Gardening Videos

Getting Headstarts on Garden Plants! Jan 29, 2012

Ready for a good "olde fashioned" how-to video? I will show you how to harvest, prep and dry your peppers to produce viable strong healthy seeds with higher germination rates. Having problems with leaves wilting, drying out or dropping like flies? I included a closeup demo for dealing with mildew, early blight and himidity problems. 

So when is the best time to plant your veggies for spring? How about RIGHT NOW? Yes that's right. Tune in and I'll show you how I plan to harvest peppers and even tomatoes months earlier than usual this year. 

This is the year to take a gardening journey into the Twilight Zone! I'll be your guide. It's going to be fun, a bit new and definitely a whole lot of fun! Ok enough rambling. Let's GROW SOMETHING! More 

More Gardening videos at Dance in the Sunshine, Praxxus' YouTube Channel. Related videos. Many Community Garden and high desert gardening videos too.

Local Food and The Farm Bill

Good news for #Mountainair #CommunityGarden, our #farmersmarket & #localfood (central to iCreate's local sustainability) movements across the country from the Environmental Working Group Ag Mag

For too long, funding provided by the United States’ most far-reaching food and farm legislation has primarily benefited agri-business and large scale industrial-scale commodity farms that aren’t growing food. Instead, they’re growing ingredients for animal feed, fuel and highly processed food — at a high cost to our nation’s health, environment and rural communities.

With the 2012 Farm Bill fast upon us, Congress has an opportunity to make smart, timely changes to help fix our broken food and farm system by embracing a package of policy reforms outlined in the Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill. This legislation was recently introduced by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and is co-sponsored by 63 representatives in the House and 9 in the Senate.

The Pingree-Brown bill includes a comprehensive package of cost-effective policy reforms that would boost farmers’ and ranchers’ incomes by helping them meet the growing demand for local and regional food. The legislation also aims to make fresh, healthy and affordable food-especially fruits and vegetables- more accessible to consumers.

Local Food and The Farm Bill: Small Investments, Big Returns | Environmental Working Group

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Updates, news & a call to action

Catch the quick iCreate update just published on Mountainair Arts (for being of broad community interest): recital (a hit), exciting news about our future and a call to action.

Monday, Lenora and Kay return to Santa Fe to bundle the iCreate Capital Outlay request with one on behalf of the Town of Mountainair for the community park and safe playground equipment.

All Mountainair ~ town, arts council, other local service organizations, schools, the entire community ~ has a part to play too. Call, email, fax state legislators urging their support. Tell your friends and family to do the same.

Here are legislator names and basic contact information:

• Speaker of the House, Ben Lujan. Capitol phone, (505) 986-4782; home phone,(505) 455-3354; e-mail, ben.lujan@nmlegis.gov
• Senator Pete Campos. Capitol phone, (505) 986-4311, office phone, (505) 454-2501; home phone, (505) 425-0508; e-mail: petecampos@newmexico.com
• Representative Rhonda King. Capitol phone, (505) 986-4438; Office Phone, (505) 832-5050; home phone, (505) 832-4603
• Senator Phil Griego. Capitol Phone, (505) 986-4861, office phone, (505) 469-9470; home phone, (575) 421-2863; e-mail: senatorgriego@yahoo.com
• Representative Larry Larrañaga. Capitol phone, (505) 986-4215; home phone,(505) 821-4948; e-mail, larry@larranaga.com

Ask them to welcome Lenora and Kay and support the Capital Outlay requests they will be delivering on behalf of iCreate and all Mountainair 

We've been busy. In addition to our new iCreate Facebook page ~ please visit, like and leave a message ~ we just started publishing a weekly newsletter, iCreate Weekly, on Paper.li that will cover various aspects of the iCreate mission: creativity. music, arts, education, sustainability, environment, community service and more. 

next #Mountainair iCreate recital & meeting

Update from Kay Stillion, who writes, 

Our next Mountainair recital is all violin students, Estrella Griego, Samantha Torrez and Jaiden Martinez, who will perform Saturday January 21, 2:30 pm at Pack's Cafe at the Shaffer.  Interested in our community based music outreach program and trying out violin or guitar lessons yourself? Call 847-2301 for more information. iCreate welcomes guests at meetings and activities. If you have a guitar or violin not being used, we can always use more musical instruments too as well as volunteer instructors.

 

The next iCreate returns to the 4th Saturday schedule interrupted by holidays and will be January 28, 2:30 pm at Lenora Romero's. We hope to be announcing exciting news about iCreate funding and development very soon. Look for our finding a new home and expanding music outreach, youth programs, community garden/sustainability mission, and developing new educational and creative projects.  

STOP SOPA: #SOPASTRIKE Jan18

My favorire "stop sopa" page is Zachary Johnson's shadowbox with the moving light (just move your cursor) on Zachstronaut. Adding this one to my feed reader... tomorrow. Today ..... 

 

Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by this: do the biggest thing you possibly can and drive contacts to Congress. *Put the source code for this page your site* ~ it's my main page at Mountainair Online (the web page). I have no control over blog policies. I'm not really up to tinker with source code to show a black out page on my blogs. So I am settling for posting information and exhortations (like this one). Except for following #sopastrike on Twitter and @fightfortheftr) and Reddit, I'm staying off public pages today. No Facebook or 

Personal blackouts seem to be running either 24 hours (midnight to midnight) or 8AM EST to 8PM EST. Major supporting sites like Wikipedia, WordPress, Google, Internet Archive (+ Wayback Machine), Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tucows and many, many more are striking for 24 hours. Looked like a major slow down on Facebook when I checked (before 8 am).  

What can you do to support the strike if you don't have a blog or web page, can't blog and RT #sopastrike stories? Make a call; sign the petition; learn more; the action of the hour is to speak out. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, opposing the bills. Contact local news stations and let them know that this is an issue worth covering. And there is still email, what they could be coming after next...

Today's Google search page:

 

Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web! 

Xeriscape & Water Conservation Conference 2012

The conference seems pricey considering our modest projects and even more modest budget, but at least one conference attendee could bring back information for many. On the other hand, Expo is free: 200+ vendors demos, exhibits and ongoing free seminars.

Xeriscape & Water Conservation Conference 2012 Collaborations for New Solutions is this year's theme for the Water Conservation and Xeriscape Conference and EXPO.  Speakers lined up for this year were chosen to provide lively talks and discussion; the group is varied and includes conservation advocates, water professionals and other interesting presenters.    Dates for the 2012 Conference are February 23-24 and for the Expo the 25-26. We are holding the conference at the Crown Plaza Albuquerque (formally the Albuquerque Hilton) and the EXPO at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds. Thanks and see you in February! The Xeriscape Council of New Mexico

OffCenter Community Arts Calendar

from iCreate #Mountainair's ABQ Music Outreach partner... and perhaps a few ideas local artists and Mountain Arts on Broadway art center program committee might find interesting.

Call for artists and art!

"Movable Masterpieces"  Ongoing Community Art-Making  Exhibit & FUN!draiser Starts Friday, Jan. 6th, 5 - 8 pm OFFCenter's emerging and established artists together with your family and friends can move from "masterpiece" to "masterpiece" on Friday night, (Jan., 6th) as you paint artwork together. Make an offer on any painting you like at any stage until the last brushstroke on Jan. 18th. All proceeds benefit OFFCenter Community Arts - a safe place for everyone to make art free of charge.

FREE Re:Envision Recycled Art Workshop

Shrines from the Glass Graveyard Found Object Workshop with Lindy Hirst Thur., Jan. 12, 2012, 6 - 8 pm Free but call 247-1172 or email: studio808@qwestoffice.net to register Lindy will bring her personal collection of melted glass bottles and trinkets dug up from Albuquerque’s famous Glass Graveyard for you to explore shrine making with these antique relics. Lindy Hirst, founder of THE STUDIO and teacher of many of its classes and workshops, is a long-time New Mexico resident. She received her MFA from the University of New Mexico and has spent many years sharing her extensive knowledge with students from all over the state. This series of workshops and open studio time are brought free to the public in part thanks to funding from The FUNd at Albuquerque Community Foundation, New Mexico Arts and Bernalillo County. If you sign up for a workshop, please inform us at least 24 hours in advance if you're unable to attend, so we can have time to notify those on the waiting list.

Yeah for Gardening!

British town grows all of its own vegetables, witnesses improved civic life and reduced crime as a result

 

Todmorden Harvest Festival 

Ethan A. Huff
Natural News

When the small British mill town of Todmorden, tucked in between Yorkshire and Lancashire, first began installing fruit and vegetable gardens all around the area as part of the Incredible Edible program, it likely had no idea that the novel, yet simple, concept would make the town a foremost inspirational and self-sustaining model of the future.

Fresh herbs, succulent greens, and tasty fruits can be found growing near civic buildings, college campuses, supermarket parking lots, and various other places. Small garden plots, raised planting beds, and even small soil strips in these areas can be found brimming with fresh produce, all of which are free to anyone who want it, and at any time.

how to organize #communitygarden for a food pantry

The #Mountainair Community Garden, a joint custody project (for lack of a better term but equally colorful designation) of iCreate, community gardeners not affiliated with iCreate, is in the process of applying for a New Mexico Centennial Garden Program grant. Supporting local food security programs is just one of the garden goals presented in the grant proposal due January 13.

Food banks and pantries today can be a lot more than a place to hash out donated – and often leftover, unwanted – food to the hungry. Right in tune with the current ecological-minded climate from “green buildings to green bodies,” they often infuse teaching the hungry how to grow their own nutritious food, how to cook it and sometimes spark careers in food.

Follow the link to read the rest of "How to organize a Community Garden for a Food Pantry" by Mary Jasch. DIG IT! mag online is a worthy and recommended gardening resource to add to your reader, bookmark file or link list. Subscribe to email newsletter on the website.

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