Plant Sales in the Iowa City area

image credit: Terrie Schweitzer, flickr.com

Three local organizations will be holding plant sales over the next few weeks - all of the proceeds go to worthy causes and can help you get an easy start on your garden.

Backyard Abundance Plant Sale

April 28, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Robert A. Lee Community Recreation Center

220 South Gilbert Street, Iowa City

Get a jump on spring plant shopping at the Backyard Abundance plant sale fundraiser. Many herbs and vegetables are heirlooms and were organically grown by volunteers. All fruits and nuts were sourced as locally as possible and were carefully chosen to maximize yield and thrive in the Midwest. Your purchases help host free yard tours and presentations in our community throughout the season.

Other interests: Silent auction, seed swap, mushroom growing kits, urban chickens, locally-made garden tools.

Project Green Plant Sale

9:00-11:30 AM, Saturday, May 5

Carver Hawkeye Arena

Website link with more information: http://www.projectgreen.org/gardenfair.htm

Friends of Hickory Hill Park Plant Sale

Friday, May 11 and Saturday, May 12

4:00-7:00 PM - 10:00 AM-4:00 PM

PLUS

Friday, May 18 and Saturday, May 19

4:00-7:00 PM - 10:00 AM-4:00 PM

1167 East Jefferson Street

Money raised through the plant sale supports volunteer work in Hickory Hill Park. Click here for more information about Friends of Hickory Hill Park.

MOCG News: Work Party Progress and Garden Blessing

A new growing season: mulberry trees, plots and paths all laid out, and tire stacks for growing potatoes.

Garden Blessing:

Miller Orchard Community Garden is ready for planting, and we want to bless it! Come to the garden at noon on Earth Sunday, April 22. Folks from First Mennonite Church will lead in a prayer and a song to bless the garden, the gardeners, and all the creatures for whom this plot of ground is home. Bring a sack lunch, if you like, and linger in a beautiful place! The blessing will happen rain or shine, unless there is a storm brewing.

The garden has all manner of entertainment for the kids.

Work Party Update:

We had a great work party on Saturday, April 14th. The fence got installed, paths are mulched and plots laid out and numbered. The sweet potato tire stacks are on the inside of the fence this year so that the fat woodchuck cannot use them as stairs to breach our perimeter. However, for people looking to come do a little extra work, we still need to have the stakes that hold the fence down pounded into the ground all the way around the fence (they will be in the shed; bring a rubber mallet if you have one), and there is always, always weeding in the front garden beds to do as people have time.

April 14 workday: laying out the perimeter fence stakes (above) and mulching paths between the plots (below)

Also, please think of the worms in our vermicomposter if you currently throw out kitchen scraps. Keep a little bucket or an old pot with a lid, and collect any sort of veggie or fruit scraps, bread, pasta, egg shells, and non-meat items. When you come to the garden, dump it into the vermicomposter. It has black doors and looks a little like a tornado shelter. The wormies will thank you, and the compost we get from it will help improve the soil.

If you need the combination for the shed, please email Marcia Widmer: tmmrwidmer (at sign) msn dot com.

New Season Beginning

The garden at the end of the last growing season, with kiosk and vegetable giveaway shelf made by Art & Ecology students.

The Miller Orchard Community Garden will commence its third growing season on April 14th with a work party to install fencing, lay out plots and paths, and welcome new and returning gardeners. The party will begin at 10 a.m. Please bring food to share, as well as your own plate, cup, and utensils. You can sign up for a plot at the party, or by contacting Marcia Widmer at (319) 354-8468 or via email: tmmrwidmer@msn.com.

Spring Home and Gardening Gala

image credit: http://bread-water-salt-oil.blogspot.com/2008/04/heart-of-tomato.html

Spring Home and Gardening Gala

Saturday, March 3

9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Johnson County Fairgrounds Extension Building

4265 Oak Crest Hill Rd SE, Iowa City, IA

Save money, energy and time by creating a beautiful home and garden that work harmoniously together. Meet fellow gardeners and home energy enthusiasts at this fun and information-packed event.

Workshops include:

· Successful Gardening Basics

· Deer-Resistant Gardening

· Easily Create a New Garden Bed

· Grow Mushrooms at Home

· Grow Seedlings and Save Money

· Reuse Materials in the Garden

· Create an Eco-Friendly Home

· Save Energy with Windbreaks and Shade

The cost is $30 if registered by February 29 and $35 at the door. Lunch, access to all workshops and materials are provided. Hosted by Backyard Abundance, the Master Gardeners, Trees Forever, and Center on Sustainable Communities. Click here for complete schedule.

Art & Ecology students

Sarah Kanouse's Art & Ecology students from the University of Iowa's School of Art & Art History have done amazing work over the last two semesters at the garden site. They have been tremendously helpful with putting up fencing, weeding, tree-of-heaven removal, and animating the garden space. This semester, Sarah's students completed a pair of lovely and much-desired message boards, one at the front of the site, one next to the garden itself. They designed them so that gardeners can leave messages, post flyers for events and workshops, distribute information to people who might be interested in gardening, and leave extra produce out to be taken by others. They also devised a flagging system so that we can flag plots that can be picked by anybody, great for when gardeners go away for a few weeks in the summer. This will enhance communication, as I suspect that not many gardeners check this blog as their main source of garden information.


Message board at the front of the garden, with nasturtium still going strong in mid-October.


The message board with shelf for flags and veggies. The white part is now a blackboard, and the corkboard has a plexiglass cover.


The vermicomposting unit, built in the spring.


Interior of the vermicomposter. I hope the worms got enough kitchen scraps and that they survive the winter.


The beautiful butterfly milkweed pod. We have a cluster of them that come up every year at the front of the garden.



Bonus reading on milkweed. Did you know that it is an edible plant and that "[i]n World War II, schoolchildren across the Midwest collected thousands of pounds of milkweed fluff to stuff life preservers for the armed forces in the Pacific, because kapok, the normal material used for this purpose, came from Japanese-occupied Indonesia and was unavailable. Today, you can buy pillows, jackets, and comforters stuffed with this material, which is wonderfully soft and has a higher insulative value than goose down..."?

Harvest Party, October 22

photo: Ken Stigler (stigs), flickr.com

What: Harvest Party and end of season clean-up
When: Sat., Oct. 22, 12-2 p.m. (rain date, Sat. Oct. 29, 12-2 p.m.)
Why: To celebrate the end of the growing season and all the hard work put in by gardeners and other community groups at the garden site.
Who: Everybody! Whether or not you gardened, come on down. Want to meet some neighbors? Come see what is happening at the garden. Interested in gardening next season? Come learn more.
Where: 815 Orchard St., Iowa City, in the back half of the lot.

Most importantly: Bring some food to share, as well as your own utensils and plate.

Fauna Report

Some of the wonderful folks from Iowa City Summer of Solutions came by and dispatched the tree-of-heaven thicket that had been growing on the edge of the front flower bed and pulled weeds so that the flowers have a bit more room to bloom. We are grateful for their efforts!

The flowers are attracting lots of animal life: bees, at least three kinds of butterflies, and a female ruby-throated hummingbird at the bee balm today. Very exciting! I was not fast enough to take a picture of the hummer, but here are a few of the slower insects (black butterfly on the bee balm, bees on the sunflowers).

High summer at the garden

It's the end of July, and the garden is hopping, literally. We have had a few baby bunnies that have gotten trapped inside the fence, and kids and grown-ups have scared them half to death by chasing them. I think they are too big to fit in now as I haven't seen any for awhile. I found a papery snakeskin in my tomatoes today, evidence that we still have critters inside the garden (glad I didn't see the snake).

Here's a picture of the garden from the beginning of the season:
And here it is now. That patch with the grass mulch is now full of zinnias and sunflowers, decorations for a gardener's upcoming wedding.
Here are some other photos from the garden:

The entrance sign and sunflower wall from the Art & Ecology students' service learning project

One of the tipis made for morning glories, also by the Art & Ecology class.

Kale in Karla and Nathan's plot

A pepper plant in one of Mark's many plots

No fear, these are from my garden, not the wedding decoration plot.

Like a sunset in flower form

So much tasty produce is growing in these little plots.

Hurray for the ripening of the tomatoes!

The sweet potato stacks workshop

A few photos from the sweet potato workshop:




The stacks are pretty easy - 3 tires filled with a 75/25 mixture of sand and soil, planted with sweet potato starts. The sweet potatoes like to have a sawn-off milk jug placed over them for a few weeks, then a shade (an old wood shingle is the best), and plenty of water. At the end of the season, you remove the tires, and the potatoes are easy to harvest from the mound of sand.

Sweet potato planting workshop are Saturday, May 21 at 9 AM, with a rain date of Saturday, May 28 at 9 AM.
Run by Marcia Widmer's dad, Mr. Ever. If you wish to participate, please email Marcia and Todd Widmer and let them know that you plan to attend and how many sweet potato towers each person wants.

Supplies needed for the workshop:

3 tires/tower (Todd and Marcia will procure, but your assistance with rolling them out to the garden would be appreciated)

Sweet potato starts (Todd and Marcia will pick them up)

Sand, to mix with the dirt (About 1 bushel sand/tower - we are still working on procuring the sand. If you can help, please let them know.)

Shovels (we have some at the site)

Trowels, if people want

Buckets for transporting water from the rain barrels to the towers (BYOB)

a shingle or a milkjug with its top cut off to shield the young plants for the first week or so.

If you have questions, you can also contact me (Katherine), but Marcia knows more about this event than I do. Cheers.

The First Mennonite Church youth group and Karla Stolzus-Detweiler came out to lay mulch paths on Saturday. Thank you so much for all your work. The paths look great, and you did major combat against the weeds. There were also some of Art & Ecology students out constructing trellises and refurbishing the sign, and gardeners mulching beds, a preemptive strike against the weeds.

Iowa Planting Guide

Early Rose Potato, sprouted. photo by Matthias Karlsson

The ISU extension has put out a nice, easy-to-read planting guide, downloadable as a PDF.

Here are some items you can plant right now (mid-April):
beets
broccoli
cabbage transplants
cauliflower
onion sets
spinach
sprouted potatoes
Swiss chard
turnips

Art & Ecology students at the MOCG workday

We are very lucky to have students from Sarah Kanouse's Art and Ecology class at the University of Iowa working on a service learning project at the garden site. Many hands really do make light work, and we are grateful for the energy and time they spent helping tidy up the garden site on April 2nd. The students came out in force and helped rake leaves, trimmed trees back so that we can mow, picked up trash and detritus, and gave us a huge assist with the rabbit fence. They will be designing and installing signage and plantings on the east side of the garden. Stay tuned to see the results of their work.

Spring Kick-off Meet'n'Greet this Saturday (4/9)

Do you like to dig in the dirt? Grow flowers? Eat vegetables? Meet new people?
You can do all that, right here in our neighborhood. Come find out more.


MOCG Meet'n'Greet
Saturday, April 9th, 1-3 p.m. (raindate 4/16)
815 Orchard St. (located on the lot next to Dental Ceramics)

This is a great time to scope out the garden site, meet some of the current gardeners, and sign up for a plot ($10 for a 10'x10' plot). We will also have a brief demonstration on how to make a very easy raised keyhole garden bed.

Next events: 4/14 Roosevelt Family night, plant starters, 4/30 seed and starter swap.

MOCG Spring events - Sign up for your garden plot!

The Miller Orchard Community Garden is beginning its second growing
season at 815 Orchard St. (across from Planned Parenthood), and we
invite anybody who is interested in growing flowers or vegetables to
sign up for a plot and get growing! Meet your neighbors, learn about
gardening, and eat delicious produce this summer. 10'x10' plots are
available (you may sign up for more than one) for $10/plot. Beginning
gardeners are welcome. You don't need any special tools or equipment.
The garden has rain barrels (thanks to the kindness of Nancy at Dental
Ceramics); we are putting up a rabbit fence around the garden
perimeter; there are gardening tools and gloves in the shed on-site.
We will have group gardening hours Tuesdays from 5-7 p.m. and
Saturdays from 1-3 p.m. (this may change to early morning when the
weather heats up) for people who want to learn from each other or
socialize.

Art students from Sarah Kanouse's Art & Ecology class are going to be completing an entrance sign and beautification project in the next 6 weeks, so keep an eye out for a new entrance sign, and watch their plantings grow over the summer. They are also planning a vermicomposting bin for the garden. We are excited about their presence and their projects!

Worms make good soil. photo credit: Clare Snow, flickr.com

Our spring calendar of events (all events are free, and everyone is welcome):

****April 2, workday 10-1 p.m.****

• April 9th, Kick-off Party, 1-3 p.m. at the garden site Come
meet other gardeners, enjoy some snacks, drinks, and learn how to make
an insanely easy raised garden bed. (rain date April 16th) This is a
good time to sign up for a plot, but you can contact Katherine Parker
Bryden (phone: 319.466.9445, email: katherinecparker@gmail.com)
anytime between now and April 23rd to get a plot.
• April 14th, 5:15-6:30 at Roosevelt Elementary MOCG at Roosevelt
Roadrunner Club Family Night: "Spring Planting" seed-starting activity
for kids and families.
• April 23rd, time TBD, garden site FMC Youth group workday to lay
down mulch paths. *This is the last day to sign up for a garden
plot.*
• April 30th, Seed and Started Plant Swap, 1-3 p.m. garden site
(Benton Hill Park pavilion if the weather is bad) Bring some of your
extra seeds or plant starts and swap for varieties you don't have.
• Demonstration: Spud Stacks -- Learn to grow sweet potatoes inside a
stack of tires. date TBD, but look for advertising in the
neighborhood!

For plots (last day to sign up is 4/23) or questions, call Katherine
Bryden at 319.466.9445, or come out to the garden if you see people
working out there!

Growing Potatoes in a Small Space

image credit: Nick Saltmarsh

Grow 100 lbs. of potatoes in a 4 foot square space

We are planning to have a workshop on this very topic in the spring. Stay tuned for details!

Site view

Harvest Party, October 2010

Harvesting a "success-failure," a still-green pumpkinOur lone orange pumpkin

A bumper crop of decorative gourds

Fun with tree-of-heaven cuttings: a tipi!

Harvest party potluck. Squash curry, made with squash from the garden!

Planting Party in (gulp!) June 2010

The tilled garden plot, with two plots planted

The Children's Garden, newly planted

The potluck table and gardeners

Josh and Shon shoveling composted soil for a plotMark with tomato seedlings

Fending Off the Weeds with Newsprint (NY Times)

From the Anne Raver in the NY Times:

...starting a new garden the no-till way — which basically means using newspapers to smother the grass and weeds without resorting to herbicides, and then adding a few inches of compost and planting right through it.

The advantages of not tilling are many. Weed seeds are not brought to the surface of the soil, where they readily sprout and grow. You don’t churn up earthworms and countless other organisms that will aerate and enrich the soil just fine, thank you, if you feed them compost and leave them alone. And since gas-powered tillers not only pour hydrocarbons into the air, but also release CO2 when they churn up the soil, leaving them in the garage is a good way to cut down on your carbon footprint.

I had read about this method in “Weedless Gardening,” by Lee Reich, a soil scientist in New Paltz, N.Y., and in the spring of 2009 had visited his bountiful gardens, which are never tilled and produce abundant fruit and vegetables with very few weeds.

...

Fall is a great time to start a new garden, even if you are not going to plant until spring. But if you love fall greens, which get sweeter with cold nights, there is still time to plant seeds of spinach, mustard greens, short-season bok choy, claytonia, mâche — even erba stella.

Read the whole article here.