Another Rainy Day

And I had a day off to play outside in my own garden, shoot!
Yes, I say "shoot", I wonder where that came from?
Shoots are good things in the garden, unless they're weeds.

Anyway, it's another rainy day, and I shouldn't whine. The weather bureau says our through-April cumulative snowfall for the winter was 2 tenths of an inch short of a record which was good. The ground and the trees need recharging.
But here with my tuna can measure I've accumulated under half an inch of rain this past several weeks when we should normally have collected at least a good inch a week.
The spring flowers have been tremendous, but the leaves of the trees could use a good rainy boost right now while they're expanding.
By the way, we had our first hearty salad meal last night, the few lettuces that overwintered in my cold frame are huge, sweet and succulent, and it felt so good to bring in a bowlful of home-grown leaves! And the baby lettuces are growing so prettily for summer salads.

So I'm indoors and maybe this would be a good time to talk a little about the Home Street garden project, of which I'm a volunteer gardener along with my gardening friend Sharron, some Master Gardeners, some Applewood volunteers, and some Land Bank people.

A few weeks ago four of us canvassed the neighborhood - I think we passed out seventy or so invitations - going door to door to reintroduce ourselves to the neighbors. Unfortunately the people we talked to the longest were unable to come to our meeting for health and scheduling reasons. But we did have some good conversations. Seven of us met at the church on the corner, the minister there is welcoming and willing to work with bringing out some of his people. If all goes as discussed, we will have a foothold in the community now.

We made a calendar, but Sharron and I showed up last week to pull weeds for a couple of hours before our first scheduled work day which was yesterday. We noted that the dead tree has toppled during the winter - part of it hit the roof of the vacant house next door. Someone needs to take care of that tree!

Yesterday five of us pulled most of the straw off of the beds and did some weeding and edging and cleaning up. We have a full lawn bag with winter accumulated trash - bottles, glass, food wrappers and so on. The used straw was going in the composting corner - somebody needs to build some bins!

I had to talk to convince Phil to keep the straw on a bed a la Ruth Stout. I read her "How To Have A Green Thumb Without Having An Aching Back" and all that straw on the compost beds being piled in the corner for future composting could just as easily be left in place for mulch to supress weeds and keep the moisture from disappearing. Only weeders and waterers would choose 'beauty' over utility, and for my gardener's eye, a well mulched garden looks healthy and beautiful.

Sharron had the idea to make a new straw-only bed near the Home Street sidewalk and plant sweet potatoes in it, which is a flash of inspiration. Why didn't we have sweet potatoes in the plan! Our new trainee volunteer, Nickie, was telling us about all the mouthwatering ways she uses sweet potatoes, and for me they are the embodiment of comfort food.

And our little depressed urban neighborhood surely needs some comfort. We hear gunfire occasionally while we're working, but I'm learning the folks there live with that as background noise, like the sound of cars and buses and smells of cooking.
A man was killed by gunfire on our block in early April, and while we were standing outside of the church after that first meeting, we had our first taste of immediate gun violence, a man on a truck was firing a handgun up the street while driving north on MLK Boulevard.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. What is this Beirut?
No, it is a depressed, forgotten neighborhood in the middle of the United States of America, a neighborhood with good people living there who tend their own yards and talk to us strangers, and who don't deserve these abandoned houses, and slum landlord owned rental properties, and the community decay that comes with powerlessness.
But I digress.

So we are ready for another truck load of compost to be dumped and wheelbarrowed in a couple of weeks.

Beautiful Veggies and Flikr Updates

Theresa just posted some cool pics (link) of the Home Street Demo Veggie Garden over on her blog. I must say, 'the beautiful veggie garden' is really producing vegetables... difficult weather, late start, and Doubting Thomases (me) aside!
The seminar we presented to meet with the neighbors and showcase the garden to the Land Bank worked out great! Next year will be even better :) Congratulations and "a job well done" to Theresa, Phil, Mel, Sharron, Helen and Erin and Thanks to our sponsors, Keep Genesee County Beautiful, the Genesee County Land Bank and the Applewood Gardening Initiative.

Also, I'm going to add my gardening project photos to one general gardening "set" on my free Flikr account, but it'll take time and I can only add a certain amount per month (unless I upgrade to the paid account.) For you to look at the pictures in my Flikr set you need to double click on any of the flikerin' the photos right there IN the tag, right.
When you link to the Flikr page, there should be a "set" called Herb Sampler that you can click through with the arrows, or view as a slide show. If you'd like to see a nice larger picture of any photo you see, click on it from the set. Pretty easy. I've also added some pretty pics of one of the Genesee County Herb Society's continuing herb garden project - the Doctor's Herb Garden at Crossroads Village. More to come!

the urban veggie plot

Here's a link to another garden that has been part of my summer ... the demonstration urban vegetable garden on the corner of Home and Chestnut in Flint.
"It is, as Phil dreamed it, a beautiful garden. Veggies can be beautiful. We are learning as we go, because as you all know Rome wasn't built in a day. But it is amazing what a small group of volunteer gardeners can do in a short amount of time."

backyard wildlife

Remember (link) the praying mantis egg cases I set out in the spring? One of my babies showed up today while I was trimming a lavender...
I heard a little voice crying "mommy!" (not really). Anyway, remember, if you click on a photo you can get a bigger version of it.



And here is another critter I saw in some mulch under a spruce tree yesterday...


Blog-housekeeping notes:

This is cool! Right after I embedded my little HGTV (Herb Garden Television -Haha!)gadget into my template so my videos will always be on the main page (see WAY below), Blogger has decided to make uploading videos straight from my computer available. Great minds (eh?) thinking alike, right? Now I wish I could figure out how to add Powerpoint presentations to the blog, because I have a couple good'uns.
I've Googled advice on how to do it, but it is either too time consuming or expensive, depending on the method. If anyone sees a blog with a powerpoint on it, let me know?

I added some newspaper articles about the Detroit Urban Farm and Garden Tour here. These articles take up a lot of space, but the information is important, and some other website/blogs have linked to it, so I thought interested readers deserved to know more.

Hot Fun...

Summer in the City


UPDATE:
Our Master Gardener e-newsletter included the following article from the Detroit News:

Urban farming tour sprouts - How does your Detroit garden grow?
Hundreds are expected to learn secrets

by David Josar / The Detroit News
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Event: 10th Annual Detroit Agricultural Network Tour of Urban Gardens and Farms
Date: Wednesday, August 1, 2007
See this link for more information: http://www.detroitagriculture.org/

DETROIT -- More than 400 people are expected to sign on for one of the biggest annual events of the city's underground culture: a behind-the-scenes tour of Detroit's urban gardens, slated for Wednesday, August 1, 2007.

The tour's popularity, organizers and supporters say, is further evidence the city is becoming a national example of how unused land in depressed cities can be molded into fertile, crop-producing enterprises.

"The interest is there about growing healthy and locally and this fits in with that trend," said Ashley Atkinson, project manager of Greening of Detroit who is helping coordinate the tour with the Detroit Agriculture Network.

The groups have chartered seven buses, and the two-hour tours will start at 6 p.m.

People can choose between visiting gardens on the west side or the east side of the city; there is also a tour of gardens in the Corktown, Woodbridge and Hubbard Farms neighborhoods that will be available to bike riders.

This is the 10th year for the tour, which is becoming one of the city's most popular independent, low-cost events which, despite no official support from the city and sponsors, are extremely successful.

Atkinson said the urban gardens tour regularly sells out even though the number of slots for participants keeps growing.

"When you talk about the weird things that make Detroit Detroit, this is on the list," said Carrie Rusker, a Wayne State University graduate student who lives in the Cass Corridor and went on the tour last year.

The urban garden tour is starting to get mythical status in the city on par with the Fourth Street Art Fair, the annual unofficial block party just west of Wayne State where bands play in a vacant lot and neighbors sell homemade cocktails from their front porches, and the Abreact Theatre, a black box theater that operates in a residential loft in downtown.

"Everyone will be inspired," said Rusker, who started growing tomatoes and peppers for the first time this year.

One garden on the tour is inside an abandoned building near the city's waste incinerator at Interstate 75 and I-94. Another garden, maintained at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, is used to teach high school students but also produces its own cheese from goats on the property.

To further hook participants on urban gardening, Atkinson said chefs from several local restaurants will take homegrown fruits and vegetables that garden tourists drop off before they embark, and make them into appetizers ready for noshing at the end of the tour. "We want people to know what they can do with what they grow," Atkinson said.

The tours will start from the Catherine Ferguson Academy on Selden in southwest Detroit.

For 72-year-old Sandra Hicks, a retired Detroit Public Schools teacher, the tours are a way to illustrate how gardening can transform a city.

"You will see ideas and potential that most people couldn't imagine exist for Detroit," Hicks said. She used to grow her own greens and tomatoes, but has had to downsize to herbs since moving into a high rise.

From 2004-06, the number of community gardens in Detroit that raise agriculture crops nearly quadrupled, from 80 to 302, according to the Detroit Agriculture Network. Organizers expect that tally to jump by another 25 percent this year.

Atkinson said about three times as many people contacted the Detroit Agriculture Network to have their gardens showcased as the tour would allow.

"People have a lot of pride when their garden is chosen for the tour," she said.

UPDATE 2:

VEGETABLES AND CONCRETE: Urban gardeners are turning vacant lots into profitable produce plots
July 27, 2007
by MARTY HAIR
FREE PRESS GARDEN WRITER

Greg Willerer raises specialty organic produce -- burgundy bush beans, pungent herbs for flavoring teas, edible flowers -- and sells them to restaurants.
It's unusual fare, "stuff you just can't buy off a truck," he says.
The fact that he grows this produce in Detroit, near Tiger Stadium, might strike some as unusual.
But Willerer, a 38-year-old teacher who loves to cook, is one of many urban gardeners turning to microfarming as a smart use of vacant land. He says his neighborhood near the old stadium is nearly as open as the country, ripe for cultivation. Growing produce to sell allows residents to reap some economic benefit from unused space where businesses and homes once stood.
"What we're doing here is kind of a wildfire of positivity," he says. "We're not going to be filling the void left by the auto industry, but we're doing something."
Across Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck over the last decade, an urban gardening movement has taken hold in backyards and community gardens. The harvest is good-tasting and nutritious fruits, vegetables and herbs, produced at reasonable cost and in areas where fresh organic produce can be difficult to find.
For extra cash or to launch niche businesses, an increasing number of gardeners are beginning to sell their produce at farmers markets and elsewhere under a new Grown in Detroit label. Several will be on an Aug. 1 urban garden tour.
One stop on the tour will be at a roofless brick building on Chene. A former furniture factory, the building is now owned by a church called Peacemakers International, which ministers to addicts and prostitutes.
Open to the sky, like a light-filled sanctuary, the old factory has become a walled garden in the last three years. The salad greens and other produce grown there are being sold to the Henry Ford in Dearborn, which has made a commitment to buy locally grown food. The church also has a community garden a block away.
"One day we'll have lots of lots. The pastor owns 17," predicted Teresa Miller, 49. She says she arrived at Peacemakers a few years ago as a crack addict. She works there as a secretary and in the gardens, having learned organic gardening techniques through the Garden Resource Program.
The program is a 4-year-old collaboration of groups that promote urban gardening: Detroit Agriculture Network, Greening of Detroit, Michigan State University Extension and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen's Earth Works Garden. For a modest annual fee, members get seeds and plants as well as access to information and class instruction.
Of the hundreds of individual and family, school and community gardens involved, this summer 35 people, double last year's number, are raising produce to sell. The garden resource program supports them by paying the cost for farm market stall rentals, insurance, the Grown in Detroit logo and compostable bags.
Willerer was at a farm market in northwest Detroit one sunny afternoon earlier this month, selling Grown in Detroit produce alongside Roy Kelly, 12, who will be a seventh-grade student at University Preparatory Academy this fall.
For the last two years, Willerer has used hands-on gardening to teach both environmental science and economics. Students who are interested sign up to participate.
Roy, who raises produce in a garden at the school, says he already has learned a lot about plants, like how nasturtiums, which he raises for their edible flowers, grow better in poor soil.
"It's fun," he says, and he gets to keep the money he earns helping grow and sell produce.

Grown in Detroit
Others in the program are exploring niche markets with food products. Detroiter Marilyn Barber, 50, who has been in the Garden Resource Program for three years, grows and purchases collards, which she prepares as a spicy stir-fry. She's now investigating ways to preserve and package them to sell.
Dawn DeMuyt, 44, of Highland Park, says she left a corporate job last winter to "do what I love" -- develop a business growing and selling 20 varieties of heirloom tomatoes in her Highland Park yard with her partner, Patrick LaMourie. She still works part-time for a program that promotes ways to turn gardening into retail opportunities. In an e-mail, she says most backyard or microfarmers have to juggle several ways to make money as they pursue farming as a livelihood.
Also selling produce with the Grown in Detroit label at farm markets this summer are Cornelius Williams, 66, and his partner Leslie Huffman, 48. They hope to add a hoop house, or unheated greenhouse, later this year to extend the growing season at their farm-garden on Detroit's east side, where they grow collards, lettuce, okra, green beans and peppers.
"I want to be an example of what can be done -- and it's good," says Williams, who is a builder. He especially likes to show neighborhood youngsters how plants grow and where food comes from. Most have no clue, he says.
"They don't have the opportunity to see grandma or mom in the backyard, gardening every day," he says.

Vacant lots for the asking
When it comes to potential for gardening, Detroit is a land of vast opportunity. The city owns 20,000 vacant parcels that are available free by permit for gardening during one growing season, according to James Canning, deputy press secretary for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. He says the city is considering creating several community gardens that could be open next spring.
Ashley Atkinson of the Detroit Agriculture Network says she would like the city to provide longer lot leases, allow fences and provide water sources to encourage gardeners willing to invest time, money and inspiration on lots.
Some of that investment could pay off as demand increases for locally grown food. The Henry Ford, for example, now buys 70% of its produce, grain and meat from local farmers, according to Susan Schmidt, director of food services and catering.
"If we can get food locally, instead of shipped from God-knows-where, with the fuel to get it here, the more the better," she says.
Starting this fall, Peacemakers plans to add shiitake mushrooms to its crops. Meanwhile, Miller is considering other ways to expand its production.
She nodded in a direction across the street from the church. On the corner is what looks to be a long-vacant building. It is empty. It has no roof.
"One day I want to go over and find the owner. And then I want to make it into a strawberry patch," Miller says.

Detroit Garden Resource Program
The Detroit Free Press
Gardening - Marty Hair
July 27, 2007

QUESTION: Who's behind it?

ANSWER: The Detroit Garden Resource Program is sponsored by the Detroit
Agriculture Network, the Greening of Detroit, Earth Works Garden at the
Capuchin Soup Kitchen and the Michigan State University Extension.

Q: What does it do?

A: Provides seeds and plants, use of tools, support and education to
families, schools and community gardeners in Detroit, Hamtramck and
Highland Park for a $5 to $20 annual fee. People may join now to start
plants to harvest this fall.

Q: Who pays for it?

A: The sponsoring organizations support it. It also gets funding from
foundations and individuals. This year it is operating the garden resource
program on a $150,000 budget.

Q: Is it safe to eat food grown on abandoned lots?

A: One thing it also pays for is soil testing before the gardens are
planted.

"We rarely get any scary samples," says Ashley Atkinson of the Detroit
Agriculture Network. Out of hundreds tested this year, she says, two
gardens had to be relocated because of lead levels in the soil.

Q: How do I find out more?

A: Go to www.detroitagriculture.org/garden_resource_program.htm or call
313-237-8736.