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Small Grants Available 2022
Unexpected expenses can take the joy out of a giving garden project. If your giving garden needs help with unanticipated expenses such as broken or missing tools, willing volunteers who need a better style of glove, a rotting side-panel in the raised bed, broken hoses, or a yard or two of compost, you can apply for reimbursement from Seattle’s Giving Garden Network’s Small Grants Program. We’ve a small pot of money to use for exactly these types of things and the process is surprisingly simple Contact us at info@sggn.org to learn more about it. https://www.sggn.org/small-grants-guidelines/
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Tomatoes are a challenge in the PNW — we’ll provide starts, you grow them
SGGN will have tomato starts ready for the giving gardens, kitchen gardens, and food banks approximately mid-May, 2018. Despite the cold April weather, we have lots of starts, and lots of varieties including slicers (beefsteak, Money Maker, Siletz) cherry tomatoes: (red and yellow) paste and pasta varieties (San Marzano varieties). For those who’d like some tutoring before taking on the responsibility for new tomato starts, here’s one class: Growing Vegetables including Tomatoes, Sunday, April 22nd – 10:00 am – 11:00 am at Magnolia Garden Center. In this class, owner Chuck Flaharty will go over planting and fertilizing vegetables with a special emphasis on Tomato growing in our area, including best…
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Wow — Over 12000 starts provided to giving gardens this year
Just in time for the Return of Summer Weather — Happy Growing every one
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The “New Normal…
Today’s Seattle Times had an interesting article by Janet I. Tu, “‘New normal’ Food banks much busier, despite better economy” that talks about the increasing number of visits to local food banks. While a lot of people think the economy has mostly recovered during last few years, this article provides some alarming statistics including: “In the Seattle area, some food banks are getting more visits now than they did during the recession. At the 27 food pantries in the Seattle Food Committee coalition, the number of visits (including delivery of food to homes) went up from 928,656 in 2007 to 1.1 million in 2009 and to nearly 1.4 million last…
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Making Compost is Simple? Not!
Making compost is simple: vegetable waste + water+ heat = rot and (eventually) soil. The tricky part comes when we realize that what we put into the compost doesn’t always rot into something that’s healthy. ( School compost programs should think carefully about how to compost: see for example compost.css.cornell.edu/faq.html for examples of ways that compost can become a problem.) To share my own story: when I first started composting I didn’t realize that the bins let the rats and raccoons in. I fed them, made my neighbors mad, and didn’t get much compost for my garden. There are other issues with compost: it needs to be really hot to…
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Food and Faith Programs
We’ve met involved gardeners with the food and faith initiative these last couple of years. Sometimes the folks are growing food for the public food banks, sometimes supporting their own kitchen-based feeding programs. More information about the these groups (and resources for starting or for maintaining your own) can be found on Seattle Tilth’s site. The Food and Faith Initiative provides support for faith-based organizations who want to grow veggies: including information about incorporating food gardening into existing ministries, education and training for congregations, ongoing technical support, guidance on volunteer engagement that will sustain these gardens for many years.
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Theft from P-Patches
Safety, Vandalism, Theft in the Garden was recently shared online by P-Patch@talk2.seattle.gov which hosted a very active discussion by gardeners about theft of veggies: carefully nurtured tomatoes, carrots, and fennel bulbs being some of what was stolen; also anything copper or brass (useful for recyclers), themometers, ladders, and gardening tools. Gardeners shared strategies: physical barriers (a short two foot fence; planting the desirable stuff in the back of the patch so it’s hard to reach and keeping hoses and tools in a locked shed) signs; codes of conduct; engaging those who walk through the garden in dialogue; deliberately labeling a part of the p-patch for public harvest; keeping the garden neat and tidy to…
