Urban Earth Co-op Blog

Watch Madeline enjoy our homegrown wheatgrass!

Take a look at Madeline enjoying our homegrown wheatgrass!

The term "guerrilla" may bring to mind a small band of armed soldiers, moving in the dead of night on a stealth mission. In the case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are planters, the weapons are shovels, and the mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing of beauty. Once an environmentalist's nonviolent direct action for inner-city renewal, this movement is spreading to all types of people in cities around the world. These modern-day Johnny Appleseeds perform random acts of gardening, often without permission. Typical targets are vacant lots, railway land, underused public squares, and back alleys. The concept is simple, whimsical, and has the cheeky appeal of being a not-quite-legal call to action. Dig in some soil, plant a few seeds, or mend a sagging fence-one good deed inspiring another, with win-win benefits all around.”

Article

Turns out each person produces 10.4 tons of carbon dioxide each year and half of that is directly controlled by the choices each person makes.

2.1 tons of carbon is focused on the food each person eats. Growing your own helps reduce that number.

Of course, it's part of a community service sentence, but hey, it's celebrity gardening!

Well, it's been a while, so why not get back into the swing of blogging with a story about naked gardening?!

The final Rain Garden A Workshop of the year is Wednesday, July 11th, at Lynnhurst, and the final B Seminars are July 24th and 31st. This will be your last opportunity this year to attend one of the Rain Garden Workshops, and get the Native Plant Reimbursement Grant.

To register or for more information

Our final plant sales will follow the last three workshops, and will also be at Lynnhurst:

July 10th
5:30-9:30pm
Dragonfly Gardens
http://www.dragonflygardens.net/

July 24th
5:30-9:30pm
Sunrise Native Plants
http://www.sunrisenativeplants.com/

July 31st
5:30-9:30pm
Landscape Alternatives
http://www.landscapealternatives.com/index.php

FFI: Kristen Denzer
Program Manager
612-729-0962
Kristen@MetroBlooms.org

“OH LORD, MAKE MY garden sustainable and eco-friendly – but not yet!” runs the cry of so many gardeners, worrying that their practical and aesthetically pleasing garden may be A Bad Thing. Absolution is at hand in Ken Thompson’s reissued No Nettles Required: The Truth about Wildlife Gardening (Eden Project Books).

Thompson is a scientist, and in his amused and ironic style he debunks so much of the tosh written about wildlife gardening, substituting common sense backed by research. “All gardens are good for wildlife, and encouraging wildlife is entirely compatible with ordinary gardening, costs next to nothing and is completely effortless,” he says. The main principles? No chemicals, plenty of trees and berries, and plenty of insect(as opposed to wind) pollinated plants.

Article about a gardener who produces 3 tons of produce from one acre! (oh those wily Californians!)

ChrisStopped into the co-op to get a picture of Chris Bezek and of course started chatting him up on some gardening ideas we've been tossing around: kid's turf/play area, children's gardens (2 years down the road), and our desire for a fruit tree. (This blog-post is wholly personalized to what we're trying to accomplish along these lines. However, it does give a nice example of what a conversation with Chris can yield for garden ideas.)

Pear TreeWell, 20 minutes later I had pretty much had my mind blown wide open. So, of course now I've obsessively been researching this Espalier concept (wikipedia) and backyard orchard culture.

"An "espalier," (pronounced "es-PAL-yer") is any plant trained to grow in a flat plane against a wall, fence, or trellis. The word espalier also may be used to describe the technique of training a plant to this flat plane. A French word, espalier is derived from the Italian spalliera, which means something to rest the shoulder (spalla) against."

This isn't our intent, we want to plop the fruit tree right in the middle of a garden spot we call the Patio Patch. It gets full sun and we want to continue
growing veggies and other sun loving plants there. So, we need to have a tree that's sparce and stays pretty much under 7 feet tall. This espaliering seems like the best way to achieve our wishes...

Espalier Example

Of course Chris also had some great thoughts on a turf play area that we'll need to implement next spring for our newborn so he can hang out with us while we're in the garden puttering about. We've got some more thinking to do about play areas and kid garden areas. We fully intend to have a specific garden area for our child that is his alone to build and maintain. We'll have to help out the first few years, but hopefully he'll be into it.