Everybody Eats: How Gardening Can Feed the Soul

In The Backyard Parables (Grand Central Publishing, 2013), author Margaret Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her. In short, she learned how the garden feeds the soul. Roach has harvested thirty years’ worth of backyard parables—deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper—and has distilled them all in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, and at-home pickling. 

The following excerpt is an introduction highlighting her early gardening experiences and the road to finding spirituality in nature.

‘The# FarmersMarket Guide’ a handy book for shoppers

The #Mountainair Farm & Garden Market is in its second year, surviving and thriving. In additions to Mountainair Community Garden,, local home gardeners and permaculturists and, recently noted, a small community garden at St Vincent de Paul's. Farmers markets supported by local producers, artisans and shoppers are central to local sustainability, central to iCreate's mission.

Farmers markets can carry an amazing abundance of products. At this time of year shoppers might find fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs, salad greens, cut flowers, baked goods, eggs, meats, honey, jams, preserves and soaps. 

Garden Tour & Summer Set-Up

Mountainair Community Garden manager Joan Embree writes,


Dear all,
     May 26, four of us went trekking to two very different gardens to see other community efforts. Addie, Carla, Tamra, and I learned much at both the Seed2Need Gardens in Corrales, Sandoval County, and at the Rio Grande Community Farm/Community Gardens area. The Corrales Food Pantry Project 

Time to get growing...

#Mountainair Community Garden manager Joan Embree writes,

Gardeners and friends,
     

With May 15 passed, those who have adopted plots at the community garden can (probably) safely plant veggies, flowers, whatever... starting now.  A few brave souls have already put in some starts.
     

We work every Saturday from 10 am to about noon, and whenever else the mood strikes us. The keys to the work sheds -- tools, seeds, etc.-- are hidden out back of the sheds for access. (Just ask if you need to know where. Send my your email address too ~ it's always a pleasure to add new gardeners to our list)

Farmers Markets, weekly festivals

Our own weekly Mountainair Farm & Garden Market opens Saturday May 11, on US Hwy 60 in front of T&C Auto from 9am-1pm or sell out. This year the market is part of the WIC (Women, Infant & Children) Farmers' Market Nutrition Program.

Got questions? Want to know more about the market, volunteering, becoming a vendor? Email or call manager Rebecca Lueras, rebeccalue@aol.com, 847-0973.

Community Garden, the next Storify

Soil Presentations, Santa Fe April 13-15

Presentations by Soil Expert Elaine Ingham Cosponsored by SF Farmers' Market Institute April 13-15, very welcome in the continuing absence of iCreate updates. Next, perhaps another video, the Off-Center Arts calendar or something musical.... but not indefinitely.

Trouble viewing? Click here

The Santa Fe Farmers' Market Institute is cosponsoring the first session of this year’s Carbon Economy Series, featuring Dr. Elaine Ingham, Chief Scientist for the Rodale Institute and world-renowned expert on soil biology, next weekend April 13–15 at Santa Fe Community College. In exchange for our sponsorship, all vendors of the Santa Fe Farmers Market who are interested will be attending the entire workshop for free. Over 40 farmers have signed up already!

All the events listed below are also open to the public. The day long workshops are $175 per day, or $300 for the entire weekend, but the Friday night introductory presentation is only $10 and provides an overview of Dr. Ingham’s cutting edge work in healthy soil management. Below are all the details:

 

Rodale Institute

Living Soil is Where It’s At

Dr Elaine Ingham, Rodale Institute, discusses healthy soil biology, fertility and high production yield.

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

'via Blog this'

Blog Action Day 2011

Autumn Gardening

Praxxus55712 just uploaded a video: EZ Autumn Composting with Leaves! Autumn isn't the end of gardening season. The gardening adventure never end and never ceases to be FREE, educational and just plain FUN! Join me in the backyard for a fantastic day in the sunshine. I have a bag of leaves and a very cool idea on how to easily improve your garden soil. Leaf compost attracts worms like a super magnet. Worms in your garden will mean crazy good soil for your next growing season.  ps: How is your autumn going so far? Are the leaves turning or have they already fallen? More

Get More Veggies from Your Garden

Photo Credit: j-oh, Flickr Creative Commons.

In the quest to grow more of our own food on our 1/4 acre city lot, we've spent a bit of time bemoaning the fact that we are quickly running out of space. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to make your limited garden space work harder for you.

The latest issue of Mother Earth News features a great article by Barbara Pleasant, "40 Gardening Tips to Maximize Your Harvest." The entire article is online, and it's definitely worth reading. The section that particularly caught my eye, however, was the section on tips for using space efficiently. Here are some of the tips that have worked well for me.

Tips for Using Garden Space Efficiently

1. Interplant Compatible Crops

This can be as simple as sowing some mesclun when you plant your tomato transplants. By the time the tomato plants are filling the space, you'll have gotten several mesclun harvests from the bed already. You could also plant herbs, such as basil and oregano, near your tomatoes, and make better use of your space while gaining some of the benefits of
companion planting; basil planted near tomatoes is said to improve the flavor of the tomatoes.

2. Succession Plant for Continual Harvests

Certain vegetables, such as lettuce, carrots, corn, radishes, and peas, mature fairly quickly. If you sow a new row or pot of these veggies every week or two, you'll ensure a regular harvest throughout the growing season, rather than having a ton of stuff ready to harvest at once, then nothing after that.

3. Plant One New Edible Every Week

As Pleasant notes in the article, devoting one row to "this and that" crops -- crops that you sow just a little bit of to add variety to your garden -- can hugely increase the variety in your garden and help stave off boredom. You could also do this with containers. Plant a pot of something new, such as leaf amaranth or bok choy. You'll increase your knowledge, try a few new foods, and make better use of your space.

x-posted from Tree Hugger

Read more about Maximizing Your Harvest at Mother Earth News.


More About Vegetable Gardening:

• Lazivores Unite: A Manifesto for Lazy Gardening
• 7 Ways to Grow Potatoes
• No Green Thumb? Try Growing These 3 Easy Vegetables

Virtual Community Garden: Indoor Gardening

With a brand new page/ blog for iCreate comes furnishing it, refreshing content and setting content guidelines. There is still content to migrate from the original site after updating and copy-editing. The page, currently hosting an "under construction" graphic will describe current and projected iCreate projects or programs: music outreach for the at risk youth and the homeless; the Mountainair Community Garden (which will probably end up with it's own page); (tentative) publishing an anthology of local and NM youth poetry commemorating iCreate's founder Merris Atmen, whose initial iCreate project was a Youth Poetry program. Partners needs updating and editing too. Then there are announcements and news to catch up with. Although autonomous, the Community Garden is part of iCreate, a Virtual Community Garden series makes sense ... informative and should be interesting and fun too.

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The Indoor Gardening and Urban Gardening Group regularly posts gardening resources and links to gardening articles.