growing people newsletter - may 2010

8/4/2019 Growing People Newsletter - May 2010

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Ever GrowingGardeners in Community Development

May 2010 Dallas Area Community Gardening

Gardeners in CommunityDevelopment

www.gardendallas.org

Mailing address:

901 Greenbriar LaneRichardson, TX 75080

IN THIS ISSUE

Starting a New CommunityGarden Every Week

Meadows Funding

Tool Bank Grant

Community VolunteersSave the City of Dallas

A Peep at the Coops Tour

Checklist of Garden Work

Mulch Pathways

Pleasant Grove FoodPantry Opens

Community Garden BikeTour, Oak Cliff

Food For Good Farm at PaulQuinn College

Plant Sale Suffers FromCold Weather

East Dallas Gardens Leadthe Community Garden

Struggle

Starting a New Community Garden Every Week

In the past few weeks, once the cold rainy weather let up, new community gardens have been start-ing up all over. A project called Healthy Harvest, in partnership with GICD, has helped five south-ern Dallas neighborhood groups begin construction of new gardens. These food production gardenprojects are hosted by churches for the benefit of members and neighbors:

Saint Philips Community Garden, 1628 Panama StreetHighland Hills United Methodist, 3800 Simpson Stuart RoadGolden Gate Baptist, 612 N Cliff StreetChristian Stronghold Baptist, 6810 Samuel BoulevardFirst Christian Methodist Evangelistic, 7575 S Hampton Road

Other new garden start-ups are in the planning

stages. GICD is providing development exper-tise and training for these Healthy Harvest newcommunity gardeners. An orientation andtraining for garden liaisons, and garden bedbuilding workshop on March 13, kicked of thisseries. It is estimated that at least 250 house-holds will tend plots, and each garden hasplans to share their garden and the producegrown with neighbors far and wide. As groupsget better organized they hope to have a majoraffect on building better neighborhoods, pro-moting healthy lifestyles, and lessening hungerand food related diseases.

The main training site for these new gardens isGICDs Center for Growing People, the com-

munity gardening training center at 1616 N JimMiller Road (hosted by Church of Our Savour).Several other groups that trained at Our Saviour have recently started their own garden projects.These include:

Acers Community Garden at Central Christian, 4711 Westside DriveCliff Temple Baptist, 125 Sunset Avenue

While a dozen or so new gardens started in the last two years, that is 2008 and 2009 (see our linkFind a Community Garden at www.gardendallas.org), this year promises a bumper crop. We arehopeful that all these new community gardeners will learn from each other, take advantage of theexpertise accrued by GICD over the past 2 decades, become active with the American CommunityGardening Organization, and stand together as city hall begins to appreciate these wonderfulneighborhood projects that have been an ignored part of our history, and now are becoming hugelynecessary and popular.

Meadows Funding

GICD received a Meadows Foundation Grant just in time to keep our work going for this year. Find-ing funds has been difficult in these lean times, and shortfalls were beginning to threaten some ofour projects. Not only is fundraising a greater challenge now, but requests for help with new gardenprojects, volunteers wanting to participate, food pantries needing fresh vegetables, people lookingfor someway to grow vegetables to feed their family, have greatly stretched resources. Thankheavens for Meadows. At least we now have some means to provide a little of the much neededsupport that can help sustain communities through gardening.

Mission: improving the quality of life in neighborhoods through community gardening

Support CommunityGardening

Your tax-deductibledonation will supportGICDs communitygardening programs.Donations are gratefullyaccepted. Please makeyour check payable toGICD and send to 901Greenbriar Lane,Richardson, TX 75080

Building St Philips School Garden, March 27, 2010


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Page 2Ever GrowingGardeners in Community Development

Tool Bank Grant

This past January the Professional Convention Managers Association held their annual convention in Dallas. At that eventtheir Education Foundation collected donations for local community projects. Working on behalf of GICD,Keep Dallas Beautifulsubmitted a request that funds be made available for a community tool shed to be established by GICD. Happily a check for

$5,111.10 has been received. Our tentative plan is to purchase gardening tools that can be borrowed by established communitygardens and community projects. We are working on details for housing and managing this tool bank.

We truly appreciate the PCMA Education Foundation and Keep Dallas Beautiful for their support and this generous gift.

GICDGardeners in Community

Development

A 501(c)(3) non-profit organizationfounded in 1994 to promote

community gardening in north Texas.

Board of DirectorsLeo GuitierrezAmanda BrownCarolyn Bush

Azenath WrightPinkie WhiteLee Govidnia

Executive DirectorDon Lambert

Educational AssistantRebecca Smith

GICD training center:Center for Growing People

1616 N Jim Miller RoadDallas, Texas

GICD mailing address:901 Greenbriar Lane

Richardson, TX 75080

[email protected]

Peep at the Coops TourBuys Chicken Tractor

The recent self-guided Peep at The Coops Tour, held on Saturday, April 18, gavefolks an opportunity to visit chicken projects in 10 backyards and at the award win-

ning Stonewall Jackson Elementary School Garden. It was a tremendous success,and hundreds of people came out to have a look and talk about urban chickens.Funds raised from sponsors and raffle donors went towards establishing chickencoops at local schools and community gardens. GICD and Stonewall Jackson Ele-mentary were honored to be recipients of this years tour. Weplan to build a mobile coop, commonly called a chicken tractorso that hens at the Center for Growing People can spend sometime eating weeds, bugs, and scratching around in the commu-nity gardens at Our Saviour. A big thanks goes to tour organiz-ers, sponsors, and all who donated to this great cause.

And, speaking of chickens, the Growing Peoplechickens started laying their first eggs about a week ago. Thisproject was funded as the last of the projects made possible byGICDs multiple-year support of the Dallas Urban Gardening Initiative from HeiferInternational.

Volunteers constructing garden at the First ChristianMethodist Evangelistic Church, May 8, 2010

Groundwork Dallas youth volunteering. Live OakCommunity Garden, East Dallas, May 8, 2010

Volunteers transplant tomato seedlings in the Grow-ing People greenhouse, March 29, 2010

Community VolunteersGive to the City of Dallas

Community Gardens are possi-ble because volunteers plan,build, plant, weed, harvest,and have a self-interest inkeeping the garden in goodshape. Some gardening volun-teers have years of experience,and some are new. Their lovefor others and gardening growsfood in neighborhoods thatlack grocery stores, bringsfresh produce to the needy,and enables children and fami-lies to grow their own lettuce,tomatoes, and squash. This isthe best kind of self-help andworking together to bring posi-tive change. Citizens cleaningup unused spaces, strugglingwith scarce resources, bearingexpense, blisters and sorebacks, and exalting in joy thatcomes from knowing that ac-

tion and shared passion makesthe city a better place.

Dallas city officials should bejumping at the opportunity tosee vacant space taken care ofat no expense to the city, andshould not be trying to create

barriers and charge fees to people that volun-tarily are doing so much good. This is espe-cially true in neighborhoods where extremepoverty is the norm. Let gardening thrive!


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Mulch Pathways Deeply withFree Wood Chips

Nothing does more good for long term garden soil quality andmaintenance than applying mulch deeply in pathways. Thebest mulch available can be obtained for no money, deliveredfree to your community garden from local tree trimming ser-vices. This is not imported bark mulch, or ground wood likeproducts that are shipped and sold locally, but an opportunityto recycle the chopped trimmings from local trees within oururban forest.

Deep wood chip mulch does many things:1. It suppressed weeds. It must be at least 6 deep sosunlight does not go through, and works best if applied on topof cardboard or several layers of newspaper. This will stopeven Bermuda grass.2. Weeds that grow in the mulch layer are easy to removebecause their roots grow into the soft mulch layer.3. Instead of removing plant materials to a compost pile, you can add them into your pathways.4. This mulch all becomes compost in a few months. It nurtures beneficial soil life forms. This compost can be easily dug,screened, and added to adjacent beds. Free compost!5. Deep mulch absorbs rain water and controls erosion. Pathways in a well mulched garden can hold several inches of rain tonaturally water your garden and leach slowly into the water table. This saves money and protects water quality in streams, lakesand rivers.6. Well mulched gardens look great! They are neat, clean, and never muddy.7. Mulch moderates temperatures in your plants root zone, which increases yields.8. Saves you money. You will save on fertilizer costs, need less disease and pest controls, and use less water.9. Saves you work. Spreading mulch to control weeds is far less work than digging weeds out, and making compost in pathways isless work than lugging materials to a pile and back again.

Screening compost from pathway mulch at Plot Against Hunger

Checklist of Garden Work in the Month of May

Mulch: Mulch is needed everywhere. For pathways use wood chips (see Mulch Path-ways on this page). For planted beds in vegetable gardens use grass clippings, leaves(put saving bags of leaves on your Fall to-do list), hay, compost, etc.Tie and stake: Tomatoes need large cages (not the puny ones sold in stores) made from horse fencing or the heavy wire mesh(you need 6 square holes to reach through) kind used to reinforce concrete slabs. Peppers, eggplant, beans and other plants mayneed support or training as they grow.Fertilize: Use organic sources like cottonseed and alfalfa meal, fish emulsion and kelp. Dry molasses will add some nutrients andmake soil life forms happy.Bugs: Hand pick and kill squash bugs, slugs, and worms on greens. Blast aphids from plants with water spray. Look for pests atnight with a flashlight. Try D.E., soap or orange oil sprays if infestations are bad. Make notes to yourself to not plant varieties that

bugs like.Hand pollinate: Some vegetable like squash, corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes, might need your assistance to achieve pollination.Maybe a good topic for future Ever Growing newsletters.Harvest: If you tended your garden from last fall through early spring, you should still have some spring greens, Swiss chard,peas, radishes, and maybe some lettuce (lettuce gets bitter once hot weather arrives, just like some of us).Plant hot season crops now: It will soon be too late. It is already for tomatoes.Spring and summer gardening depends on the soil building you began last fall and work done over the winter. Spring is hectic. Itis a struggle to get cover crops turned under, early vegetables planted, find seeds, get seedlings started on time, transplant andprotect tender tomatoes and peppers, harvest greens and lettuce, and do the many other tasks that compete for time. Proper exe-cution of each is critical for a garden to be successful in the months ahead. Rain and cold weather may cause delays or plant loss.And dont forget to mulch. Begin serious mulching by late spring or summer heat will destroy your hard work. Soil betweenplants should be covered with 2 or more inches of mulch (grass clippings, chopped leaves, compost, but not those bark or woodchip mulches that break-down slowly). This will keep weeds from growing, protect soil and roots from heat, heavy rains anddroughts, and provide nourishment as decomposition occurs.

Work to do:Deep mulch pathways and bedsTie and stake climbing plants

Fertilize all beds before plantingControl bugs, slugs, aphids and wormsHand pollinate squashPlant hot season crops

Harvest:greens, chard,

peas, cabbage,

radishes, lettuce

Plant hot crops: okra,sweet potato (from slips),southern peas, pepper

plants, squash, beans,melons, corn


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The Pleasant Grove Food Pantry OpensThe Chapel on Jim Miller, 1655 N. Jim Miller, Dallas, 75217

Serving zip codes 75217, 75227, and 75253!

The Southeast Dallas Emergency Food Center has re-opened as the new Pleasant Grove Food Pantry. Pleas-

ant Grove community members have seen the need increase for the pantry to reopen due to the economy and lossof jobs, but finding an affordable location has been impossibleuntil now in space generously donated by Joyce Carr and man-aged by Sophia Brown at the Chapel on Jim Miller! AscensionEpiscopal Church Parishioners donated the funds to remodeland make rooms ready. And ready we are!

Volunteers from Pleasant Grove, including local churches, businessesand organizations, gathered Tuesday morning (May 11) to sort andpackage donations of canned goods from local food drives, and withfunds donated from the Pleasant Grove Kiwanis and help from thePleasant Grove Fiesta Food Market. At the same time, garden volun-teers harvested fresh vegetables at Our Saviour Community Garden todonate to the pantry.

First Day Service: 14 volunteers14 families served (47 people)468 lb (1,872 servings) of food including freshlyharvested vegetables from Our Saviour Community Garden.

The Pleasant Grove Food Pantry will be open on Tuesdays immediately following the weekly harvest at Our Saviour CommunityGarden every other Tuesday for two months and then every Tuesday beginning in July. Hungry families will receive fresh produceand staples and will be encouraged to volunteer at the Community Garden to help others in need and to learn how to grow theirown food.

The Pleasant Grove Food Pantry Steering Committee would like to give special thanks to:

Joyce Carr, Sophia and Amanda Brown

The Chapel on Jim Miller

Ascension Episcopal ChurchBlake Ingram, Auto City

Our Saviour Episcopal Church

Martha Doleshal, Exec Director, Southeast Dallas Emergency Food Center

and our Pleasant Grove Community Members who have graciously and generously reached out to care for each other!

The next steering committee meeting is Sunday, May 23, 4 pm at the Pleasant Grove Food Pantry, located in Chapel on Jim Miller,1655 N. Jim Miller. Please join us!

To Volunteer Time, Talent or Treasure, contact: Becky Smith, 214 564-5801 or Martha Doleshal 972-313-5564.

Eastminster Presbyterian ChurchSoutheast Dallas Chamber of Commerce

Umphress Park United Methodist Church

Kiwanis of Pleasant Grove

Our Saviour Community Garden gardeners and volunteers

Community Garden Bike Tour in Oak CliffThe folks at BIKE FRIENDLY OAK CLIFF are heading up a tour of our community gardens in north Oak Cliff, and we couldnt bemore thrilled! Here are the gardens, projects, and other locations we will be going to, as well as the event schedule. This is a fam-ily event, so bring your kids. The route is approximately 7 miles long, so if the little ones cant ride the entire way, please accom-modate.

Tours, refreshments, and educational presentations about composting, bees and other interesting activities will be provided at

some of the garden stops!

Fix up your ride at Oak Cliff Bicycle Company (http://ocbicycleco.com) for this great event

Ride Date: Sunday, May 23, 2010Start Location: Enos Pizza Tavern, Bishop Arts DistrictStart Time: 1:00 pm (times are approximations based on amount of time at each stop and travel time)

1. 1:15pm Community Garden of Cliff Temple2. 1:50pm Methodist Hospital System Garden3. 2:50pm St. Cecilias Community Garden (http://stceciliascommunitygarden.blogspot.com/)4. 3:20pm Jefferson Median Project5. 3:50pm Urban Acres Farm Store (http://urbanacres.wordpress.com/)6. 4:30pm Enos Pizza Tavern (http://www.enospizza.com/)

Many thanks go to all of the gardens and volunteers involved who will make this ride the best of BFOCs yearly rides!


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Food For Good Farm at Paul Quinn CollegeOn May 5, 2010 PepsiCo and Paul Quinn College inaugurated their Food for Good Farm at Paul Quinn College. The urban farm,located on the schools former football field, will be a fully operational farm that emphasizes sustainable growing practices, stew-ardship, and community engagement. The college will follow an innovative curriculum that will integrate the farm into its academicprogram, teaching principles of botany, biology, and social enterprise. PepsiCo is working with students and staff to develop farmrelated businesses that will serve the surrounding Highland Hills and South Dallas Communities, as well as local chefs and restau-rants.

Left: The entire football field is planted to summer cropsAbove: Dignitaries & quests ceremonially plant the new farm

GICD Plant Sale Suffers From Cold Weather

GICDs annual fund raising plant sales were held on April 17 and 18 at the

East Dallas Community Garden, and April 24 at Our Saviour CommunityGarden. The extended cool weather and rain in April has not been goodfor gardening, and kept many buyers from attending the sales. Last yearwe made almost $8000, but this time it was closer to $5000.

The plants donated by local nurseries and growers were some of the mostbeautiful ever. The top donor, YC Nursery, really grew some beautifuldianthus, begonias, impatiens, coleus, petunias, and geraniums. Otherplant donors included Bruce Miller Nursery, Greenlake Nursery, Rui-bals Plants of Texas, and Yellow Rose Landscape. We had giftcards donated by Waltons Nursery, North Haven Gardens, and

JimmysFoodStore. Anice lunchwas pro-

vide by ourfriends atBlue Mesa. We really appreciate the support of these wonderfulbusinesses, and hope that GICD supporters will thank them as theygo and shop at these fine community friends. Again, please help usthank these supporters!

GICD grew plants in the Growing People greenhouse for the plantsale and to supply other local community gardens. Cool tempera-tures made for tomatoes available about 2 weeks later than usual,but this worked out due to our late spring. We were unable to havebasil, peppers and eggplant ready for the East Dallas sale, but somewere just barely big enough at Our Saviour. If anyone is looking forbasil, we still have some. Call 972-231-3565.

Thank You Sale Donors

YC NurseyBruce Miller NurseryGreenlake Nursery

Ruibals Plant of Texas

Yellow Rose LandscapeWaltons Garden CenterNorth Haven Gardens

Jimmys Food StoreBlue Mesa Grill


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Pass-along this newsletter: help sow the seeds of community gardening.

To subscribe or un-subscribe, or to offer suggestions contact [email protected]

East Dallas Gardens Lead theCommunity Garden Struggle

On Saturdays the East Dallas Community Gar-den, at 1416 N Fitzhugh, has a small produce

market where the gardens growers sell some ofwhat they grow. This marketing, encouraged byDallas Mayor Annette Strauss when this gardenopened to serve area Asian refugee families over

20 years ago, is the oldest community garden inDallas. Most of the gardens farmers came fromrural farming communities in Cambodia and Laos,

and are now seniors suffering various disabilities.They grow traditional Asian vegetables and herbs,like long beans, bitter melon, wax gourd, bunchingonions, mint, and various leafy greens. The extra

cold this past winter and spring has brought hard-ship, and they are struggling to get new plantings

in and to cover their expenses. Please help outby visiting this garden and buying some vegeta-bles.

GICD is currently adding some newly arrived fami-lies from Karen and Karenni areas of Burma.

These and

many othernew refugeegroups des-

peratelyneed a placeto garden.

While GICDsupports theidea of com-munity gar-

dens for eve-ryone, weare commit-

ted to keeping our East Dallas sites as a specialplace for new immigrant families who come to theUS as refugees.

Property taxes may bring about the end of com-munity gardens on land within the City of Dallas.

Current interpretations of zoning and currentcodes do not recognize community gardening as alegitimate or exempt land use. As an example,the small Peace Community Garden on Virginia

St, is owned by GICD. Every year we struggle topay taxes approaching $2000 per year for this tinylot with garden space for only 10 families. Re-

peated requests for exemptions have been denied.And really scary, starting next year, the Dallas

Central As-sessmentDistrict,will begincollecting

taxes on

four lotswhere the

Live OakCommu-

nity Gar-den oper-ates, and onthe single

lot where the 22 year old East Dallas Commu-nity Garden sits. GICD does not make a profit bymanaging gardens or providing community gar-

dening education, and we currently are in a stateof crises as to how to keep this wonderful gardenopen. Work in these gardens is done by commu-

nity volunteers, and the gardeners themselves arevolunteers. This is necessity gardening, not somecasual recreation. It is extremely hard work for ameager return. These are not commercial enter-

prises. We feel that the locations where commu-nity gardeners apply their labor, most of which arelow-income people producing food to feed their

families, should be tax-exempt. Current tax codesand zoning are not in accord. On top of this, theCity of Dallas wants to begin charging gardeners,

or organizations with gardens, fees for permits to

start a new gardens.What needs to happen? Change current zoningto certify that individuals and groups have a rightto garden. Allow tax exemptions for community

gardens that have an established record of foodproduction for low-income households and of feed-ing the hungry. Let growers sell some of whatthey grow to cover costs of water, tools, seed, etc.

Let urban farming become a source of local foodand local jobs. Avoid expanding city governmentfunctions to include charging fees, requiring per-

mits, and other top-down control that will under-

mine local volunteer commitment to building bet-ter neighborhoods through gardening. Give sup-

port to current programs like that of GICD, insteadof creating new city run programs. Vacant lots inthe poorest neighborhoods of Dallas, where chil-

dren go hungry, should not be allowed to festerwith crime and grow weeds when neighbors areeager to grow food there.

Don Lambert, Executive Director, GICD

Karen gardeners grow food for their families

growing people newsletter - may 2010

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