Giver's Gallery, Gratitude and Updates

Lettuce ready for planting - April 2011

We've been watching the dramatic weather world-wide; floods, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves and record snows! It seems more important than ever to be helping people learn this basic skill of growing food while building community ties amongst neighbors. We are very grateful for the surge of support that has come to us since we lost greenhouse access and the big grant we applied for. All told, we received close to $2,000 in donations from people near and far. We have also received materials donations and the warming weather here in the Pacific NW has brought out droves of volunteers, both new faces and familiar friends from last year.

Our garden "palette" to choose from - May 2011

We have been moving forward in faith, trusting that there is some greater purpose to recent events. We don't want to miss it by wallowing in regret or judgment. We feel on-purpose again and happy to honor the commitments we have for growing food for those in need, and continuing to develop this model of gardening that builds community and helps increase local food security. We have some exciting prospects calling us forward and are freeing-up our energies to pursue those. Thank you to everyone for your wise words and all the ways you have shown us that this program matters to you. It has really helped.

A few highlights since our last post:

Jan with lettuce for the Food Bank

Harvest has begun: We've begun to harvest from the gardens! The cool, wet spring has been very good for our lettuce and kale. Volunteers have been taking home as much as they can eat, we took thirty lettuce-heads to the food bank last week and another twenty to the Monroe Legion Hall: they serve lunch to seniors twice a week and appreciate the fresh vegetables we're able to provide. The seniors take home whatever isn't used in the lunches. This week's lettuce harvest was over 40 heads!

Llyn with spring's bounty!

Straw delivery: We are extremely grateful to Mark Frystak, a resident of Monroe who saw our recent wishlist posted in the Tribune News and came through with 55 bales of straw for us to begin to mulch the gardens. Everyone agrees that the straw makes the garden look so tidy, volunteers love the dry comfort of weeding from straw paths and the worms, snakes and other garden-friendly wildlife appreciate the food and shelter it provides. We can still use much more straw, and will continue to have need all through the season. We used about 10 tons last year and had about a third less garden in cultivation. If you know of anyone with bales to donate, we can probably arrange for pick-up. Here's a link to our full wish-list.

A-Frame - tomato cages with mulch on the paths

Young people in the garden: The last day of school is June 10 but we're already receiving lots of help from some of the local young people. Weeding, mulching, planting seeds and transplanting starts...all these tasks provide meaningful activity and fun in a town without much else to do after school. One afternoon last week we had five kids stop by; some just to visit, and others to help out.

Seth and Ricardo take lettuce home to their families after helping us mulch the garden paths

Volunteers: We've got some new faces and many of the core group of volunteers coming back from last year. Today we had five people helping with the harvest and other tasks. These included Pastor Mark Peterson from the nearby Monroe Church of Christ, Jim and Cindy Kitchen who are the coordinators for a garden modeled after the Sharing Gardens, in Corvallis and Larry Winiarski who went above and beyond the call of duty and patiently took apart our donated lawnmower that hasn't been working at all this season. He finally sleuthed out the problem and got her running! Now maybe our garden paths won't look quite so shaggy. Thanks to all the rest of you who have been coming out to help.

Jan, spreading mulch

Jennifer and Llyn planting tomatoes

Larry (the lawnmower doctor) starting seeds at the Monroe garden

The gardens are starting to take shape. We've been preparing beds and planting almost every day. Here are some pictures of the garden's progress:

"Butter Crunch" lettuce

Pepper plants interspersed with red lettuce. The lettuce will be harvested before the peppers get too big.

Much thanks too to all the people bringing us your used pots and flats. We're glad to give them new life. Phyllis Derr has been calling us to pick up her lawn clippings in Monroe. We use them to mulch. We've received financial donations since our last post from Jennie and Kris Rhoads, Craig Erken, Karen Josephson, Angee Costa and Chuck and Betty Conway. And thanks to Steve Rose who, once again has grown hundreds of tomato starts which he gives away to food-bank recipients, volunteers and provides us with the surplus at the Sharing Gardens. 

It looks like we'll have quite a few extra tomatoes to give away. First come, first served. Stop on by the Monroe garden during volunteer times if you'd like to take some home to your own garden.

Growing Gratitude

We have so much to be grateful for. The Sharing Gardens community--near and far--have been showing their support for the project.

Chris paints garden benches made from recycled materials, and refurbishes the donated trailer.

Our local weekly paper, The Tribune News continues to publish frequent articles about us. Many of the donations listed below have come as a result.

Fabric for the Great Monroe Autumn Leaf Drive was donated by Danette Puhek of Alpine. She gave us a huge role of a canvas-type material that can be sewn up by volunteers to make leaf bags. Our intention is to distribute these around town once the leaves have begun to fall and come back later to gather them for garden-mulching. Leaves provide valuable organic matter to improve the quality of the garden-soil and feed our "micro-livestock", the worms, bugs and bacteria that add their valuable "manure" to our gardens. The colorful, reusable leaf bags will provide a visual demonstration of our whole town's participation in growing food to share. (More fabric is still needed - see our wish list).

John Dillard, owner and manager of Monroe Telephone Company read our wish-list published in the The Tribune News paper and has offered his company's services to laminate signs we can post around the Gardens for people's information. We'll print the signs from our computer and bring them over to them for laminating.

Greenhouse/nursery donations: The Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture at Oregon State University -  nursery pots and flats (thanks Cody, for setting that up!). Barbara Standley of Santa Clara - pressure-treated lumber, saw-horses and nursery table tops. Eva Fife - straw bales for the muddy greenhouse paths, and help with transplanting. Knife River Corporation - almost $3,000 worth of gravel to expand the parking capacity where the greenhouse is located. Cindy Cantor for taking over the watering of all the starts.

Garden supplies and plant materials: Bodhi - about a dozen raspberry plants from his Eugene garden. Jason and Christine - sprouting potatoes. Laurie and Warren Halsey - ten gallons of gray house-paint. (We gave half of it to the Monroe Food Bank to spruce up their interior after they did renovations; we're using some to refurbish the trailer donated to the project earlier in the season by Dick and Jan Skirvin.) Gary Glore has brought us two plastic compost bins to process vegetable waste/kitchen scraps. We've put them at the Crowson/Monroe site.

Thanks to Mylrea Estell for the bicycle that Chris can use to travel to the gardens and back to our home, cutting down on the use of gas to drive our truck, and increasing our fitness as well.


Since we were denied grant-funding, we added a donation button on our website. We have had a strong initial response from supporters both near and far. We'd like to thank Dick and Helen Hewitt, Cathy Rose, Marian Spadone, Rann and Doreen Millar and Sue and Scott Peabody-Hewitt, Claudia McCue and Judy Peabody for their generosity. If you would like to donate, just click on the button below or mail a check to

Sunlit cabbage leaf

Sharing Gardens
PO Box 11
Monroe, OR 97456

Please indicate if you need a tax-receipt.

Happy Birthday! - Sharing Gardens

Dustin digging onions

The "Sharing Gardens" turned "two" on April 15th! Hard to believe it's only been that long...This past few weeks we've been dodging raindrops and spending time transplanting and preparing beds with the trust that sunnier weather is on its way. Our young friend Dustin McClintock showed up to help us dig up the last few onions that wintered over. We always appreciate his willing smile and "can-do" attitude!

Doreen transplanting

Doreen Millar managed to join us a few times already this season. She and her husband Rann were some of our most dedicated volunteers last year. Here she is transplanting out a few lettuce plants. The slugs are getting plump on many of our early transplants. It's a good thing we have many more at "The Ark" - greenhouse - awaiting their turn to be planted out.

4-H Giveaway

We enjoyed our time at the 4-H Giveaway on Saturday, April 16th. Chris and I brought a whole table-full of starts: broccoli, lettuce, kale, spinach, amaranth and sunflowers. It was fun to see the smiles of people taking their free "starts" home for their own gardens. The young people in Christie Warden's 4-H group did a beautiful job of putting on the event. They volunteered their time to set up, be there for the day and clean up the leftovers. It felt good to see all these young people being in service to their community.

Many of our wishes have been granted (we'll write up a thank-you blog soon!). Take a look at our current wish-list to see if there's anything you can help us with:

Our Current Wish List

Christie Warden - 4H leader and Ismael Ramos, one of the young people in her group.

"Sharing Gardens" Potpourri

Liz Hayler at the greenhouse.

The community support for the "Sharing Gardens" is growing. We send out thanks to Warren and Laurie Halsey for donating two, unopened 5-gallon buckets of house paint. We can spruce up the bathroom at the Alpine Garden--inside and out and use it for other garden projects as well. Our continued gratitude goes to the Canters and Haylers who are hosting the greenhouse on their property in Monroe.

A big thanks goes out to Bud Hardin of Monroe. He has donated the funds to cover the cost of renting a portable toilet for a full year! This has been placed between the Monroe Garden site and the Food Bank. Since the closest public bathroom to the site is several blocks away, there are many volunteers in both programs who will be very glad of this donation.

Linda with a Mason Bee house.

Linda Zielinski has given us a "starter" batch of Mason Bees (Osmia Ribifloris). These industrious pollinators do not build hives but lay eggs in tubes which they seal off with a daub of mud (hence their name). Since they have no queen or honey to defend they are easy-going and will not sting unless you step on them or squish them in some way. For this reason they are ideal to keep in your garden if you have children nearby. They have a fascinating life-cycle which Linda is going to write about and post to this blog in the coming months.

As we were sending off the final draft of our Wish List to our local weekly paper (Tri-County Tribune) for publication last week we added, almost as an after-thought, our need for a small utility trailer. Over the weekend we got a call from Dick and Jan Skirvin, life-long residents of the Tri-County area. They had a trailer they could donate! They had found it decades ago, when they first took over the family homestead. It was lost and buried amongst a wall of Oregon's famous blackberries. Dick and his son resurrected the trailer and it served their family for many years. They no longer have use for it and so now, with a stiff wire-brushing and a fresh coat of paint it will join the ranks of refurbished garden-equipment at the "Sharing Gardens" and along with the wheelbarrow just donated by Brigitte Goetze will serve for many more years to come.

Dick and Jan Skirvin with their donated trailer.

We are happy to say our wish list is dwindling. Our main need at this time is for some bailed hay or straw that we can put down on the floor of the greenhouse. Even though it is fully covered and sealed, the ground below is wicking moisture from the surrounding field and the paths are really mucky. We realize that most people with livestock wait until the new hay is coming in before they get rid of the old so we'll probably just buy some bails. If you do have some moldy bails to donate, we can come pick them up. Just let us know.

Something else to keep on your radar screen: Next fall we're going to have a volunteer team of leaf-rakers go around the area and bag up leaves to mulch the garden. We'd like to sew a few dozen re-usable leaf bags out of drapes or other sturdy material. So, if you have fabric you think would be appropriate and/or you are a seamstress and would be willing to sew a few of these bags to help out the project, let us know. Our current Wish List

Mason Bee

If you have sprouting potatoes and don't wish to grow them yourself, we'd be happy to grow them in the "Sharing Gardens". if you'd like to plant them in your own garden, follow this link to learn how.
Why grow your own. How to "chit" potatoes

Sunflower seeds are a great crop to grow; the seeds can be harvested and sprouted for winter greens, they make great bird food for our wild friends and they are a beautiful border on the north side of any garden.
How to Grow Sunflower Sprouts

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

Wish List - Feb 2011

We continue to be grateful for all the support the "Sharing Gardens" are receiving. When we can demonstrate to granting organizations that their donations are being used wisely, and that others in the community are united in caring for the less fortunate amongst us, our project rises to the top of the pile to receive this funding. Every little bit helps.

Here is a list of our current needs:

• House Paint - exterior, water-based
• Stove pipe - 6" (a total of 12-feet, with elbows, cap and box to pass through wall.)
• Nursery flats, pots, especially 6-packs
• Hay Bales (or straw) - delivered (moldy is fine)
• Bagged leaves - bring to Alpine or Monroe and leave by the gate
• Truckload of potting soil - delivered to greenhouse on Oak St. in Monroe (contact us first)
• Sprouting Potatoes
• Seeds
• Cash donations - make checks out to ACC - "Sharing Gardens" and mail to 
  

        Llyn Peabody
        PO Box 11
        Monroe, OR 97456

       To contact us, please call or email: 
       (541) 847-8797 (call between 9:00 am - 1:00 and 3:00 - 8:00 pm)
       AlpineCoGarden@gmail.com