Winter at the Sharing Gardens

Our newest greenhouse - the Sunship - Sept. 2016

Greetings everyone! Here we are heading into our ninth year with the Sharing Gardens, Can you believe it? From our humble beginnings at Alpine Park, with an 80'x80' garden-plot, an 8'x8' greenhouse, a handful of tools and willing spirits we've grown to the thriving, expanded project we are today.

In the beginning, we didn't even have pictures to use on our website so borrowed photos Chris had taken in previous gardens. LINK to first Post - A Seed is Planted Our readership has steadily grown over the years and is currently experiencing a surge in readership that peaked with over 17,000 site-visits in December 2016 alone! It has tapered off slightly since this peak but we are still averaging 300 visits per day. These visits come from all over the planet both for practical gardening knowledge and for inspiration about the power and joys of generosity.

Home-grown dinner!

This post features info about what happens at the Sharing Gardens during the winter months. Enjoy! From December through about mid-February, activity in the gardens is minimal. Here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, our winters are typically cold and rainy (with occasional snow and freezing temperatures) and the shorter day-lengths mean that any plants that are still growing in our greenhouses (kale, fava-beans) just maintain their current size, without adding any growth until days get longer.

So, just what DO we do to prepare for the coming Spring?

Because we practice a style of gardening that requires deep mulch, even in our greenhouses, the winter is time for preparing beds. Preparing Garden Beds - One Low-Tech Way-LINK
 

Our largest greenhouse with tomato plants on left, peppers and fig-trees on right. October 2016.

As the season comes to a close, and the last of the summer crops have been harvested, we rake away the left-over straw from the paths of the greenhouses. We remove cages from the tomato and pepper plants, cut them off at ground level and cut them stems up in 6" - 8" pieces and put these pieces in the paths underfoot. The stems are too course to decompose by planting time which is why we don't cut them in the garden beds. Cutting them speeds up decomposition and, by the time plant-roots are reaching out under the greenhouse paths, the stems will be almost entirely broken-down.

The next step is to cover the paths with the straw raked off prior to cutting up the plants. Clear any remaining straw, or plant matter off the greenhouse beds. The garden-beds - where we'll be planting in the spring - are generously sprinkled with coffee-grounds, and a dusting of wood-ashes.

Greenhouse beds covered in 1/2' coffee-grounds and a light dusting of wood-ashes.

We have been experimenting with creating greater soil-fertility using coffee grounds and wood-ashes. Coffee grounds are available for free from most coffee-shops; they're grateful to have someone come pick them up! And though they're not sustainable, they are a free resource at this time. For some reason, red-wiggler worms (also called manure worms) just love coffee! If you spread it liberally on your soil, they will migrate to find it. Their worm poo (castings) provides many nutrients that plants love and the tunnels they make help aerate the soil. Wood ashes should be used sparingly; they are very potent but provide a bounty of minerals to the soil.

Worms love coffee grounds!

Coffee grounds provide generous amounts of phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, and copper. They also release nitrogen into the soil as they degrade. When we have it, we spread it about 1/2" thick. We also layer it into our compost piles. Coffee grounds - Will They perk Up Plants - LINK

Wood Ashes provide all necessary nutrients except nitrogen and sulfur.  We use ashes from our wood-stove (that heats our house). We use only newspaper to start the fires and burn pure wood. We don't burn anything with paint; no ply-wood or other man-made products so the chemicals in them don't get into our food-chain. We sift the ashes to remove any big chunks, nails or screws. Be very careful not to use too much! We put just the lightest dusting in our beds. Do not use wood-ash to make a potting soil. It is caustic to worms and will alkalize your soil so use only a little and wait before planting seeds or seedlings. Do not use around acid-loving plants (like blueberries, or in potato-beds). Article from our local University Extension Service: Wood Ashes Can Benefit Lawn and Garden

Chris adds leaves to the greenhouse-beds - about 6" is ideal.

Next we add a thick layer of leaves, a layer of straw and, if we have it, green-grass clippings and more coffee grounds. Ideally we cover each garden bed with a layer of carpet, or cardboard - to keep in moisture and hasten decomposition, but sometimes we just leave the rows open to the air. All this organic matter is slowly eaten from below by worms and fungi and bacteria. In the spring, these beds will be ready to plant our new crops.

December 2016. Note trellises for winter-peas, a re-purposing project from an old chicken-coop (from left, to center). Light-green carpet covers row in lower-right corner.

Winter is also a time for pruning our fruit trees and blackberry bushes. Pruning helps fruit trees stay healthy and productive. Almost all our fruit trees were mangled by deer in their first year and a half so we still haven't had much fruit from them yet. Most of them have lots of fruit-spurs this winter so we're hoping that 2017 brings more fruit. In a few years' time, our 3-dozen apples, pears and plums should yield enough surplus that we can share the bounty with local food-charities.

 August 2016. Here is our first harvest from an Asian pear we planted in 2014. Not much, but they sure were delicious!

We've been enjoying herbal tea made from rosehips and fennel-seeds we grew and dried. Here are rosehips from rosa rugosa a hedge-rose that grows well in our climate that we started from seed three years ago.

October 2016. In mid-Autumn, we mulched most of our outdoor garden-beds with leaves and straw so they will be ready for planting in the spring. Chris looked under this straw just last week and found many worms! Even though the ground is saturated from winter-rains, the worms thrive at the surface where the straw meets the ground.

January/February is the time to plant biennial, root-crops for seed.

Carrots, beets and onions all produce seed in their second year so you must save them in your refrigerator or a root cellar and re-plant them to grow-out for seed. We plant them in gallon pots in January or February and than transplant them into the ground later in the spring. Seed-harvest occurs through much of the summer-months.

Tomatoes, peppers and squash make a bright compost pile!

We continue to build our compost piles. We don't have as much material to add to them at this time of year as the garden-debris has mostly been collected. The bins we are filling now won't be ready to use in the gardens till summer-time but you can never have too much!

We continue to process food for long-term storage. Llyn likes to make pumpkin-pie filling for freezing. In early January she noticed some of our Provence squash was showing signs of rotting so she had a marathon session and froze ingredients to make 22 pies. Yum! Making Pumpkin Pie from Scratch - Recipe - LINK

Baking Provence squash, a favorite for pie! Yes, it really is that orange, and so sweet!

Winter is also time for indoor-construction projects. Below, is a wood stove that Chris made from a kit that comes with legs, a collar and door for the stove. Holes must be cut out of the barrel using a metal-cutting saw. We purchased a used barrel from a food warehouse and Chris discovered that the barrel we bought for $4 had almost a gallon of honey still in the bottom which he drained and we enjoy on our toast!

 Here's a wood stove that Chris made from a kit.

Cleaning and lubricating hose-fittings, valves and timers so they'll be ready to use in the spring.

Each summer we dedicate a sizable amount of garden space to crops that store well: winter squash, potatoes, beets, carrots and storage onions to name a few. We want to be able to augment the Food Pantry's fresh produce offerings for as long as possible when their donations from other local sources begin to diminish. To be honest though, by the time all our share-givers receive their share of winter crops, the only thing we really have surplus for the Food Pantry is winter squash. Perhaps in future years we'll be able to increase our output, or other local gardens will join us in the project and dedicate a row of their space to storage crops to share.

Last week we delivered the last of our winter-squash and hot-peppers that we had saved to share with the Food Pantry. Because we plant our peppers and tomatoes in greenhouses, we can harvest them after everything outside is drooping and dying from heavy Autumn rains. We do have to harvest them before the first hard-freeze or they'll rot on the plant, even in the greenhouses. Our last harvest this year was December 6th!

The last of summer-harvest! Dec. 2016.

We are so grateful that the winter solstice has passed and that days are getting longer! In another six weeks (mid-February) it will be time to start seeds again for cool-weather crops (onions, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, to name a few). Still plenty of time to finish our pruning, paint some more signs, clean and organize our garden-sheds and workshop and perform other maintenance tasks.

August 2016. Can't wait for next year's tomatoes!

The Sharing Gardens project is a unique model of community garden that is 100% non-commercial, uses local materials for soil-fertility, provides thousands of pounds of free produce to local food-charities and encourages gardening as a way to increase wildlife habitat. 

Growing Gratitude

Have you ever noticed how plants grow exponentially? At first you plant the seed and it seems like nothing is happening for the longest time; then, the first simple leaves appear and you can hardly perceive their daily growth.Given the right conditions: a larger pot, enriched soil, water, warmth and light and suddenly the leaves are lengthening and multiplying almost visibly! The "Sharing Garden" project of Alpine and Monroe, OR seems to be coming into that super-growth phase. So much to be grateful for!

Volunteers at the Crowson/Monroe garden - 2010

Big thanks to Chester Crowson for giving us permission to garden on his property in Monroe for another year. The Monroe gardens are ideally located behind the Methodist Church on Coon Rd. which houses the Food Bank (the greatest recipient of our produce). The garden is huge (110' x 170') and we were only able to cultivate about half of it last year. There's a garden shed  we use and Chester pays our water bill. His daughter, Lisa Richter has been a big help as liaison between the project and her Dad.

We continue to have very positive response to the articles that the Tri-County Tribune is publishing about us. Thanks to the editor, Gini Bramlett and her support staff. The paper reaches a different audience than the posts we write for our web-site and many new "locals" are becoming involved as result. One of these is Barbara Standley who donated several stacks of home-built nursery flats and the 6-packs to go with them. She and her husband Waldo started "Victory Gardens" on River Rd in Santa Clara back in 1968. Waldo was single-minded with the nursery and would have grown only tomatoes if his friends hadn't said, "You've got to branch out and grow other things!". Eventually they added flowers and vegetable-starts to their repertoire. Their nursery was active until 1996 and lay dormant till recently when the Standley's daughter and son-in-law began to revive the business - renaming it the "Grateful Gardener".

Barbara Standley and Llyn load her donation in the truck

We've had a nice response to our request for help to create re-usable leaf-bags. Two local seamstresses have stepped forth and are poised to make the bags once we get more drapes and other heavy fabrics donated. Our vision is to distribute these reusable leaf bags, for people to fill themselves and drop off at the garden sites or, for those who are unable to do their own raking to circulate a team of volunteers for leaf collection through-out the Fall. We use the leaves to mulch the garden beds and feed the worms and bacteria in the soil. John Noreena and Jenny Grey donated four HUGE, heavy-duty bags that were originally used to deliver sand to a job-site but that he has used for leaf-collection on his own property.

Germaine and Larry join us in the greenhouse. So much fun!

People have started to step forth and volunteer their time in the greenhouse. We've begun a partnership with Albany's YMCA (more about this in a future post) and they've been coming to the greenhouse to learn the art of nursery work as they grow out the "starts" they'll use in their own food-give-away garden. Kyle Rd. residents Larry and Germaine Hammon were a great help in transplanting sunflowers into bigger pots. Bruce Hayler - host to "The Ark" and the Oak St. "Sharing Gardens" also keeps coming over to get his hands in the soil.
  

Bruce Hayler and Chris planting lettuce in donated "plug trays"

We want people to know that our thanks goes out to all the people behind the scenes and those we've fail to specifically mention, whose support makes this project possible. The anonymous donors who drop things off at the garden sites, the well-wishers who think warm thoughts and send notes of appreciation and those who help to spread the word by forwarding our posts/articles. You are the light, the water and soil that makes it possible for the "Sharing Gardens" to blossom.

Current Wish List: Heavy fabric (drapes, shower curtains, canvas), at least 3' x 5' - to sew leaf bags out of. T-posts (slightly bent, OK). Nursery pots and flats (six-packs and large 4" sizes). Mud boots - various sizes for people to use when they come to the gardens.

We have available: Thornless ever-bearing raspberries: the canes are coming up and already getting leaves so the window is closing to transplant to your garden beds. They like full sun and well-drained soil. Let us know you're interested and we'll tell you where to dig them up.

Chris and Llyn can be contacted from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm and 3:00 to 8:00 pm - (541) 847-8797

Sharing Garden Update

We have much to be grateful for!

Karen and Chris unloading barrels

Karen Finley, of Alpine's Queen Bee Honey drove with Llyn down to Eugene and back and loaded twenty recycled 55 gallon barrels donated by Glory Bee Foods onto her truck and brought them back to the greenhouse. They are set up to support our potting tables and, once filled with water, will provide thermal mass--moderating the temperature of the greenhouse year round. The water-filled drums will absorb the heat from the sun, or the woodstove, during the day and release it slowly through the night.

A sample of our seed bank.

We received a seed-donation from Brigitte Goetze of Alpine. All together we had three lidded buckets full of seeds - most of which Chris saved systematically over the course of last year's harvest. We sorted through them and determined which ones we could give away and have been sharing them with other gardeners, and people growing food for those in need.

We are grateful to the Tri-County Tribune for offering to print our complete wish-list and an explanation of the "Sharing Garden's" purpose. The article has only been out two days and we've already received a donation of over 2000 "plug trays" from Frank Pitcher who grows cabbage-seed commercially. We haven't decided if we're going to cut them up with a razor knife - to be able to give away smaller amounts of starts (there are 128 holes per flat!), or if we'll plant multiple varieties of seeds on one flat to have "variety-packs" we can give away. We'll put the word out when we have seedlings available.

Bruce and Chris planting seeds

Today we got some breaks in the rain. It's amazing how fast the greenhouse heats up as as soon as the sun comes out! We all peeled down to tee-shirts though the temps were still chilly outside. Bruce Hayler showed up to give us a hand. Though he's been a gardener for many years, this will be his first experience in a greenhouse. We sifted potting soil, added some fertilizer and sifted rabbit manure and, between the three of us started seven flats of seeds. It's starting to really feel like a greenhouse!

We've received a beautiful green-painted mailbox from Renee and Johan Forrer of Monroe. We'll put that up in Monroe once the season gets going and it will be a place for plastic bags and a harvest knife for people to pick produce. Save your clean, plastic bags for us to use during harvest season!

If you need thornless ever-bearing raspberries, contact us and we'll arrange a time to show you where you can dig them up. We can supply pots if you need them for transport. Our contact info.

Here's a link to our updated wishlist. New items include: water-based exterior house paints, a wheelbarrow or garden-cart and, though we received all the plug-trays from Frank today, we still especially prize the standard "six-pack" size so let us know if you have some you don't need. Even a small amount helps.

Garden Tip: If the ground where you live is still too cold and soggy for planting peas, try this method we used last year with great success.

Another beautiful rainbow over "The Ark"

Wishlist and Thanks

Our new greenhouse. We've decided to name it "The Ark".

Here's a beautiful picture we took at the greenhouse on Monday. As you can see it's close to being finished. If you're local, you can see it at the far east end of Oak St., in Monroe (near the Long Tom River), just north of the storage lockers. Though we still have a list of "finishing touches", we've already started our first batches of peas and onions in pots.

We've got an updated wish-list. Let us know if you can help us out with any of these things:

Here's the mailbox we re-decorated for the Alpine Garden

* Hardi-Plank - scraps would be fine. We need it to skirt the greenhouse
* Pine Needles (the long ones from Ponderosa Pines are best) - we'll use them to
      keep the paths in the greenhouse from getting too squishy. We can come rake
      and bag them.
* Bedding straw - spoiled OK - we can use this for the greenhouse paths too, and
      any extra we'll use to mulch the gardens.
* An old mailbox - we need to paint one and set it up at the Monroe garden for
      plastic bags and messages (like at Alpine)

Still on our list:

*  Nursery flats, pots, 6-packs: Our vision is to grow enough garden "starts" to supply the "Sharing gardens" and to give the surplus away to volunteers and others who have donated in some way; to other "Sharing Garden"-type projects and to people in need in our community. We are in greatest need of 6-pack sized pots and prefer not to buy them new if we can find them to re-use (keeping them out of the waste-stream). Even a few will help as, if everyone donates a few, we shall have enough for the whole project. You can drop them in front of the garden shed at the Monroe garden, behind the big, white Methodist Church in Monroe.
*  Bagged leaves - bring to Alpine or Monroe and leave by the gate
*  Truckload of potting soil - delivered to greenhouse on Oak St. in Monroe

*  Sprouting Potatoes

*  Non-Hybrid Seeds

Cash donations are always appreciated!

Gratitude goes out to:

* Steve Rose - for the beautiful job he did pruning the apple tree at the Alpine Park - the branches are available to anyone who wishes to process the wood.
*  Judy Todd - thank you for your generous cash donation
*  Betty and Jim Christensen - your cash donation is also a big help!
*  Julia Sunkler of "My Pharm" - donated a load of rabbit manure
*  George and Claudia gave us all the pellet-bags they saved from running their stove this past winter. They're made of heavy-duty plastic and so can be used over and over again.

Chris in the door of "The Ark" greenhouse

Preparing Garden Beds - One Low-Tech Way

Planted side-beds in a previous greenhouse that Chris built and managed.

The challenge: In our 100-foot-long greenhouse we've got two side-beds that still have living grass growing in them. Since we began building the greenhouse at the start of Oregon's rainy season we didn't want to roto-till the ground which would have created a muddy mess during construction-time.  We have begun a process now which we hope will leave us with healthy, worm-filled beds in time for this next summer's plantings of tomatoes, peppers and other herbs and vegetables.

Creating raised beds with salvaged lumber.

The Solution: Step 1: We used salvaged lumber to create the sides of the raised beds. As we build the soil, this will contain it from spilling into the paths. Each bed is four feet wide.

Step 2: With leaves that people have donated, we lay down a layer about 4" thick, the full length of the beds.

Step 3: Next we added a layer of rabbit manure. One five-pound bucket per six-feet of bed, spread evenly (Sometimes it clumps so you have to break it up with a spade fork or your hands.) We are fortunate to have a rabbitry in our neighborhood (Julia Sunkler - "My Pharm") where we can go shovel large quantities of manure for use in our gardens. Rabbit manure is preferable because grass seeds do not survive their digestive tracts. If you don't have access to rabbit manure, cow, llama and chicken are also excellent (for the same reason). Horse manure is the least desirable as, unless it has been well-composted, weed seeds are still viable and can be a problem in your garden.

Step 4: Using a hand-held pump sprayer, or one of those hose attachments that allows you to spray a mist, spray evenly a strong solution of fish emulsion, seaweed and water on your garden beds.

Step 5: If you have a small tiller, that you can easily run in your beds, mix everything together at this time. We don't have a small tiller so we are using something called a broad fork. This is an indestructible hand tool that is excellent for breaking up new soil. It is also great for harvesting potatoes. If you don't have a broad fork, you can loosen the soil with a spade fork instead. It will just take you a lot longer. If you have heavy, clay soil, be sure to wait until it has drained a bit or you will end up with heavy, brick-like clumps.

A broad fork in action.

Step 6: Once you have mixed everything, it's ideal if you can "seed" your bed with micro-livestock i.e. "red wiggler" worms. These are a variety of worms that thrives on compost and mulch. If you don't have a starter batch, they will eventually come on their own but you can significantly jump-start the process by spreading them through-out your beds. When we went to dig up the rabbit manure, we came across several concentrated clumps of the worms. These we put in specially marked bags and distributed them through out our greenhouse beds.

"Red Wigglers", our micro-livestock.

Step 7: Using thick black plastic (that we found dumped at our local recycling center) we have covered the beds completely. Blocked of sunlight, the grass still growing in the beds cannot survive. The worms and other microbes have plenty of food to keep them busy and multiplying, doing the work of preparing the beds for late-spring planting.

Finished job (for now!)

"Sharing Gardens" Update and Wish List

In this post you'll read an update on the "Sharing Gardens" - including construction of our 20' x 100' greenhouse, our vegetable plant give-away, our youth-garden program starting in the spring and see what's on our current wish-list.

So far, we've been blessed with a relatively mild winter here in Alpine/Monroe, and we've been able to move forward steadily on greenhouse construction.

We'll be writing a full handbook on all the details of the hoop-house construction which will be available as a PDF, so we won't go into details here on the blog about how its done. The short version (according to Chris, who's built many of these hoop-style greenhouses) is that the greenhouse is about half-way done. We figure we're still on track to complete the project sometime in February.

This will give us plenty of time to get seeds started for this year. We're going to be growing a great abundance of starts this year. "Enough and to spare...to give and to share." These will be available to everyone for free. We'll let you know when they are available for you to bring home to your own gardens.

We have a short wish-list of materials we need for the greenhouse and garden project. If you can help us out with any of these things, please send us an email, or give us a call.

nursery flats and containers
6" stove pipe, 2 adjustable elbows and a cap
treated 4 x 4's  - 6 feet or better
dry, spoiled hay ( we can arrange to pick it up or give you some gas money)
bagged leaves to either garden site
cedar or redwood fence or deck boards
cash donations
(make checks to Alpine Community Center - "Sharing Gardens" and mail to PO Box 11, Monroe, OR 97456)

Bruce, Rann and Doreen preparing beds. Note heavily mulched paths.

Other garden news: This spring we'll have three volunteer times. Wednesdays will still be at the Alpine Garden. Thursdays will be at the Monroe garden (times to be determined on a week to week basis). We're going to add a third garden time on Monday afternoons right after school. These will take place either at the Monroe garden or at our new greenhouse. Though young people ages 9-18 will be welcome at all three weekly sessions, due to school hours they probably won't be able to participate on Wednesdays or Thursdays till summer so the Monday sessions will be focused on including them in the garden project. We need some committed adults who would like to join us for the Monday sessions and mentor the young people in gardening skills. We're also wanting to connect with young people who have a sincere interest in learning to grow food and who wish to be of service to their community.

Chris with a 4-H class he led in California.

Gratitude goes to:

• the anonymous leaf donors at both garden sites - keep 'em coming!
• Renee Duncan - we're finally using the cedar boards you donated last summer. There will be many happy bird families with new nesting boxes in the spring, thanks to you.