Start Your Garden Indoors

Wintertime is a great time to start your plants indoors to extend your growing season and beat wintertime blues!

Mother Earth News just published a great story on how to start seeds indoors, the link to the article is on our "How To: Grow Food" page. Check it out for more information on seed starting!

Some great tips from the article:
Don't start beans, peas or root crops indoors, they don't transplant well.
Use 1/3 coir 1/3 compost and 1/3 soil.
Moisten the mix before sowing your seeds, plant 2-3 seeds per cell/pot.
Cover with a plastic dome or plastic wrap until seeds sprout. After that, water only when soil is almost dry.
After 4-6 weeks, move them outside on a porch or protected area during the day, inside at night for one week, then transplant into your garden!

Plowshares Current Happenings

The Plowshares Garden has been busy!
Read below and visit their webpage to learn more about what's been going on in the Plowshares garden, and get some new ideas for your garden too!

Garden Leadership Training:
The Garden Project http://www.gardensproject.org/ has begun a year long training of garden coordinators, and Plowshares is well represented. Five of us attended the first meeting and were warmly welcomed by representatives from many gardens in the area. Together we will learn leadership, outreach, coordinating work days, honoring volunteers, building community, accessing resources, and increasing food production! The goal is that through our efforts and networking we will help to build a safety net of food security for our community.

Donations:
Julie Price of Solid Waste Systems just sent us 20 yards of rich, black compost made from leaves and green waste from all the homes around Ukiah. It's symbolic of Plowshares being nurtured so richly by the whole community.
Last week North American Organics donated five yards of compost also, beautiful, rich compost! The fig trees from Mendocino College are settling into their new home. The starts from Lovin' Blooms are growing steadily. And Rainbow Ag brings us straw and hay as mulch. The community supports our work!

Kitchen survey:
Our friends at the garden of the City of 1000 Buddhas expressed garden leadership well, with "THE KITCHEN IS BOSS". We have asked our kitchen what we should grow and there seems to be general agreement that salad ingredients are top priority, onions and garlic and cooking herbs are very high priority, and, listed in order by number of votes received are: zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, beets, squash, chard, broccoli, cucumbers, kale, bok choy, leeks, and collards.
We're bound to grow!

Invasive vs. Native Plants

Invasive plants are plants that evolved in one part of the world, that humans moved to another region. They can crowd out native vegetation and the wildlife that feeds on it because they no longer are controlled by their natural predators. Learn more by visiting the new section on Invasive Plants in the How To: Grow Food section of our website!

Building a Cob Kitchen

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, several Healthcorps and Rural Health Scholars began building a cob kitchen at the Talmage Preschool garden.
Cob is a natural building material, consisting of clay, sand and straw, which, when given a good roof and foundation, can last... a really long time. It's a sustainable method of building, involving the use of local materials, like the clay/soil on site, and found materials like rocks, bottles and old concrete blocks.
The volunteers began constructing a foundation for the counters, which will attach to the existing cob oven, under the existing roof structure.
The counters will surround the oven, creating a complete kitchen that the preschool will use for outdoor cooking. The inside of the counters and oven will be gated to limit preschooler access, and there will be an attached smaller counter on the outside for preschoolers to use to help cook!
MCOE Youth will be finishing the project along with Gardens Project Healthcorps, Katrina Hanson.
We'll keep you posted with more updates as the kitchen evolves.

BEANS Cooking Club Begins at Nokomis Elementary School in Ukiah

Adriana and Montana, BEANS teen peer educators, were greeted with smiles and hugs when they arrived at Nokomis Elementary’s after-school program last Wednesday. The 3rd and 4th graders who are part of the six-week long “BEANS Cooking Club” couldn’t wait to find out what the recipe of the day would be. It was “Apple Smiles”… a sticky, crunchy, crisp apple snack! The students eagerly answered questions about food groups, healthy snacking ideas, and trying new foods… then they each practiced reading and following the recipe. Happy chatter filled the classroom as students tasted their snacks and shared ideas for additional toppings.

After finishing and clearing plates, Adriana and Montana got the kids up and moving for a raucous game of “What’s on My Plate?” where students work in small groups to name examples of foods from a particular food group as quickly as they can, do jumping jacks until all of the other groups complete their task, then run to the next station to work on naming foods from another food group.

As the students returned to their seats, the BEANS teen peer educators asked, “What is one thing you learned today?” Hands shot up and kids said, “I learned how to taste new things,” “I learned about food on MyPlate,” “I tried a new snack and am going to take the recipe home,” “Is there more?”

Adriana and Montana assured the kids that they would be back next Wednesday… “You’ll be helping us cook One Pot Vegetarian Stew!”

Spring Agriculture Classes at Mendocino College

Mendocino College has several options of hands-on agriculture classes for Spring 2012.
If you're interested in learning more about plant propagation, soils, nursery production or plant ID, check out their class listings!

Mendocino College Agriculture Classes--Spring 2012
New accessible class times!
Enjoy hands-on learning in our beautiful botanical gardens and nursery

Plant Propagation
AGR 102 Sect 5492
3 Units
Plant propagation will explore both the science and art of plant propagation.
Students will gain experience with many different techniques and methods of sexual and asexual plant propagation such as, seeding, layering, breeding, cuttings, grafting, budding, tissue culture and sporulation.
T& Th 6:00 - 8:20pm

Soils & Fertility Management
AGR 108 Sect 4023
3 Units
Learn what your soil consists of and how to assess and improve your soil for agricultural and natural resource uses. This applied soil science class, includes formation of soils, chemical and biological properties, plant nutrition soil and fertilization management and erosion mitigation.
T & Th 9:30pm – 11:50pm

Nursery Production and Management
AGR 144 Sect 4021
2 Units
This hands-on class will teach you the entire process of of developing and operating a nursery in the north coast . This course will focus Commercial nursery operations; propagation of plants, soil preparation, transplanting and potting, greenhouse field management, disease and insect control, and irrigation and fertilizer
applications.
M 1:00pm – 6:05pm

Spring Plant ID
AGR 241 Sect 5528
3 Units
Whether plants are your passion or profession you can learn how to identify and appreciate plants in this fun hands-on interactive class. This course will focus on attractive and useful spring plants and give you the skills needed to confidently identify the plants in your surroundings.
M & W 9:30am – 11:50am

Classes start January 23, 2012

http://www.mendocino.edu/tc/pg/6145/programs.html

Can you eat healthy on a Food Stamp budget??

Come see the movie Food Stamped and find out!


In honor of MLK Day, FIRST 5's Americorps*VISTAs will be showing the movie Food Stamped on Monday, February 16 at I-cup coffee house (720 N. State St.) in Ukiah.


Movie begins at 5:30pm
At 6:35pm there will be a discussion about hunger in Mendocino County led by Jacque Williams, Director of the Ukiah Food Bank.


Admission is FREE but we encourage the purchase of food or drinks.

Tell your friends and we hope to see you there!

Indoor container gardening

You might think there's no gardening you can do in January, but think again!
Now is the time to start your herbs and other plants inside for those of you who garden indoors or in a greenhouse. This site has plenty of useful information about container gardening.
Remember, most potting mix is too strong for most plants and doesn't drain well.
It's important to use a mix of 1 part potting mix to 1 part volcanic rock, like pumice (don't use vermiculite!)
Start your seeds in a flat or 1-2" pots, then each time your plants start to outgrow their containers, transplant them to a pot 2-4 time the original size. For example, if you start seeds in a flat, transplant the seedlings to a 2" pot, then transplant the established plant to a 1 gallon pot, and as it grows move up to a 5 gallon and then 15 gallon pot.
Also, check out this site for tips about small container planting using a vertical shoe rack!
If you think you don't have enough time or space for vegetable gardening indoors, try an herb garden!
This site has information about starting a basic beginner's herb garden. Just use the container gardening information above for your herb garden. This site has information specifically about growing herbs indoors.
Enjoy your mini gardens!

Remember to check our "How To" page for more gardening tips!

Potter Valley Garden

We've added a new garden page!
The Potter Valley Garden is now a part of our webpage.

The Potter Valley Community Garden thrives at the Potter Valley Youth & Community Center, where it is used as a teaching tool for kids in the Nutrition Class during the 5th Day Program. Its bounty is used to feed kids in the afterschool program, KUDOS. At snack time, kids are introduced to new fruits and vegetables and learn to expand their tastes and develop healthy eating habits.

To learn more, visit the page:
http://www.gardensproject.org/gardens/pottervalley/