Community Garden Exchange

Newly-installed rainwater harvesting system in the south Citrus Bed

Who knew that so much functionality could look so pretty!

Yesterday a group of enthusiastic volunteers installed a “Rainwater Harvesting garden” at our Community Garden site.

The Way it Was

For those of you reading this from other areas and other states, here in Southern California we get no rain — ZERO — each year from about May to November. Thus everything we plant needs to have an irrigation source. We had an area outside the garden gates where we wanted to grow citrus trees, but it didn’t have proper irrigation.

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Join the fun! Join the mission!

The Community Garden at Holy Nativity grows organic food which is donated to LAX Food Pantry and similar distribution organizations to feed needy families in our local area. The Garden also reaches out to our local community, educating our neighborhood about how to grow food.

Garden “Caregivers” take turns watering and tending the plants in the garden. They participate in planting sessions, harvests, and new installations. Our garden Caregivers are young (Jeremy’s 3!) and old. Some are local neighbors. Some are church parishioners. Some participate because they want to help the needy. Others just love gardening and love having a place to do it.

If you’d like to join our garden Caregiver team, here’s how can you get involved:

1. Let Christine or Father Peter know you want to participate. (contact)
2. Join the Garden’s YahooGroup. This email loop is how we will be communicating specific details with caregivers this season.
3. Read the “Guidelines for Caregivers” .
4. Select a date to work in the garden, and log it on the Caregiver calendar (you have to become a member of the Garden’s YahooGroup to do this).
5. Show up on your date and jump right in!

On November 15 (9am) we’ll offer an “Introduction to Organic Vegetable Gardening” orientation class for garden caregivers. Here you can learn the basics about soil, watering, “fertilizer,” pest control, and which vegetables grow in cool season versus warm. Garden caregivers, new and ongoing, are requested to attend.

An ongoing series of free garden classes will provide all the know-how you’ll need. Planting and harvest dates will be announced on the YahooGroup – all are welcome to participate.

Title: Seed Swap and Winter Garden Celebration
Location: Community Garden at Holy Nativity, 6700 W. 83rd, Westchester (LA 90045)
Description: We’ll hold a Seed Swap in conjunction with the “International Seed Swap Day of Action.” Join us for a local foods potluck, garden class, and other fun!
Start Time: 09:00
Date: 2009-01-31

If you’ve stopped by the Garden lately, you’ll see that a LOT has changed!  The giant sunflowers and billows of cosmos still remain, but slowly — one pattern after another — we’re converting the Garden to the cool season.

Here in So Calif, we are blessed with a year-round growing season.  That means that we can continue producing food for the Food Pantry all year round.  But it also means that we must manage our growing beds so that we maintain soil fertility, prevent plant pests and diseases, and also maintain a tidy aesthetic appearance.  Whew!

Last evening, a small team of volunteers cleared the “B” pattern.  Tomatoes, basil, peppers, and eggplants are now gone, in favor of chard, spinach, beets and carrots.  The plants we removed are staged for our new composting operation (“Biodynamic Composting Workshop” coming up on Nov. 8).  For those of you who are garden caretakers, water the new babies gently — they’ll need to stay moist until they germinate and establish roots.

A few weeks ago, volunteers converted the “C” pattern (cucumbers and squashes) to cool season peas, favas, and snowpeas.  The “E” pattern (site of our failed potato crop) were converted first.  Soon to be worked over will be the “A” beds, where we grow a wide variety of greens, onion family, and salad materials.

Resources on garden rotations and cool season vegetables are in the notes from our Organic Vegetable Gardening class series, here.

Title: Biodynamic Composting workshop
Location: Community Garden at Holy Nativity, 6700 W. 83rd, Westchester (LA 90045)
Description: Gene Fox, from the Learning Garden at Venice High School, will guide us in converting the Community Garden composting operations to the biodynamic method. Come join us for this day of action!
Start Time: 09:00
Date: 2008-11-08
End Time: 11:00

Fr. Peter with Skylar, Julian and Jeremy with giant Sunflowers

Title:

Introduction to Organic Gardening
Location: Community Garden/Room 5
Description: Learn the basics of organic vegetable gardening: soil, “fertilizer,” pest control, and which vegetables are best grown in cool season versus warm. This class serves as an orientation to Community Garden caretakers, but is also opportunity for all your miscellaneous Q&A about organic edibles. Are you gardening in containers? The class material applies to you too!
Start Time: 09:00
Date: 2008-11-15
End Time: 10:30

Title: Rainwater Harvesting workshop
Location: Community Garden at Holy Nativity, 6700 W. 83rd, Westchester (LA 90045)
Description: Join us for hands-on learning as we construct rainwater infiltration pits for the Community Garden. We’ll discuss the different ways to make use of the water bounty that falls from the So Cal skies each winter, the ways we are putting it to use in the Community Garden, and ways you can put rainwater to use at home. John Tikotsky ASLA will guide us through this experimental installation.
Start Time: 09:00
Date: 2008-10-25
End Time: 10:30

Title: Container Edibles
Location: The Community Garden at Holy Nativity, 6700 W. 83rd, LA 90045
Description: Limited space? Want to get started growing veggies right away? Come to this hands-on workshop about growing vegetables in containers. Bring a favorite pot, and take home a winter garden! Plus we\’ll plant containers for the Community Garden site. (container size recommendation: at least 5 gallon or 16 inches)
Start Time: 9:00
Date: 2008-10-11
End Time: 10:30

On Saturday, Sept 13, during our “Seed Saving” garden class, class participants went out to the Community Garden and harvested some of our blackeyed peas. We’ve been growing ‘Ejotero,’ a Native American variety, which originated from NativeSeed/SEARCH. They have lovely broad green leaves, and look quite pretty and ornamental most of the growing season. They only brown out at the end of their lifespan as the pods dry.

As the class discussed the finer points of seed saving, participants hulled the blackeyed peas. We ended up with a huge bowlfull.

Together with other garden vegetables, the blackeyed peas were donated to the food pantry on Tues, Sept 16 for a total of 28lbs of food donated.

For those of you who’ve attended garden classes at the Community Garden and want lists of resources, and for those of you who wished you attended the classes but somehow missed them, we’re posting many of the resources online.

The Soil Building class can be found here.

The Vegetable Crop Rotations class can be found here.

The Seed Saving class can be found here.

The main concepts from our introduction to organic gardening class are here.

As always, a list of organic vegetable gardening resources for the Los Angeles area can be found here.