Ripen Tomatoes & more summer gardening tips

…just out on Praxxus' YouTube channel of gardening videos, heavy on the tomatoes.There is a "Tomato Channel" on YouTube too as well as a "Pepper Growing Channel"

Announcing the #NMCentennial #Gardens Program

Something for #Mountainair #CommunityGarden or perhaps the Manzano Mountain Art Council (partnering with MPS) to consider. Please note  that "priority will be given to both limited-resource communities and to projects that demonstrate strong collaborations and community support." 

Centennial Gardens - Call for Proposals
The New Mexico Centennial Gardens Program is an initiative of the New Mexico Centennial Foundation, working in partnership with state agencies and private partners. Thanks to the generosity of the Coca-Cola Foundation, the NM Centennial Foundation is able to provide grants to support school and community garden projects in New Mexico in 2012. Grants will be available at levels of $2,500, $5,000 and $10,000. To be eligible for a Centennial Garden grant, applicants must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization or nonprofit K-12 school that is developing or currently maintaining a garden project that will help communities engage with fresh fruits and vegetables. Garden projects may be at any stage of development; planning, construction or operation. In selecting grant recipients, priority will be given to both limited-resource communities and to projects that demonstrate strong collaborations and community support. Relationships with food banks or other outlets to distribute food to New Mexicans in need are a plus. To download the guidelines and application please visit the NM Centennial website or call 505-984-2012. The application deadline is January 13, 2012.

Get Poetry Broadsided: Botanical Garden )

Is poetry trespassing into the garden part of iCreate's cyberspace pièd á terre? I love the smell of oxymoron in the morning. Consider it a National Poetry Month 2011 / Broadsided mashup. Throw in a touch of bridge building between groups who have more in common than they are sometimes willing to admit. 

Nature poetry is as old as the genre; the garden, an ever blooming literary trope not limited to poetry. 

The garden has always held a special place in literature – from hidden gardens to secret doorways, from giant plants to gardens that appear out of nowhere. And the Botanic Garden in Oxford is also strongly connected to literature. It was a favourite spot for the Liddell family to visit (Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland for little Lizzie Liddell); Tolkien often sat there under his favourite tree, the majestic black pine, which looks uncannily like Tree Beard the ‘Tree Ent’; and Pullman set one of the most poignant scenes in ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy on the bench under the witch-hazel, next to the Water Garden. (from Picnics inspired by gardens in literature, U Oxford)

The Guardian's John Mullen lists 10 of the best walled gardens in literature. Ecopoetry is a more recent chapter in that same tradition, as are cross-disciplinary Nature and Culture programs

Here's an article that explains more about Broadsided. So print out this poem (or another) and get broadsiding...  PS ~ wouldn't it be neat to broadside a poetry walk at the Community Garden? Publish the poetry project IRL by weatherproofing and broadsiding?

April 5: Gardening Workshop

Tuesday's Claunch-Pinto sponsored Gardening Workshop in the Mountainair High School Library, 901 West 3rd St, will cover "Vegetable Gardening" ~ x-posted to Announcements, Mountainair Farm & Garden Market and iCreate: please excuse any duplications in your mailbox or feed reader

The presentation by Gene Winn, County Extension Agent-Agriculture, NMSU-Torrance County Extension Office starts at 6pm. 

The Library is located at the back of the school, at the north - just follow "Gardening Workshop" signs from the parking lot. If the gate on 3rd St is locked, you may need to enter the parking lot from the alley next to the high school.

Submitted by Carla Cope, Claunch-Pinto SWCD, P.O. Box 129, Mountainair, NM 87036, 505-847-2941

---

Ed. Note and FYI ~

Check home vegetable gardening in NM and other Extension gardening information pages.  Did you know that NMSU College of  Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Services (CACES) has a YouTube Channel with 419 videos, 200 in the Southwest Yard and Gardening section alone? Better than a good Aggie joke but on't expect all of them to be about organic gardening. To find more gardening resources on YourTube, use the handy search bar at the top of the page.

Good gardening and other news

I see from my mailbox that Tomas has submitted the the ScottsMiracle-Gro Grant. He writes,

The MiracleGrow  gardening grant application has been submitted. 

Phone numbers and e-mails are included in the grants for Kay Stillion as Executive Director of iCreate, 

Joan Embree as project director (of the community garden) 

and me, Tomas Wolff as garden coordinator are included.

We should hear by May 20th for a grant up to $1,500. 

That's a lot of drip hoses, wheel barrows and perhaps some shade cloth, and other necessities. 

Lets keep our fingers crossed.

PS. We should start planting some spring vegetables. 

Joan is returning from California soon, so we should plan a garden meeting, 

say Saturday, April 9th at 10 am AM? or the week following?

In other news, not about the Community Garden or gardening but about the other side of iCreate, the call for submissions for the memorial poetry anthology project is, pending just a bit more feedback, ready to roll on schedule, April 1st, the first day of National Poetry Month. More, much more on that and the month itself in separate posts... a month of poetics-appropriate festivities, rollicking versification and general merry-making planned at both Poets and Writers Picnic locations, in the blogosphere and on Facebook, (none IRL or, as far as I know, recognized by the MMAC poetry/writing subcommittee).

We interrupt this short update on and commercial for poetry to return to our gardening news....

Grow Your Own – Time To Start Digging! Posted: 30 Mar 2011 07:14 AM PDT by John Weckerle Well, it's past time to start digging, at least for some of us, and digging we have done – largely sponge pits for new and existing trees and shrubs, but we've also taken some time to start prepping the beds for this year's crop.  With luck and time, we'll be adding new beds this year, and maybe even experimenting with some new varieties and soil mixtures. As we approach the season, we thought we'd share a few resources that might be useful to our readers in getting (and keeping) the ball rolling  (go to John's "Grow Your Own" post for the rest ~ a hint, more good Extension resources; while there check out other articles in the gardening category and admire the pictures) Happy tilling!

#Mountainair Community Garden updates

Correction to last iCreate post: Tomas not Scott as incorrectly reported is writing the the Community Garden application for the Scotts (no doubt where the 'Scott' came from) Miracle-Gro Community Gardens and Open Spaces grant that I pointed them to (a hint to keep me posted). We have no idea how tight the competition will be, but the grant requirements look like a good fit.

And now back to the garden... 

Recently, Tomas Wolff (assistant garden manager and Joan Embree stand in but not dressing the part) and other Community Gardeners have been occupied with getting the new art center ready for use ~ but not before starting early seedlings in the Mojave Rose greenhouse to have a selection, including popular herbs and tomato varieties, ready to sell at the May 5 opening of the new Mountainair Farm & Garden Market.  

Reports have been scant but seedlings are coming along nicely and a good selection will be available for opening day. Some may also be available for purchase directly from the Community Garden on workdays. I'll keep you posted... if the gardeners do the same for me (and will remind them if they don't).

March Garden Update from Tomas (should be more, my next step will have to be writing exciting fictional updates to post):

March 12: The tomatoes are popping out all over. I also planted 25 bell peppers and have them over at my house where I can put them on a heating pad. There are some more cups available, but we are running out of planting soil. I'll try to get some this weekend, so we can plant more peppers and spices and seedlings for our own community garden, perhaps during this coming week. We probably have about 250+ seedlings planted so far.

---

More information about the Scotts Miracle-Gro Grant ~

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company Offers Grants for Community Gardens and Green Spaces: World's Largest Lawn and Garden Company Launches Program Helping Communities to Cultivate a Green Thumb   

The goal: to plant 1,000 gardens and green spaces across the U.S., Canada and Europe by 2018. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company wants to make that happen and launched a new program called GRO1000, offering $1,500 grants to deserving communities and organizations in the hopes it will get people involved in creating more community gardens and green spaces where they call home. 

"Something happens when communities grow and learn together," said Jim King, ScottsMiracle-Gro's senior vice president of corporate affairs. "People develop a sense of pride and accomplishment when they get involved in cleaning up their neighborhoods, growing flowers, or cultivating their own healthy local food, and we want to help them get the job done." 

Communities interested in pursuing 2011 GRO1000 grassroots grants can apply online by March 31, 2011. Projects should include the involvement of neighborhood residents and foster a sense of community spirit.

This year's crop of ScottsMiracle-Gro's community gardens is already underway. On March 1, teachers, parents and students at Morning Star School in Tampa, FL, got their hands dirty planting edible and learning gardens on the school's campus. 

Throughout 2011, Scotts Miracle-Gro and its partners: Keep America Beautiful, Plant A Row for the Hungry, Garden Writers Association, the National Gardening Association and Franklin Park Conservatory will establish gardens and green spaces in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York, Ontario, Canada and Lyon, France. 

Carol Ledbetter

 Program Administrator, Plant A Row for the Hungry
5281 Holly Springs Dr.~ Douglasville, GA 30135
Tel/Fax: 877.GWAA.PAR, E-mail: par@gardenwriters.org
PAR is a public service campaign of the Garden Writers Association Foundation