Community Garden Exchange

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.

Hello Garden Caregivers:

As we worked the garden yesterday gathering the harvest, a few observations:

1. Harvest time: If you see items in need of harvest, please let the Community Garden Advisory Team know, rather than harvesting the produce immediately. In this way, we can preserve the vegetable as fresh off the vine, while we schedule a trip to the Food Bank. At the moment, cucumbers in the “C” beds are the nearest to needing harvest, but keep an eye on the tomatoes, the bell peppers, and the scarlet runner beans at the south entrance.  [Note: If you're confused by bed names, they appear on this map of the garden] (more…)

New pages have been added today. First, the “Guidelines for Caregivers” have been uploaded to their own page so that you can easily see what goes into caring for a garden bed (or beds).

This is the first of several Resources we hope to add so that any organization or group wanting to plan their own Community Garden can use our experience to help with their own planning.

Detail pages are being created for each of the Garden Sections, and appear under the Garden Layout page. Each Section will include what is actually planted this season in each bed, the names of the Caregivers (organization or first names only), and eventually the square footage of each bed and a harvest record to see how each crop fares.