What difference does it make?

I wander around the Welcome Table Kitchen Garden  Park and make a mental note of how much work there is to do, what can and cant wait. What can I do today that will make the biggest difference?  Occasionally I make myself remember where we started and appreciate the beauty of a plant or a bed or a view or enjoy sitting on the deck or reorganize the shed a little. I keep thinking I will start weighing the produce that leaves the park with neighbors or with volunteers for the food pantry at the Welcome Table Community Center but I just can't seem to get started measuring the parks produce by the pound even though I know it will help with grant writing.  I measure the difference we make by counting cars that slow down so the driver can wave and yell "thank you"  or " I love your garden" or " I love what you are doing"  Counting double are the cars that pull over so the driver can get out walk up to the fence and ask about the garden.  If I can get them to come in look around understand this is a community garden with family beds and share beds and leave with at least a taste of something that counts even more.  The biggest difference the park makes is more intangible.  Will the children who garden with us have a better life because of  their time in the garden?  Will anyone who tastes the herbs and ripe tomatoes change how they cook and how they eat enough to make a difference in their longevity or energy? What about the students doing their volunteer time in the garden and the community service volunteers who sullenly or eagerly have worked in the park, what have they learned? How many gardeners will meet and become new friends? I expect as more neighbors plant family beds and our fruit trees are producing fruit to share we will more and more measure the increase in access to healthy food.  For now I think our biggest impact is that people don't avert their gaze any more when passing this corner, they don't feel discouraged by debris and weeds, they see neighbors gardening and a steady improvement in a block near home that was once simply a mess. Spirits are lifted.  That is our greatest difference.

 

 

 

 

 

Fall Is A New Beginning

I am back again, trying to blog.  Everyone else in my family "has to" write.  Not me, if someone else will say or write it I am happy to sit back and let them.  But garden news in the Turley North Tulsa area must be covered!!!  The Garden Park at 6005 N Johnstown still has that "oh my you have a lot of work to do" look to it for newcomers and "wow you have accomplished a lot" for folks who saw the before pictures and or reality. I hope to entice more neighbors to garden with us, (nothing is better than fresh ripe organic food) and also to use the park as a place to play picnic celebrate relax commune with nature....what have I left out?  The bottom line is it is time to plan and plant your fall garden, let me know if you need seeds I have quite a variety to share.

Thanks to OU social work students for the before video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhgFKD6_i_w



and for a fall garden guide

http://osufacts.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1114/HLA-6009web.pdf

Let's begin at the ending....

As I walked into Bustani Plant Farm on my annual spring pilgrimage to find a new native plant for my prairie bed,the owner Steve Owen was potting up some plants and discussing inventory with an assistant. He looked up saw me and immediately looked very concerned. Wow, “what expression do I have on my face?” I wondered! I quickly gave him my best attempt at a smile and explained that last year I bought plants for Cherokee Elementary School and due to the school closing this year I would not be buying plants for Cherokee. I complimented him on some plants I had seen on the way in, made a weak joke and he was reassured and I went back to my shopping.

Grief is not usual at a garden center even though gardens are temporary art. I know gardens never last. I could be casting a statue in bronze or carving marble but I am not, I am a gardener. “My” art is very momentary. A perfect bloom in the perfect light with just the right butterfly landing for a moment, only with a camera can you come close to capturing that moment. But you won’t capture the wind, the bird song in the background, the sun on your shoulders, the fellowship with other gardeners that you find at Cherokee. Gardening is more like a symphony with nature as the conductor, the best I can hope for is first chair. But losing the Cherokee garden is like breaking up the symphony and shutting down the concert hall. I hope we can all continue to enjoy Cherokees garden regardless of what happens next on the site. Like a garden version of a musicians jam session. No matter who uses the building or if it is empty we should hope to be on the grounds watching birds and butterflies, growing food and picnicking. This will keep down despair which will keep down vandalism which will increase the odds that someone will want to put the building to good use and even keep up the gardens.

For now I hope neighbors and former students and those taking advantage of the summer feeding program (which will be at Cherokee again this summer from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm June 8 to August 3rd)will continue to grow food in the vegetable area behind the school. For now we have decided to use the Muhammad Ali Peace Garden materials we received as a grant to start a garden at the Community Center across the street from Cherokee (5920 North Owasso) where I hope students from Cherokee and Greeley and other schools will join us growing food. Many of the plants from this grant will be in the garden at Cherokee but the sign and the presence of the Peace Garden Spirit will also be at the center since it feels like the most “permanent” place right now. It seems unlikely that Greeley will be open for more than one more year. When it seems the elementary students have settled into a "permanent" school we can consider moving the Peace Garden materials (2 raised beds and tools and a sign) at that time.

Building community is also an impermanent ever changing art and a community garden can be a good tool. I hope we can continue to use the Cherokee grounds as a place for family friends and neighbors to gather and celebrate community. I hope the entry garden at Obrien Park Recreation Center will become more and more educational. I hope our Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park and orchard at 60th and Johnstown will be a bridge for all the neighborhoods surrounding it so they can grow food and community. I hope all the schools can develop a garden as a place to enjoy nature and our neighbors and I hope volunteers from Let Turley Bloom and A Third Place Community Foundation will continue to help students and their families grow food beauty and community together anywhere we can.

Sadly Cherokee and many other Tulsa schools are now closed but happily our community still has many opportunities to help our students and their neighborhoods. I propose this blog widen its scope and become a TNT garden blog for the Tulsa North Turley area. Please email me with garden news and blog ideas at bjashing@aol.com
Thank you all for all you do!

http//www.bustaniplantfarm.com/natives.html?alpha_filter_id=abc&sort=2a

http//www.mypeacegarden.com/

Sunscreen is for old people! So said my young assistants so I slathered on as much SPF 70 as I could and still turned a little pink but it was worth it to hang out with Cherokee’s fabulous students families faculty principal and Big Event volunteers. We tidied up the flower beds mulched the trees and planted cone flowers and sunflowers to feed birds and butterflies. We had the garden tilled to make room to plant corn squash and beans (the 3 sisters) or other crops that take a lot of space and weeded the raised beds so we can plant tomatoes peppers and other warm season crops. We added strawberries to the back yard of our playhouse of gardening and shared lunch in the courtyard. And as the crew from Channel 2 asked, we contemplated why. Why do we have a school garden? Obviously a vegetable garden can feed students all summer who rely on subsidized breakfast and lunch during the school year along with backpacks of food to help them get through the weekend. Even students with plenty of access to food will benefit from the added nutritional value of fresh organic produce. We all benefit from the community aspects of a community garden especially one that will be as diverse as Cherokee’s student body where we can swap recipes and learn to grow food endemic to another culture. Study after study shows that children are calmer less angry less depressed more healthy when involved with nature. That is reason enough to have bird and butterfly friendly plantings but the science and math we can learn and the color wheel lessons from these plantings are also worth the effort. Perseverance when weather does not cooperate, how to work out a disagreement about what to plant where, enjoying each other’s cultural differences, learning to look at things from a neighbors or butterflies or birds point of view, learning the history of plants…lessons in the garden never stop! McLain High School has reopened its green house and Cherokee could be the perfect feeder school for McLain. Another garden nearby (5 blocks away also a Cherokee partner) is competing to win an orchard and hoping to partner with McLain as it gets ready to set up vegetable beds. This makes the Cherokee area an ideal partner for the horticultural program at McLain. Why have a school garden work party when the school is expected to close on all three proposed plans? Obviously the plans are not final and I must wonder if we made it clear to the board that Cherokee is a school with passionate volunteers and a very productive outdoor classroom. We won a grant from the Muhammad Ali Peace garden, our bird banquet garden has markedly increased our bird population and I hope the students will apply for an Audubon grant next fall. As I arrived at the school Friday (to speak to the students about our Saturday work party) I paused with an arriving student to contemplate teaching the mockingbird in a tree near the entrance a new song. We planted a milkweed bed last fall and this coming fall will be the students first chance to watch the Monarch lifecycle in the school yard. I hope the students will file for designation as a Monarch Waystation. The Boy Scouts from troop one planted trees to celebrate their 100th anniversary in our bird banquet area last fall and we promised to care for them in their first hot summer and I will not let them down. The garden is in motion and should not stop. Books students desks and teachers can be moved to another school, this outdoor classroom cannot be moved. We can start another garden at another school but it will take time to grow in and attract wildlife and become part of the culture of the school............ An empty building in our community will grow despair and spark vandalism. A thriving garden will grow food soul and community. I vote for community. http://www.cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=946 .......... Also, Please go to this website below daily starting April 15th 2011 to vote for our garden near Cherokee School(A Third Place Community Foundation, The Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park 6005 North Johnstown) to win an orchard! http://www.communitiestakeroot.com/Plant/Index

yes we will garden!

Some of you may be wondering if we will still be working in the Cherokee garden this weekend considering that Cherokee is listed as closing on all 3 initial plans put out by the Operation Schoolhouse task force. The short answer is YES! I expect our big day to work on Cherokee will be Saturday,April 9th 2011. We will also be picking up trash around town and weeding the bed at the Welcome To Turley sign during the weekend of April 8th 9th and 10th. The long answer is I will be meeting with Cherokee teachers Monday to discuss the garden/outdoor classroom and with students Friday to discuss the outdoor classroom as agreed upon before the plans were revealed. Because our outdoor classroom (every inch of the school grounds!) is relatively new the school board has not had time to realize what an asset it is and it is up to us to make this clear. Teachers students and books can be moved from building to building but the garden is impossible to truly move and slow to recreate at a new site. This garden approach to the school landscape also makes Cherokee an ideal feeder school for McLain High School where the horticulture program and greenhouse have been revived. This was the first winter for our bird banquet and even though only one mockingbird eyed me warily from the roof the day we hung the bird feeder several birds of several species can be found eagerly looking on when you stop by now to fill the feeders. Last summer we fed the community with radishes tomatoes and other crops the students started in the vegetable garden and this summer will be the first season to watch the life cycle of the Monarch and other butterflies in the milkweed and nectar gardens we planted last fall. The trees the boy scouts from troop one planted last fall seem to have made it through the winter and are ready to provide nesting sites and food for wildlife. The foundation plantings will be lovely and I am ready to add groundcover plants to make care of the foundation plantings easier. I have showy evening primrose plants and blue fescue seeds and would welcome donations of sedum or native groundcovers to plant this weekend at the base of the shrubs in front of the school. We also have a mountain of mulch to move, weeding and planting and tidying up in all areas and I had hoped to extend the prairie this year and add hummingbird friendly plants to the south fence. The surviving boxwood in the courtyard needs to be shaped, I picture it carved into a bookworm. We also have Star of Texas Hibiscus seeds to share. So yes we will have our annual spring garden work festival and continue to celebrate the Cherokee Elementary School Outdoor Classroom. If we can effectively articulate what an asset this school is to the Tulsa Public School system, I will see you at our fall garden party as well! http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kwgs/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1782856/Local..and..Regional/Project.School.House.The.Turley.Impact

Wish List

WISH LIST FOR CHEROKEE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GARDEN

Our next big garden work party will be Friday Saturday and Sunday April 8 9 and 10,2011. Times to be announced or let us know when you can work and what you can do. If you see this post after those dates be assured we will still need your help just call 9186913223 for details. As always we are ready to do whatever the teachers and students need us to do!

In the Bird banquet area south of the school
Plant a cone flower bed for finches and or a hummingbird bed or other bed to attract a particular bird butterfly etc
Plant native wildlife friendly vines (such as native honeysuckle) on the south fence (behind the trees on the ridge south of the school)
Add birdhouses baths and feeders to the garden
Write grants to buy benches plants seeds tools binoculars and field guides etc
Mulch the bird feeder area to minimize mowing around the feeders and trees and benches
Build a bird feeder pavilion to house several types of feeders, extra feed, water etc
Strip turf, dig new beds for coneflowers sunflowers and hummingbird plants. Let Turley Bloom can help with seeds.
Add benches for birdwatchers.
Cut out bird shapes and paint or supervise students painting them then mount them on the south facing wall as an outdoor field guide, repeat with butterflies and flowers. See the barn behind the county extension office for an example.

In the Nectar and color garden at the southwest corner of the school
Build and install a strong trellis with a seat on the south west corner of the building so the wisteria can climb it and students can watch butterflies from the seat
Add painted wooden butterfly cut outs to the walls for an outdoor field guide (see above under bird banquet)

In the Front foundation plantings
Plant groundcovers under the shrubs along the front of the school preferably low maintenance, native, wildlife friendly plants that will choke out weeds. Let us know what plants you can donate or ask us what plants we can supply.

In theVegetable garden
Prepare the fruit and vegetable area for spring planting, generally tidying up.
Also the vegetable area could use soaker hoses laid out in a user friendly manner, a “faucet” set up so it is easy to run a hose to the faucet on the building and easy to loop the hose on a hose holder inside the garden when not stretched out to the faucet
Compost bins
Tool storage shed
Prepare more vegetable beds either raised beds or lasagna gardening
Greenhouse and or potting bench as part of the tool shed
Prune overhanging branches
Cover concrete area with a wooden table
Repair and or build benches trellises birdhouses

General Help we can use in the Cherokee Elementary School garden
Write or purchase a curriculum
Put together a book of projects such as how to build a bird house etc.
Help with signage including a map of a self guided tour of the landscape and plant naming signs
Organize and lead a wildlife census on the school property and or Audubon Christmas bird count, backyard bird count, butterfly count etc
Lead garden celebrations such as cookouts, harvest festivals, wildlife celebrations, garden tours, plant sales, seed swaps and propagation days
Prepare a bed and seed more of the prairie garden (north of the school east of the courtyard)

Adopt a bed
Let us know which area of the Cherokee garden you or your family or organization would like to adopt to care for this summer or indefinitely

Throughout the garden
Add edging and mulch for existing beds. Edging can be just digging a trench and weeding along or around a bed or adding a metal wood or other type barrier to keep weeds out.

A FEAST FOR THE EYES

All of my art is subconscious, from tiling the bathroom to the Cherokee garden a theme my subconscious has been working on will gradually emerge. As I was sorting my photos of Cherokee and pulling in other photos to supplement where something has not yet happened at Cherokee that I expect to happen this summer I realized it is all about food.

I started with the bird banquet, wanting to plant 88 sunflowers in honor of a friends’ 88th birthday and inspired by her daughters donation of $88 to the Welcome Table Community Center and gardens. I found photos of cone flowers we can put in a bed for seed eating birds like goldfinches near the bird feeders. I organized photos of Boy Scout Troop one planting trees to celebrate their one hundredth anniversary thinking about how many animals eat acorns and other food provided by the trees they planted. I found photos of milkweed to show what will grow where we planted swamp milkweed plants and other milkweed seeds last fall and how monarchs will use the plants during their amazing migration. I moved on around the corner to show the color garden which holds a lot of nectar plants to fuel the butterflies for flight then on to the vegetable garden where we grow food for ourselves.

Beauty is food for the spirit. Watching a caterpillar consume “your” plant and transform into a butterfly is food for compassion and generosity. Watching a beautiful sunflower brown and droop its head in the fall then feed birds all winter feeds our ability to see beauty in the entire cycle of life not just the first flush of bloom. Leaving the seed heads of cone flowers in the garden all winter instead of “tidying up” the garden feeds our ability to look at things from someone elses point of view. Is it a mess or is it lunch? Watching a mockingbird mock and a blue jay scold and a hummingbird dart feeds our sense of wonder at the diversity of life and surely grows our curiosity.

Starting plants from the garden to share with others (with seeds or cuttings or divisions) can feed the students sense of their own ability to give, to make a difference, to be a citizen of their neighborhood.

In our own vegetable garden at Cherokee integrated pest management causes us to provide a home for the toads and frogs we find there so they can eat some of the insects that may eat some of our human food. Charity asks us to donate 10% of our produce to the food pantry or a community cook- out and feed our neighbors. The earth asks us to feed back to the soil what we take in the form of last year’s tomato vine and this year’s cucumber peel. The earth will be hungry if all we do in our vegetable garden is take and not give back, the soil will become depleted and it will be harder and harder for us to feed ourselves if we don’t feed our soil. It is all about food! Feed your own soul, body family and community spirit.

Come garden with us! Our big weekend will be April 8, 9, 10 when we will be gardening all over our area; we need folks to come for as long as they can to help and learn and share. Come see all the opportunities we have for you to grow food for yourself and your family. Free food will be provided for volunteers. Also check us out on Saturdays; call 9186913223 to find out where and when we will be at Cherokee or the Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park or the Welcome Table Community Center or our other sites here in far north Tulsa and Turley. Let us know if your neighborhood needs some plants or wants to start a “Let it bloom” organization, Let Turley Bloom will help get you started. Check back here for more to come!

http://beyondthefarm.org/growing/check-out-our-video/

winter!

It is winter. I am more cold tolerant than I used to be but still I have no patience for it being dark when I go to work and dark when I get home. Gardening in the cold and in the dark? Not gardening? Well, I can’t not garden! So it is time to sit down with the seed catalogues, maybe do some germination tests on old seeds to see if I need new seeds, and if daylight allows do some fall chores I just didn’t get around to. Like seeding the prairie! Our prairie bed (north of the art room east of the courtyard) is gradually being enlarged and gradually filling in, soon it will be a bird and butterfly magnet. South of Oklahoma it is definitely best to plant wildflower seeds in fall, north of us in spring but here, in the middle? I say plant native seeds when the native plants would plant native seeds. Most fell to the ground or blew in the wind around November but I still have many beautiful seed heads hanging on in “cold storage” in my garden. Some will be eaten by birds some will fall into dense plantings or onto rocks or be combed out of my dogs fur and some will find their way to fertile soil, that is why plants make so many seeds! But Sunday afternoon as it started to snow I knew it was time to seed the prairie, at least a little bit! With the cold wind biting my cheeks and my sensible dog snug in the car (giving me her best you must be out of your mind look) I raked bare bits of soil loose and scattered seeds of big bluestem ( Andropogon gerardii) little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) cone flower (Echinacea purpurea) and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) along with a prairie wildflower mix from Native American Seeds, (a very educational seed catalogue) raking them in, walking on them and trusting the snow to cover them with a gentle blanket that will eventually melt and wash them snug against the soil. Here’s to spring!

“Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that they bend under the load . This is the real spring; the future is not in front of us, for it is here already in the shape of a germ; already it is with us; and what is not with us will not be even in the future... We don’t know the future because it is within us. Sometimes we seem to smell of decay, encumbered by the faded remains of the past; but if only we could see how many fat and white shoots are pushing forward in the old tilled soil…if we could only see that secret swarming of the future within us we should say that our melancholy and distrust is silly and absurd, and that the best thing of all is to be a living man- that is a man who grows.“ Karel Capek in “The Gardeners Year” originally published in Prague in 1929, always a good winter read!

http://www.seedsource.com/catalog/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=1814

More Trees!

We have much to be thankful for in the Cherokee garden as Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Just around the corner from our color bed our future Monarch waystation has been seeded and planted with milkweed and our bird feeders are filled (except the yellow one I couldnt get it open, someone with a stronger grip might try) and the scouts from Troop one from First Presbyterian Church have planted 2 River Birch a Live Oak a Redbud and a cottonless Cottonwood, the latter with much heavy equipment! It was great fun to watch them work. These scouts obviously have great leaders and it was wonderful to watch them interact with mutual respect and encouragement as they learned about planting trees and community service. We were lucky to be a part of the 100th anniversary celebration of First Presbyterian and troop one which they celebrated by planting 100 trees from Up With Trees at schools around town. Also the Warren foundation donated the big Cottonwood which will provide a shady spot next summer. This area south of the school should become a haven for bird watchers so first it must become a haven for birds. The trees will provide shelter and food and a place for birds to perch as they take turns at the feeders. The bird seed is in an ice chest behind a shrub and help keeping the feeders full is welcomed. Also I recently planted a deciduous holly which provides food in late winter when birds are most desperate, when most seeds and berries are already gone and insects are not yet plentiful. I didnt do much bird watching while working on the bird garden but I did notice 2 mockingbirds watching me! I wonder if they recognized the birdseed bags or the feeders I was carrying, they seemed intent on watching me!
Benches, a cone flower bed for finches and a bed of hummingbird plants would be great additions to this area. Lets plan on participating in the Audubon Society bird counts in the future as well as doing our own wildlife surveys.

http://www.troop1tulsa.com
http://birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count
http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/kids

Insect Use Not Damage!

You may have noticed a new bed along the south wall of the school. We had a turf stripper for our neighborly task of installing an entry garden at Horace Greeley Elementary School and it seemed a shame to take it back without taking a few minutes to strip turf from a new bed around the corner from our colorful nectar garden. After reading Dr. Tallamy's book "Bringing Nature Home" I will never consider insect use of a plant as damage. Is it lettuce damage when I have a salad? Well of course it is but I would never think of it that way! And when the monarch caterpillars strip my swamp milkweed it does look quite messy but the beauty of the parent butterflies sipping nectar at the same milkweed weeks earlier more than makes up for the mess. And if I am lucky I will get to watch a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis, again payback for putting up with "insect damage". That is why we are dedicating a not so public space along the side of the school to insect use. These plants will be beautiful and common milkweed has a wonderful scent but eventually these plants will be chewed up by monarch caterpillars. Thus our new lesson, how to see the beauty in insects using "our" plants next to "our" school to complete their beautiful and informative life cycle. Long before any building was on this land monarchs and milkweeds were at home here, let's invite them back. Let's have a Monarch Waystation Garden!
https://shop.monarchwatch.org/certificate/waystationcert.aspx

Quiet Time in the Garden

Last time I was in the garden with children painting bird houses and making a toad abode. We did a little math, learned the word abode and talked about what toads and frogs need and why we need toads and frogs. This time I was alone in the garden and very aware that I needed to garden slowly and quietly instead of my usual “let’s get a lot done today” style. I added a lobelia cardinalis and a fern to the west side of the toad abode to provide more shade for the tadpoles and gave the whole area a long slow shower with the hose adding just a little water to the toad abode because I didn’t want to add too much chlorine. I watched a pair of beetles on the log we added to make it easier for frogs and toads to get in and out of the toad abode. I watched the tadpoles wriggle near the edge of the abode catching tiny things to eat and caught a glimpse of a half inch 4 legged frog! The first tadpole I have seen with all four legs ready to take its place in our garden! I added a couple more tomatos and realized our well mulched playhouse was actually too wet in spite of the dry weather. Don’t forget to put a finger in the soil before watering, the mulch may be working better than you expected and a plant can wilt from too much water as well as too little. So let’s learn math, vocabulary, integrated pest management, gardening for wildlife and how to sit quietly observe and appreciate all that is in our garden. Meditation, our next lesson?

Art In The Garden

We had a wonderful time this morning painting gourds to use for toad abodes and birdhouses and planting our toad abode. The tadpoles have been transferred with many cool damp places to hide under logs gourds and stones around their new toad abode,ready for when they hop out. Cattails and horsetail are planted in the garden tote we used for a pond and a water loving canna is planted southwest of the tote for evening shade with a fern to the east. More plants will be added for shade and hiding places for frogs and toads.

We still need more signs painted, we did paint a bright blue chalkboard we can use to announce future events so keep your eyes open and feel free to join us. We also put up our prairie sign so folks will know something grand is coming, I am afraid it won't look like much for a year or two but don't mow it, be patient!

The Tallamy Toad Tote

The Dr. Doug Tallamy Toad Tote

One minute into Dr. Tallamys talk at the Tulsa garden center (Thursday August 19th 2010) and I was picturing our tadpoles, turning into tiny toads or frogs leaping from the wheel barrow and landing… where? And can they jump that far when so tiny?

I know from my own yard that a small body of water can be greatly appreciated by frogs and toads; just an area where I water pots every day is populated with the hoppers. When I placed a plastic garden tote in the ground in my lawn, no plantings, nothing but a bucket of water in the ground I came home the next day to find a frog floating in it! How desperate does an amphibian have to be to move into a bucket or wheel barrow?

Dr Tallamy tells of moving into a new subdivision at age 9 and becoming determined to watch the tadpoles next door turn into toads which he did just minutes before the bulldozer showed up to turn the toad abode into a human home! See the second link below for more of his story.

Of course the home could have been built with a wetland intact (see the first link for why) but even now we just don’t think about giving back some of our yard to those who lived there before we built our home. But my task was clear, give the toads a chance to hop out of a ground level “pond” not a 3 foot high wheelbarrow and leave a little wetland available for them to return to and in exchange they will eat bugs in our vegetable garden.

That’s why I bought the Tallamy Toad Tote! A green plastic 20 gallon garden tote to bury near the wheel barrow and transfer the toads into and why one of our garden art projects (Saturday August 28 2010 8 am to noon) will be to build toad abodes. These can be as simple as a hollow log or a stone with space to creep under or as elaborate as a painted gourd or upside down flower pot with an opening to hop into covering a damp piece of earth. We just water the toads when we water the garden.

Join us Saturday for our art in the garden event and to celebrate our toads with our toad abodes. If you have something we can work into a project (wind chime, mosaic, sign etc.) bring it or just show up we have plenty of projects you can help with.

www.bringingnaturehome.net/native-gardening/gardening-for-life


http://books.google.com/books?id=JA45XbUm48gC&lpg=PP1&dq=douglas+tallamy+bringing+nature+home&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false

It Really Ought To Rain!

My dog Lizzie was not going to go out this morning no matter how much I insisted. It was going to rain! I haven't checked the weather for predictions of rain since I got my Lizzie, she is much more accurate. So the thunder in the distance was not just taunting me, it would rain. So there I was in a cool breeze listening to louder and louder thunder (did i mention the cool breeze?) planting Kentucky Wonder and Royal Burgandy beans, peas, and cucumbers on our garden playhouse (PHROG). As I was scattering radish seeds around the edge of the planting it started to rain. Perfect timing! Unfortunately by 9:30 Lizzie was happy to go outside. For a moment though, I thought I saw St Fiacre smile.

http://www.pittsburgpostgazette.com/garden/20001223clips4.asp

PHROG

Almost finished with what so far we are calling the Play House Re-creating Our Garden or Play House Re-creating Organic Gardens or People Helping Real Organic Goodies or....Ideas? We started with PHOG Playhouse of Gardening but I just love the PHROG or frog motif!

Now that we have photos those who couldn’t picture one cattle panel standing like an arbor and one lying down as a back wall connected with a ceiling of twine can see what I had in mind. The floor is a layer of newspaper then landscape fabric then cardboard then mulch. The house is great for easy harvesting; you can stand or sit in the shade inside the house for much of your harvesting. It also serves as a magnet for young children so their parents can garden while toddlers are enjoying their house. The front yard of the playhouse is landscaped with 2 blueberry bushes planted in amended soil to accommodate their need for an acid ph. Tomatoes (heat tolerant varieties donated by Duck Creek Farms) have been planted on the front arbor and tomorrow or as soon as I cool off I will plant cucumbers and beans on the back wall. Blackberries are planted on the fence nearby and I hope to add strawberries next spring. The weather is cooling off! I didn’t break a sweat till well after 11am and I was soaked last weekend by 8am!
We will need to replenish the mulch periodically to continue to smother weeds and of course replant our annual vineing food crops but this structure should give our students great gardening opportunities for many years.
I have also installed a soaker hose and am trying to make watering easier.
Don’t forget we will be doing garden art and garden chores on Saturday August 28 from 8-10 am and we need volunteers in many areas, let us know how you want to participate.
I will try to post pictures occasionally so you can see our house walls and roof fill in! Happy gardening everyone.

Welcome to Duck Creek Farms - growing quality tomato and bedding plants for over 30 years.

Every School A Garden, Every Child a Gardener: Come Garden Saturdays Aug. 14 and 28 as we make a Vegetable Garden Playhouse at Cherokee

Saturdays August 14th and 28th from 8-10am I will be in the garden at Cherokee Elementary School (6001 North Peoria) getting it ready for back to school and would welcome your help input curiosity and company as we get ready for the fall semester.

The first Saturday I hope to install a vegetable garden playhouse. It will be made of cattle panels set up as a trellis you can walk into, covered with vining crops. One cattle panel will stand as an arbor we can walk under and one will lay down as a back wall with garden twine making a roof. We can lasagna garden this area as an example of this technique that can turn a weedy turf into a productive garden in one season.

The second Saturday let's do an art in the garden project. Bring broken beautiful things from around the house we can put together into art for our garden, a single earing, left over tile, broken plate or coffee cup, anything weather proof and we will put it into a mosaic, wind chime, or other garden sculpture.

Want to work at other times? Feel free to stop by and pull bermuda grass from the mulch as you enjoy the plants. Also I am still looking for a topiary artist and carpenter! Feel free to call if you have any questions or would like to adopt a bed or take on a special project. With enough volunteers the children can count on finding a mentor in the garden most weekends and evenings. Thanks to all who have and who will help our students and to Ms Tell Ms Gault and all the faculty and staff at Cherokee who have been so encouraging.

Serendipity?

There are many lessons in the garden; one is not to leave the wheelbarrow sitting where it can collect rainwater, you will only harvest mosquitoes! So as I was thinking “I need to bring my wheelbarrow up here” I rounded the storage shed and saw a wheel barrow! “I’ll use that” I thought, then realized it was full of water which made me full of anxiety! Sure I would find mosquito larvae wiggling about I peered in, wondering if I had the strength after a long day of gardening to dump out all that water. “But those are tadpoles!” It looked like 3 different stages of development were represented so more than one frog found our little metal wetland. Now instead of dumping it out I wonder every day “does the wheelbarrow need more water?”

Is this a chance to increase our vocabulary? Serendipity? Flabbergasted? Luck? Or learn about the web of interdependence, isn’t it great the tadpoles eat mosquito larvae? What is a larva (what are larvae) anyway? Sharpen powers of observation drawing the tadpoles? Write a poem? Research beneficials in the garden and decide if we want frogs? Have a philosophical debate about protecting the frogs versus letting nature take its course and if it rains they live if the wheelbarrow dries out they die, versus dumping the whole thing and using the wheelbarrow just because I need a wheel barrow! (eminent domain?)

Or simply take a breath smile and know biophilia is the real reason you garden even if you have never seen the word or heard of E.O. Wilson.

Maybe I’ll dig a little pond some day!

Most children have a bug period, and I never grew out of mine.
Edward O. Wilson, Naturalist

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1984, p. 22

I have argued in this book that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.
Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1984, p. 139

Every year I am determined to start a fall garden, it's just so easy to let all of springs efforts burn to a crisp while sitting under the air conditioner but then as fall cools off and you survey what could have been a great crop of fall veges regret sets in! So get out there in the "cool" of early morning and evening or work in short spurts if you must work in the heat and keep those tomatoes watered and picked and start your fall crops! You should have some sort of watering system that just requires you to turn on the faucet and your drip hoses will do the rest. August will require water and you won't want to stay out in the heat too long so make basic tasks like watering easy with drip hoses and mulch. Newspaper, straw, grass clippings and mulch from the green waste site on 56th street north (east of Mingo west of highway 169) all help keep the soil cool and moist. As fall sets in we will want your bags of leaves for Cherokees vegetable garden. We might also compost right in the beds to some degree, we do need more organic matter to help our soil retain moisture better and increase fertility.

I have cleaned out one bed at Cherokee and planted squash and beans while using the lettuce which had gone to seed as part of the mulch. I would love to have some volunteers to help keep the tomatoes going so the students can come back to school and find a beautiful crop of yellow pear tomatoes, the plants will stop producing if we don't keep them picked and watered. Obviously your reward for weeding and watering can be handful of tomatoes!

OSU extension is a great source of gardening information, they should be on your favorites list!
http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1114/HLA-6009web.pdf

Inventory, July 11, 2010

Just took a quick tour of the grounds at Cherokee to help focus our efforts in this hot time of year, hoping to have something to show for our efforts when school is back in session.

vegetables
The volunteer who was going to lead the vegetable garden efforts has not been able to be as active as she hoped so we would welcome help in the vegetable garden. Produce can be donated to the food pantry or handed out when we are giving out free lunches this summer or eaten by the volunteers and their families. We had some corn kohlrabi and tomatos to feed some of our volunteers at lunch today at A Third Place Community Center. We would love to see several Cherokee School families eating out of this garden. Fall planting is a great idea in Oklahoma, we can extend our gardening season. Right now the grass needs mowing and we need to mulch around the fence to keep grass from creeping under and perhaps use the lasagna gardening technique to smother grass and weeds inside the fence. This can be done by covering the ground with a thick layer of newspaper (10-12 sheets or so) then topping that with soil for planting or mulch for paths. I saw 4 squash or similar plants (planted by students before school was out) that are growing into what is taller and taller grass, we need to mulch this area so the squash wont accidentally be mowed.

front beds
the front beds are looking great, recently weeded and mulched but the grass is tall and setting seed which I am afraid will blow into the beds when the area is mowed. Considering the budget crunch it would be great if a volunteer could at least mow a perimeter around the beds in front. We are also looking for a volunteer per bed so we each have a specified area to call our own.

south garden, the bird banquet
the trees planted near the bird feeder south of the school will be a pain to mow around, if we could mow this area very short then mulch and keep filling in with shrubs and trees till its shady enough to have fewer weeds that would be great, we also need benches to help with birdwatching classes.

numbers
while taking the tour i finally got around to counting. We have planted around 38 trees and 52 shrubs. Dont make me count the daffodils perennials seeds vegetables groundcovers....as soon as it is cool enough we will resume filling in the flower beds and planting groundcovers under the shrubs, my goal is thick enough plantings to disccourage weeds.

An Introduction to Lasagna Gardening

J C Raulston and the Leyland cypress

I chose a Leyland cypress to screen a downspout from view not just because it was on sale but so we can talk about J C Raulston when we are in the garden and teach students words like ubiquitous and irony and the importance of diversity. How ironic that one of his introductions became ubiquitous! This tall narrow tree (Cuprocyparis leylandii) has been used commonly as a screen mainly due to its introduction as a screen at the arboretum Raulston established on the campus at North Carolina state university in 1976. Later the arboretum would be renamed the J. C. Raulston Arboretum. He realized we used the same plants over and over again and many fascinating plants were not available at nurseries. At the North Carolina State University Arboretum that this Oklahoma native (OSU graduate) was directing he was able to introduce many new plants to the nursery trade and therefore to gardeners. He allowed nursery owners to take cuttings from any of the arboretums plants and encouraged propagation of many plants that were not available to the home gardener. The irony is that the Leyland cypress was quickly overused and due to that was often destroyed by diseases that found it easy to move from tree to tree. But Dr. Raulston who kept introducing new plants until he died in a car accident at age 56 had other plants to suggest by the time the Leyland cypress became so common that disease could spread easily through the community. His generosity energy and passion for diversity are why we can have so many different plants available at local nurseries today.


JC Raulston Arboretum - J. C. Raulston