We Miss Our Intern - Alison Petro!

The Gardens Project is truly sad to have to say goodbye to Alison Petro - an amazing student intern from the Community Services Dept. at UC Santa Cruz. Alison has been a great asset to the organization over the past six months.
As Alison learned, The Gardens Project is engaged in numerous projects with the overall goal of creating access to local, fresh produce and facilitating the rebuilding of our local food system. An area of great need, particularly in the Willits area, has been to develop the capacity to implement a Farm-to-School program with the Willits Unified School District. Alison’s main accomplishment has been developing this capacity.
* She developed a Farm-to-School resource binder with case studies from other schools focusing on successes and challenges.
* She assisted with the leadership and community development of the new WISC Community Garden through facilitation and participation in weekly events.
* At the Willits Farmer’s Market, Alison assists with the promotion of the Brookside School Farm and sales of their produce to support the Willits Farm-to-School program, as well as sell Brookside produce, along with the sale of bulk grains from a local grain promotion program - Grange Grains, promote the Farm-to-School program and the Brookside School Farm.
* At the Brookside School Farm she assisted with weekly harvesting of vegetables for food preservation workshops and for farmers market.
* She proactively facilitated meetings with the Food Service Director, helped organize food service staff trainings in the use of fresh produce, and is actively promoting food preserving classes to preserve foods for the developing program at Willits Unified.
* One of the other pieces to developing capacity in the Farm-to-School movement is providing food service staff with training to handle seasonal, fresh produce. Alison successfully facilitated the development of trainings for food service staff in Fort Bragg, Willits, and Covelo. The trainings, paid for by NCO, brought in a local executive chef to train food service staff in fresh produce preparation.
Once again, we are grateful to have collaborated with UCSC to host Alison at The Gardens Project of NCO. We hope to have the opportunity to work with Alison in the future. We miss you!

September Garden Tips

September is coming to a close, but its not over yet! Check out the garden tips from Master Gardener Suzanne Millard. Thanks again, Suzanne!

What to do in Your Garden this month

September brings a season of change. The kids have started back to school and the summer garden is starting to wane. This is a great time to renew your garden with a fresh crop of fall plants to extend your season and to continue to grow your own food. If you are a new gardener this is a great time to start!

September also brings generous crops of vine ripened, home grown tomatoes. If you haven’t already experienced the joys of home canning, why not start now? You’ll smile every time you open a jar of home canned tomatoes to make a beautiful pasta sauce in the midst of winter.

Follow this link for great home canning resources, instruction and recipes: National Center for Home Food Preservation

What to plant?

In September you can directly sow beets, garlic, carrots, fava beans, peas, cilantro, spinach, radishes and Asian greens. You can also start lettuce, sweet peas, brassicas, Asian greens indoors for planting. Plants ready for transplanting are lettuce, brassicas, fennel, leeks, chard, kale and nettles.

Flower and Herbs that can be directly sown in September are cold tolerant flowers such as Calendula, Viola, Larkspur, Clarkia, poppies, all California wildflowers, Nigella, Limonium, Borage, Dianthus, Centaureas, wallflowers, Love-in-a-mist, Snapdragon, etc. Flowers and herbs that can be started from seed are all of the above including medicinals and biodynamics such as Yarrow, Chamomile, Dandelion, Nettles, Lavender, Thyme, Sage, Valerians, Echinacea, etc.

Other activities for September are cleaning-up and composting fallen fruit, mulch perennials, make compost, start sheet mulching, continue to preserve the harvest and as always, weed!

For more Gardener's Tips, please click Greater Hopland Planting Guide (Peter Huff and Kate Frey's Monthly Planting Calendar for Inland Mendocino, also found at the "How to - Grow Food" page on The Garden's Project Website).

Other September Activities…

Clean up spent summer plants and weed planting areas to get ready for fall planting. Amend your soil as necessary with fresh organic material to boost soil structure and add nutrients. This is also the time to compost fruits and vegetables that are past their prime in order to reduce the attraction of garden pests. Avoid adding any plants, fruits or vegetables that are diseased to your compost pile.

When in doubt, there is a tremendous body of knowledge about gardening in California, provided by University of California Cooperative Extension. This site, geared toward the home gardener can be found at http://cagardenweb.ucdavis.edu/.

DO IT YOURSELF (together) GARDEN WORKSHOP SERIES! ** We want yo' knowledge!

What do worm composting, tackling Bermuda grass, growing chili peppers, and canning tomatoes have in common? They are all part of The Gardens Project’s inaugural “Do It Yourself (together) Garden Workshop Series”! This life affirming series will kick off in late March and run through September, taking place at the Ukiah Farmers’ Market and community gardens around town.

The idea of this workshop series is for Mendocino folk to teach each other the things we need to make our community healthier, livelier, and more self-reliant. There is an abundance of knowledgeable people in this county, and the Do It Yourself (together) Garden Workshop Series is a collaborative forum through which people can share their knowledge with the rest of the community.

Below is a list of workshop topics that we plan to offer. We are still looking for people to teach some of them. If you know much about one of these subjects, or you know someone that does, please consider sharing your knowledge with your community. It will be fun! It will be life-affirming! You don’t need to know everything about a subject, just more than your average Jill Gardener. And we can work with you to lead the class.

Some of the classes:

- Starting your own vegetables from seed

- Transplanting

- Worm composting/Vermiculture

- Composting

- Seed Saving

- Tackling Bermuda Grass

- Spring Vegetable Garden

- Double-digging

- (Sub)Urban Chicken Coops

- Pollinators

- Gardening in Small Spaces/Container Gardening

- How to Start a Community Garden

- How to Change a Flat Bike Tire

- How to Grow Chili Peppers

- Solar Cooking

- Preserving the Harvest (Canning, Pickling, Dehydrating, etc.)

- Planning your Fall/Winter Garden

- Cover Cropping

- Rain-Water Harvesting in Barrels

If you are interested in leading one of these classes, have a tip for someone we should ask to lead a class, or have another skill you would like to share, please contact The Gardens Project by emailing lneely@ncoinc.org or calling (707) 462-2596 x186.

And check out next month’s Real DirtE-Newsletter to see the full schedule of events, including the community all-stars that will be leading classes! (subscribe on the left hand side of our homepage)