This is the last Saturday (May 25) to come pick-up tomatoes and peppers at the Sharing gardens from 9:00 to 11:30. There are still over 100 left but there are other "sharing"-type gardens we'll be passing the surplus along to after this weekend.
It
may still be early to put these heat-loving plants into the ground. We
recommend you keep an eye on the weather and if there's a frost-threat
bring them back inside at night or cover them with buckets, boxes or
some other protection. We won't have replacements if these get frosted.
Local wisdom suggests waiting until Mary's Peak is snow-free, or after
Memorial Day (whichever is later).
We always like to provide free 'starts' to those in
need, but if you've already budgeted money to buy starts from the store,
consider making a donation to our project instead. You'll have some of
the healthiest, robust, organic 'starts' available. The funds we receive all go towards keeping this vital, local project thriving.
Please continue to bring your six-packs, flats and small, square pots
for us to re-use. We don't need any hanging baskets or round pots.
The Sharing Gardens is happy to announce that we have beautiful, healthy, heirloom tomatoes and peppers (grown mostly from our own seed) available these next two Saturdays (May 18 and 25) from 9:00 to 11:30.
It may still be early to put these heat-loving plants into the ground. We recommend you keep an eye on the weather and if there's a frost-threat bring them back inside at night or cover them with buckets, boxes or some other protection. We won't have replacements if these get frosted. Local wisdom suggests waiting until Mary's Peak is snow-free, or after Memorial Day (whichever is later).
We always like to provide free 'starts' to those in
need, but if you've already budgeted money to buy starts from the store,
consider making a donation to our project instead. You'll have some of
the healthiest, robust, organic 'starts' available. The funds we receive all go towards keeping this vital, local project thriving.
Please continue to bring your six-packs, flats and small, square pots
for us to re-use. We don't need any hanging baskets or round pots.
So much to be thankful for! The abundance just keeps multiplying. Here
is a gallery showing many of the ways that support for the Sharing
Gardens continues to grow.
Our Spring Plant Giveaway and Fun-d Raiser has been very successful, bringing in close to $200 so far. We still have some plants left so come on down on Saturday morning for lettuce, cabbage and kale. We've got about 500 heirloom tomato plants started (mostly from our own seed) and many peppers and flowers. They'll be ready for
pick-up in early June so get your garden plots ready!
We're grateful to our neighbor Rick Fielder who's been keeping us supplied with grass clippings, and David Crosby, the Dillards and George and Irene for massive leaf donations.As readers know, we mow the leaves and grass together and use the combination to increase fertility in the gardens. LINK
Mark Frystak heard our impassioned plea for straw and spoiled hay and used his networking skills (and massive dump truck) to bring us over three tons! That's Chris pulling flakes off an 800 lb. bale!
Lynne and Mike Miller and Lynne's mom Pat Gray brought us three truckloads of straw mixed with sheep manure...
...and several boxes of seed potatoes ready for planting. We have extra now, so come on by if you need some.
Here are just some of the leaves donated by David Crosby.
Chris tilled the leaves into the ground using David C's tractor.
Here's about 2/3 of the new 80' x 100' garden space. The leaves were tilled in in late February. In two months time, they've had time to compost into the soil and grass has grown back to make comfortable walking paths.
For the second year in a row we've received a generous cash donation from the OSU Folk Thrift Shop in Corvallis. Please stop by and patronize them when you're in town. Their store (originally run by the wives of faculty at OSU) raises thousands of dollars for local service-projects such as ours. LINK to their history and website.
We were blessed to have four OSU students come for four hours on April 20th for a service-learning project. They were great helpers and moved the project forward in several areas:
Brianna and Whitney mulching the potatoes just planted.
Brianna, Whitney and Llyn transplanting Red Iceberg lettuce. The straw makes it so pleasant to be on our knees!
Amanda and Chris loading straw.
Chris and Amanda forming a mulch caravan! Donated leaves in the foreground and compost bins made of pallets in the background.
Justin spreads the mulch in our tomato patch. "Justin time!"
Whitney and Brianna tying tomato cages to baling twine so they don't fall over.
Brianna and Whitney tying up bamboo for a pole-bean trellis.
We've had steady help from our core volunteers (now called "share-givers"!) in the new season. We've just now begun to have regular hours in the garden each week. If you'd like to come join us, CLICK HERE.
Christine is one of the first people we met when we moved to the area in 2008. She's become a close friend and walking buddy of Llyn's and we always look forward to having her in the garden.
It's been great watching Kaitlynn grow. She's always such a cheerful, willing spirit! This is her third year in the gardens.
Shelby (on the right) brought her friend Melissa to help mulch the garlic. Melissa's sweet girl Lily supervises.
Shelby's partner Kurtis loves to work up a sweat! We appreciate his gentle, serving nature.
Boys love to dig in the dirt! Here David is showing Austin (one of our newest friends) how to prepare the soil for tomatoes by digging in rabbit manure.
Jim and Cindy Kitchen mulching the NE garden beds. These guys drive an hour round-trip each week, from Corvallis, just to be in the garden. They did a picture-perfect job on the mulching and 20 minutes later we watched a giant dust devil come and blow a wide swath of the straw out of the paths and over 100 feet in the air. Very dramatic!
Jennifer and Doreen met for the first time and shared stories as they transplanted "maters and pepps"! (tomatoes and peppers) Doreen was one of our very first volunteers (along with her husband Rann). They stopped in on their bicycles to get a drink of water at the Alpine garden just as we were breaking ground and became our steadiest support the following summer once they'd moved to nearby Harrisburg.
Here are a few special thank yous to supporters of the gardens far and near:
David Heath has been sending us emails from Turkey (where he's living on a sailboat he helped build with his wife Janet). He's been sending us links for some informative and entertaining videos (which we'll pass along the links to soon) and made some astute comments on some of our earlier posts: Keep 'em coming, Dave!
Dave Roux - shows up every Saturday with his award-winning smile, eager to serve in whatever ways he's needed. This year he's begun collecting video-footage for a Sharing Gardens documentary!
This dear woman made it possible for us to move from an 8' x 40' travel trailer to a five-bedroom farmhouse, just a short walk from the garden. We love our Cathy Rose!
Our sweet new home!
Well, time to get back to the garden!
A bouquet from our new home. Each week something new and beautiful comes into bloom!
We
still have hundreds of lettuce starts - many varieties; and dozens of
cabbage, kale broccoli and cauliflower. It's time to get them in the
ground (frost tolerant). Later in the spring we'll have the heat-loving
plants: peppers, tomatoes and flowers - we'll let you know.
Every Saturday inApril, 2013 if the weather's not too yucky!
9:00 to 11:30 - at the Sharing Gardens - 648 Orchard St. Monroe, OR 97456 (straight behind the big, white, Methodist Church)
2012 Lettuce 'starts'
Ginny with Slo-Bolt lettuce harvest
We always like to provide free 'starts' to those in
need, but if you've already budgeted money to buy starts from the store,
consider making a donation to our project instead. You'll have some of
the healthiest, robust, organic 'starts' available, grown mostly from
our own saved seeds. The funds we receive all go towards keeping this vital, local project thriving.
Autumn Beauty sunflower
Please continue to bring your six-packs, flats and small, square pots
for us to re-use. We don't need any hanging baskets or round pots. (They
can be recycled at the 1st Alternative Co-op in Corvallis).
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
One
of the goals of the "Sharing Gardens" project is to demonstrate how
materials that might otherwise be headed for the burn-pile or landfill
can be "re-purposed" and find new life serving those in need in our
community (we call it re-usery!). We also appreciate your cash donations. All donations are tax-deductible - ask us
for a receipt. Contact info below.
Home-made V-8, yum!
Lawn clippings: We have lots of lawn/leaf bags for you to
re-use. Just come by when we're there and we'll give you some. Please
don't tie bags too tight (makes it hard to re-use them).
Steer, llama, rabbit, chicken, sheep manure - delivered, please. (No horse manure unless it's very composted.)
Metal watering can
Bird bath
Riding lawn mower with bagger - running, please!
Old cedar fence boards - we use them to build bird houses and compost bins (among other things).
Mud boots: some of our volunteers are
low-income and can't afford mud boots. We will keep them on-hand for use
in the garden. All sizes welcome.
Canning jars - all sizes
Food-grade, 50-gallon plastic barrels (preferable) or metal drums.
Plastic tubs, 5-gallon buckets, kitty-litter tubs, etc. (please no broken ones)
Field fencing: the stiff kind, so we can build tomato cages.
Cash donations are always appreciated
Last but not least, our biggest wish of all is for a piece
of land, with a farmhouse and a few out-buildings; a permanent home for the Sharing Gardens coordinators; a place to plant orchards; a place for an outdoor, rural
arts school and a common-ground gathering place dedicated to the
cultivation of generosity. All donations can be brought tothe Monroe site.
648 Orchard Rd.
Monroe, 97456 - Behind the big, white Methodist Church For large donations, please arrange to meet with us
Volunteers help sort donated pots and flats.
To contact us, please call or email:
(541) 847-8797 (call from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm to 8:00 pm) ShareInJoy@gmail.com
Cash donations - make checks out to the "Sharing Gardens" and mail to
Sharing Gardens
PO Box 11
Monroe, OR 97456
All Donations are Tax-deductible - ask us for a receipt.
To read an Overview about the Sharing gardens, and the many Benefits of growing food in this way, Click Here.
