Archive for the ‘In Your Backyard’ Category
City Fruit is Gearing up for 2011 Harvest Season
Fallen fruit!
By Jill Eikenhorst
Have you ever seen this picture, in August or September around the city? Does it make you feel uncomfortable to see good, healthy fruit rotting on the ground? City Fruit works to prevent this problem by harvesting fruit from residential trees in Phinney-Greenwood and South Seattle and donate it to local organizations serving people in need. City-grown fruit is an important resource that needs to be stewarded and used to feed people our community.
City Fruit is now gearing up for the 2011 harvests, and there are three ways you can help:
1) Volunteer to help harvest. This is a fun, social, volunteer opportunity—great for families and everyone else! The time commitment is flexible, since harvests happen daytime, evenings, and weekends, and you can sign up the week before a harvest. For the Phinney Harvest, both new and returning volunteers should attend our Harvest Volunteer Info Meeting on Tuesday, June 28, 6:30-7:30 at the Greenwood Library. If you can’t make it or have more questions, please contact us.
2) Donate your fruit. If you have a fruit tree that you can’t harvest or use all of the fruit, we can harvest and donate the fruit. We typically leave a small box of fruit for the residents, and you can help harvest if you’d like. You can also harvest your own tree and donate the extras yourself—find a list of donation sites on our website.
3) Become a member. It costs us about $1 to harvest one pound of fruit, so the support of our members is critical. Members receive one free class and $5 off additional classes. You can join online using Paypal.
Phinney Harvest: Volunteers and fruit tree owners can contact us at phinney@cityfruit.org. Our “boundaries” are N 50th St to N 105th St, and Aurora to 8th Ave NW.
South Seattle Harvest: Contact is info@cityfruit.org. This harvest is south of I-90 and east of I-5, up to the City limits.
Our partner organizations harvest in other parts of Seattle. If you live in another part of Seattle, contact the Garden Hotline at (206) 633-0224 or help@gardenhotline.org to have your tree harvested.
Time to Dry Herbs
The solstice is coming up and this is the perfect time to dry herbs. You can bunch them and hang them to dry, lay them out on sheet or if you are in a hurry even dry them in the microwave. Once dry they need to be stored in airtight, dark containers or they will lose flavor. Making herb blends is a nice way to save time and money. Here is a link to several recipes.
Chives
Oregano
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Calculating the Value of the Harvest
This article ran last year.
One couple (or rather, the wife) wanted to conduct a little experiment to figure out the economic productivity of their small, home garden. The extra effort spent weighing produce and calculating grocery prices was well worth it. Not only did the family reap a valuable harvest, they have also provided other gardeners with the satisfaction of knowing that the countless hours and sweat going into their edible landscape is paying off.
Take a look at their calculations in this Kitchen Gardeners’ blog post–What’s a Home Garden Worth?.
With the global economy spiraling downward and Mother Nature preparing to reach upward, it’s a good question to ask and a good time to ask it. More…
Garden Update
Lavender
Thyme
Chives
Roses
Greenhouse
Flowers
Backyard
Keeping warm
Front beds
Front beds
Tomatoes and potatoes
Mason bees
Oasis on a Vacant Lot
A nice use for a vacant lot.
Lovely view
Drip irrigation.
Good looking greens.
Urban Homesteading: Harvesting Rhubarb for Scrumptious Muffins
In honor of rhubarb season here is a rerun of a post from last year. These muffins are delicious!
We are enjoying a glorious (and very rare) actual spring here in Minneapolis. Trees are budding out and green things are growing everywhere, which means rhubarb harvests aren’t too far away.
I still remember the first rhubarb I saw here – a very telltale nub of leaves ready to spring out even with several inches of snow around it. I didn’t pay much attention to it because, as far as I knew, the only thing you can do with rhubarb is make rhubarb pie – which I do not like.
Then one day I was looking through my muffin cookbook and found a recipe for rhubarb muffins. I decided to give it a try and holy cow–they were the tastiest muffins! We put our urban harvesting skills to work and tracked down a couple friends who had rhubarb forests that they had no plans to harvest. At one house we harvested seven pounds of rhubarb, and that’s not counting the leaves.
Rhubarb usually has a reddish or pinkish tint to it, though the rhubarb we have now is green. The green variety actually seems a bit sweeter than the pink/red variety. You can cut the rhubarb stalks off with a sharp knife, close to the ground, when they’re nice and thick. I’ve heard you shouldn’t harvest the whole rhubarb plant because there is nutrition in the leaves that goes back to the roots to make a strong plant. But some people say it’s fine to harvest the whole thing. More…
pH is pHundamental for Gardening
When I first started gardening I tossed seeds in the soil and hoped they would grow. Over the years I’ve grown a bit more scientific and have added a pH testing kit to my set of tools.
The pH scale measures how acidic or basic something is. Seven is neutral–numbers less than seven are acidic while numbers greater are basic. An acidic soil is common in areas with high rainfall and is called sour while a basic soil is common in dry areas and is called sweet.
So why does this matter to gardeners?
- Many plants and soil life prefer either acidic or basic conditions
- Diseases affecting plants tend to thrive in soil with a certain pH range
- The pH can affect the availability of nutrients in the soil.
Plants generally get maximum benefit from nutrients in the soil when the pH is between 5.5 and 7. The majority of food crops prefer a neutral or slightly acidic soil (pH 7). If a soil is too acidic you can add ground limestone. This replaces calcium and magnesium washed away by rain. Amending the soil with compost to help the soil resist a change in the pH is also helpful.
For more information on pH testing click here.
RFP Out for Atlantic Street Nursery Farm and Wetlands
From Emily Fuller at Seattle Parks here’s news on release of the request for proposals for the new farm and wetlands in Rainier Beach.
We wanted to notify you that Parks and Recreation is seeking Proposals for the development and long-term operation of an Urban Agriculture and Wetland Preservation and Enhancement project as defined herein, at the City of Seattle Atlantic City Nursery Site.
Proposal Packages are available February 9, 2011. Interested parties may either pick up a Proposal Package or request that a Package be mailed to them by contacting the Department at the address shown below. You can also print the Proposal Package from the web here. Small businesses, Women and/or Minority Businesses are encouraged to submit a Proposal Package.
The Request for Proposals time line is as follows:
- February 23, 2011, On-site open house for Interested Parties 2 pm.
- March 21, 2011, RFP Questions due
- March 23, 2011, Proposals due by 3:00 pm.
- March 24 – April 6, 2011, RFP Evaluation.
- April 11 & 12, 2011 RFP Oral interviews – optional. (Interviews will be used solely for the purpose of seeking clarification of specific points of qualification.)
- April 14, 2011, Final RFP recommendation to Superintendent.
- April 21, 2011 Superintendent approves recommendation and notifies successful Operator.
- April-May 2011 Legislation to Seattle City Council and Mayor’s Office for approval.
- May 19, 2011, Legislation and proposed 5 year Agreement approved
You may contact me if you or someone you may know is interested in exploring this opportunity.
The City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation
Emily Fuller, Planner,
Planning and Development Division,
800 Maynard Avenue S.,
Seattle, WA 98134-1336,
Phone (206) 684-7047,
Email emily.fuller@seattle.gov.
Happy Thanksgiving from Urban Farm Hub
Snow Goat
I awoke this morning to snow gently falling in huge lacy flakes over thickly blanketed backyard garden beds. The clove studded apple I had finished last night perfumed the air with a spicy smell and I could hear the whistle of a distant train and the sound of the goats bouncing up and down on their milking stand. It was cold enough to see my breath and the thought of getting up to start the fire, feed the animals and milk the goats was not very appealing. The bouncing sounds increased, the chickens joined in and the dog began to whine; it was time to face the day.
A Thanksgiving meal for the girls.
I filled a bucket with hot water to melt the goat’s drinking water, got food for the chickens and let the dog out to gingerly pick his way through the snow.
Milking the goats is a good time to space out and let your thoughts wander. Today I thought of so many things for which to be thankful; we live in a city where sustainability and building community are celebrated and supported through municipal codes, funding and electeds who garden and raise chickens. Our climate is one where you can grow things by throwing seeds out your back door and every year the movement towards local food gains support and energy. With my head full of these thoughts I heard the creak of the gate and was reminded of more reasons to be thankful.
It was my neighbor coming through with a Thanksgiving bale for the girls. One of the benefits of doing farming in an urban environment is the proximity of neighbors to share the chores. Some neighbors help with the milking, others help cart off the soiled hay and yet others help with planting and harvesting. This year we are having a communal meal. I am bringing sauteed collards from the garden, roasted delicata squash with sun-dried tomatoes and a tray of the summer’s pickled beets, carrots and peppers.
I hope this holiday season finds all of you healthy, happy and well fed.
Urban Farming’s Most Valuable Crop?
No matter how much I want to feed my whole family from my city lot, the reality is without a lot more time, know-how and energy, it ain’t going to happen. So what is urban ag really doing? From the Sustainable Food blog here is an article on some of the things urban ag does even when it’s not stocking the pantry.
To hear the media tell it, urban farming is all the rage. Take, as just one example, the happenings here in the eco-chic San Francisco Bay Area. At the newly created Hayes Valley Farm, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that a small staff and a huge crowd of volunteers have created a “freeway food forest” on what used to be a traffic on-ramp. On the other side of town, the New York Times adds that the two-woman team that runs Little City Gardens is breaking ground in reforming San Francisco’s zoning laws around the selling of local produce. In Berkeley, Spiral Gardens recently chalked up an award from the East Bay Express, joining Oakland food programs City Slicker Farms and People’s Grocery as a press darling. And photo editors at the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle can’t resist running (and re-running) bucolic pics of San Francisco’s Alemany Farm, which I help to manage. More…
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