!

Click on the link below to enjoy a funny, up-lifting view of a morning in the Sharing Gardens.

Sharing Gardens video: Eat it Up!

The Giving is Growing - Peak Moment Video

 Here's a beautiful video about the Sharing Gardens, just released by our friends at Peak Moment TV. Filmed in July 2013 with the garden's bounty as backdrop, we explore the philosophy that is at the root of the gardens: simple-living, gratitude and giving without accounting. Enjoy!

Our deepest gratitude goes out to all of you who have supported this project in any way, from distant well-wishers to those of you locals, rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands in the dirt side-by side! All of us together have made this expression of 'sharing' possible.

Here's the video (watch it here on our site by clicking on the image below, or click the icon in lower right-hand corner of image to view on YouTube):

 To watch it on the Peak Moment site, or view their other excellent programs, Click Here.

If you've enjoyed it, and feel so inclined, please pass it along to your network of friends and family. Much love, Llyn and Chris - The Sharing Gardens

Part of our massive beet harvest - 2013

A "Growing" Movement

Hello dear friends and followers of the Sharing Gardens,

Heavenly Blue Morning Glory

We're heading into our 5th season with a renewed sense of enthusiasm, due in part to what appears to be a growing upsurge of similar efforts and projects like ours popping up around the country and around the world. In the last few months we've watched the 'stats' on our website (the numbers that tell us how many people, and from where around the globe they are coming from, as well as what kinds of information they are seeking) continue to rise to the point where, at the time of this email, there are nearly 3,000 visits to the 'Sharing Gardens" site each month!!! If you do a search for "sharing gardens", or ask "how to grow potatoes", for example, you will find us near the top of your search. This is amazing!! We just wanted all of you who have participated in some way to know that your efforts are really making a positive difference. People are coming to our site from all over the planet, and are able to translate the information into nearly every spoken language. You can all be quite pleased by that! And we hope that it will inspire you to keep on participating, not only for the great food and exercise, the great social experience and the shared gardening knowledge, but because your contributions, added to each and every other person's contributions, are sending a message out into the world of a way to begin to take back our communities, our health, and our sense of belonging to something bigger than our own little selves.

Briggs-family in the bean patch.

We discovered these two fabulous 'Ted Talks' that really capture the essence of

what our 'Sharing Gardens' are all about. We urge you to PLEASE set aside a little time to watch them. They are very inspiring and passionate examples of work that is SO cutting-edge and SO relevant to the times we live in that we believe that you won't be disappointed. Perhaps you will be even MORE motivated to get involved with us or get something started yourselves in your own communities. The time is NOW! It always IS!

Follow these two links and be inspired! And, if you feel moved, please let us know your thoughts about this topic. Post your comments at the bottom of this post if you'd like, so that others can read them.

Be well, and we (Llyn and I) look for ward to being with many of you in the garden again this season.

Ron Finley: A Guerilla Gardener in L.A.

Roger Doiron: A Subversive Plot; 

How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard

If you'd like to sign up to receive notices about volunteer-times in the garden: Click Here

To see our current wish list: Click Here