DC Urban Gardeners

Post-inaugural fall-out in the garden (Ripley's, on the Mall)

I'm sorry to report that the inaugural news out of Washington, D.C. isn't ALL good, at least in the gardening department.  Remember the "Best Little Garden in D.C. and the Plant Geek who Tends it?"  I didn't think so, but it's the Ripley Garden just off the National Mall.  Its gardener in charge, Janet Draper, wrote to tell me about - oops - major damage caused by enthusiastic crowds (and I'll add - crowd control and security that let everyone down).  Just look where the poor garden is located - awfully close to the action.

Here's some of Janet's sad report:

I was very thankful to learn before the event that the Ripley Garden would be safe since they had walled it off with 6’ fencing for security reasons...Due to excitement and massive crowds being forced down Independence Ave (as early at 6:30 a.m. 7th street was blocked off!), people were desperate in their excitement to get to the Mall, so the fence protecting Ripley was breached (people first climbed it; then it was just moved out of the way).

As far as I can determine, what must have happened is that people were flooding (coworkers describe people nearly running) into the garden and then they were blocked in by the fence at the other end, and until that was removed, the crowds were backing up and people must have been frantically just trying to find someplace to stand and not get trampled. Needless to say, the garden took a major hit.  The gates remained down through the entire event so the garden was trampled both coming and going.

The result? "Plants just disappeared!  It is as if they were freeze dried then they just turned to dust!" 

But Janet's a REAL GARDENER, and everyone here knows what that means - neither rains nor winds nor gate-crashing crowds can kill her spirit!  And she tells me her Smithsonian bosses are supportive and the garden WILL make a comeback!

Photo:  Today Janet's smiling and inspiring crowds to plant gorgeous annuals from seeds.  She's sharing her photos with me, so stay tuned.

Posted by Susan Harris

Local Picks for White House "Farmer"

It's amazing the attention a little website can get, and I'm speaking of course of White House Farmer.com, where people across the country have been voting for their choice for "White House Farmer."  Over 100 farmers were nominated and 56,000 votes were cast in just 10 days, which I think speaks to the popularity of the very cool idea of food being grown again at the White House. 

The top three vote-getters are all women - gardeners at a community farm in Madison, WI, an 8-acre organic farm in Puyallup, WA, and a provider of home farming services in Davis, CA. In fourth place is the top male vote-getter, Will Allen.  Of course I want ALL the nominees to win something - recognition, kudos for their good work, more funding for their projects.  And how about a shout-out to the Brachman family (in S. Illinois, not Iowa as I previously wrote), whose White House Farmer website and make-believe election have brought even more attention to this idea whose time has come - on the heels of campaigning by Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Roger Doiron and the WHO Farm guys.  The success of all these crusaders in raising awareness, drumming up excitement for the First Family raising food and getting this idea ALL OVER THE MEDIA has been phenomenal.

But as a D.C. local, with almost four decades inside the notorious Beltway, I propose a different contest altogether, and urge a different tactic for growing food at the White House:

• Instead of a large farm, why not a small kitchen garden, just right for a family of four and their friends. No big deal to install and maintain, no big security hassles, and lots of potential for showing Americans what they, too, can do with very little money or time.  Unlike the 5-acre farm imagined by Pollan and others, it wouldn't compete with local farmers.  And of course it would be beautiful.

• As kitchen gardener, whose services would only be needed a few hours every week, I suggest someone who not only knows how to grow vegetables but who also has experience teaching KIDS to grow them.  I'm not alone in suggesting that someone affiliated with the Youth Garden of the National Arboretum would be great for this part-time job (also not alone in thinking of a particular young woman who's a total delight and loved by kids.)  Oh, and is it TOO obvious to suggest that someone who knows veg-growing here in the Mid-Atlantic Humidity Belt might be better suited than those fine candidates from other climates?
  

• I also propose a White House kitchen garden adviser, and a very particular person to fill that role - Cindy Brown.  She's been the number one teacher of food-growing in the Washington, D.C. area for years now.  She spoke to the crowd at the Fourth Annual Washington Seed Exchange and floored even the geekiest of plant geeks with her knowledge of how the various vegetable varieties performs right here. That kind of knowledge you can only gain from growing for decades in one spot and trying every single variety there is.  Veg varieties mean absolutely nothing to me, but what bowled ME over was her enthusiasm - nay squealing excitement - for the taste of the vegetables she talked about, cooked a certain way and yum-yum-yum!  See, eating delicious food I GET.  Cindy just may turn me into a farmer after all (along with Ranter Michele).

So for staffers at the White House, if you're reading this (we WISH), here's Cindy's bio:

Cynthia Brown, Assistant Director at Green Springs Garden, started her gardening career in tandem with her passion for cooking.  Her desire to have specialty herbs and vegetables led her to experiment with edibles and test the climatic limits of the mid-Atlantic region. Cindy is a regular contributor to Washington Gardener magazine, appears on local TV and radio shows and speaks frequently at various horticultural venues.  She designs gardens with a mix of ornamentals and edibles for a gourmet garden that appeals to all your senses.

Top photo:  A lovely family-size kitchen garden - Robin Wedewer's  in Maryland.  Middle: Harvest celebration at the Youth Garden.  Bottom: Cindy Brown.

Posted by Susan Harris

White House Food Garden: Time to Go Back to School

It seems the whole world is badgering the Obamas to tear up part of the White House lawn and plant a food garden.

Kitchen Gardeners International started a petition called "Eat the View" that calls on the first family to plant a "victory garden" within their first 100 days in office. Michael Pollan, writing in the New York Times Magazine last year, proposed turning five acres of White House property into a farm, and a website in California got nearly 60,000 readers to vote on who should be the farmer. Now our friend Susan Harris, blogging at Garden Rant, has rolled out a whole cast of characters to design, advise on and maintain a White House kitchen garden.

DC's Cycling Garden-Activists in the News

GREAT story by Adrian Higgins giving DC's Women Garden Cyclists some much-needed attention.  That link won't show you the fabulous photos, so I took this screen shot from the Home&Garden web page.

Posted by Susan Harris

The sad state of the organic lawn demo on the Mall

Been noticing the organic lawn care demo on the Mall at all?  Me, neither, until our Yahoo group received this email:  ""Have you taken a look at the National Mall lately? Safelawns.Org Project restoring the mall organically has issues. It looks pretty bad. I am all in favor of growing grass organically, but why did the National Mall project fail? This is a way for us to learn from this trial."

So I forwarded it to Pamela Burton at SafeLawns for a response and here it is:

Now, regarding S Bloom’s email, attached are photos of the SafeLawns test site in April of this year and again in May.

April:  Thick, green and beautiful.

May: AFTER the Graduation Ceremony.

Black, plastic tarp was laid over the entire site, then chairs were set out and the lawn just cooked and cooked and cooked. Then, the graduation ceremony was held on which thousands of people walked, stood and sat on the black plastic tarp while the lawn continued to bake.  You can see the ‘aisles’ on which the tarp was not covering the turf – still lush, green and pesticide free in May.  We are sadly aware of the lawn’s current condition and we are working with our local vendor to try and overcome the effects of the plastic tarp

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to respond to your member about this issue.

Posted by Susan Harris

Organic lawn care on trial in D.C.

The nonprofit SafeLawns.org has planted a patch of lawn using organic growing techniques in that most public of spots - our National Mall.  So Metro or stroll on down to the 4rd to 7th Street section sometime in the next two growing seasons to see the results.  Compare organic versus traditional lawn care yourself, read the resources on their website, and remember that if organic lawn care can survive in this challenging spot, it's a good bet for our own yards, where it can replace the tons of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides we're instructed by certain corporations to dump on our property throughout the season.  Imagine: No more little flags warning neighbors that our lawns are toxic to them.  (Animals, not versed in flag-reading, are just out of luck.)

HOW IT'S DONE
According to SafeLawns' partnership agreement with the Park Service, the two lawn panels comprising the 4.3-acre test area have been either aerated or tilled to 8", had compost applied, then were seeded and watered in.  Next, a "liquid compost mulch" is applied.  I'm assuming that mean compost tea because the plan is to apply compost tea throughout the duration of the test, which ends in September of '09. SafeLawns is doing all this at no cost to the government.

FINDINGS TO BE FULLY REPORTED
Oh, and this is research, not a quick PR gimmick.  The EPA will be compiling and reporting findings on "soil compaction, moisture, organisms, fertility, as well as hours worked and type and amount of all machinery and products used."  Excellent!

The compaction findings will be particularly revealing, considering how much heavy traffic this strip of land gets.  All those demonstrations for or against every known cause really add up.  Then there's the huge 4th of July event, the yearly Folklife Festival, amateur sports, and even large, rowdy commercial events (thanks to a controversial new policy of the National Park Service).  So the folks at SafeLawns are really putting their talk to the test here.

DO WE REALLY HAVE TO BE BROWN TO BE GREEN?
After completing this turf-redo, the folks from Safe Lawns didn't just hung up their gardening clothes and go home; they stayed in town to teach us locals all about safe lawn care and the training they offered is described here. According to that, public officials (including the governor of North Carolina) are pleading with residents to let their lawns turn brown, trying to convince the public that brown lawns are a badge of honor, but Paul Tukey claims that brown isn't necessary:

The founder of SafeLawns.org, however, said that in most cases lawns and gardens could remain green and lush if homeowners and landscape professionals utilize organic methods. He’ll offer specifics when his organization participates in the DC Environmental Conference at the University of District of Columbia on Saturday, Oct. 20.

“If you avoid synthetic chemical fertilizers and switch to compost and organic fertilizers, you’ll reduce the need for watering by up to 75 percent,” said Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual. “These natural soil amendments help the soil store water and, therefore, help the grass stay green.”

Now truth to tell, I didn't attend the training but then I'm already a convert.  I did pay a quick visit to the Mall this week and took this photo of the new lawn, which is looking darn good.  Kudos to Paul, Shep, and the whole gang at Safe Lawns!

Posted by Susan Harris

Top photo credit. Middle photo by SafeLawns.org. 

 

The nonprofit SafeLawns.org has planted a patch of lawn using organic growing techniques in that most public of spots - our National Mall.  So Metro or stroll on down to the 4rd to 7th Street section sometime in the next two growing seasons to see the results.  Compare organic versus traditional lawn care yourself, read the resources on their website, and remember that if organic lawn care can survive in this challenging spot, it's a good bet for our own yards, where it can replace the tons of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides we're instructed by certain corporations to dump on our property throughout the season.  Imagine: No more little flags warning neighbors that our lawns are toxic to them.  (Animals, not versed in flag-reading, are just out of luck.)

HOW IT'S DONE
According to SafeLawns' partnership agreement with the Park Service, the two lawn panels comprising the 4.3-acre test area have been either aerated or tilled to 8", had compost applied, then were seeded and watered in.  Next, a "liquid compost mulch" is applied.  I'm assuming that mean compost tea because the plan is to apply compost tea throughout the duration of the test, which ends in September of '09. SafeLawns is doing all this at no cost to the government.

FINDINGS TO BE FULLY REPORTED
Oh, and this is research, not a quick PR gimmick.  The EPA will be compiling and reporting findings on "soil compaction, moisture, organisms, fertility, as well as hours worked and type and amount of all machinery and products used."  Excellent!

The compaction findings will be particularly revealing, considering how much heavy traffic this strip of land gets.  All those demonstrations for or against every known cause really add up.  Then there's the huge 4th of July event, the yearly Folklife Festival, amateur sports, and even large, rowdy commercial events (thanks to a controversial new policy of the National Park Service).  So the folks at SafeLawns are really putting their talk to the test here.

DO WE REALLY HAVE TO BE BROWN TO BE GREEN?
After completing this turf-redo, the folks from Safe Lawns didn't just hung up their gardening clothes and go home; they stayed in town to teach us locals all about safe lawn care and the training they offered is described here. According to that, public officials (including the governor of North Carolina) are pleading with residents to let their lawns turn brown, trying to convince the public that brown lawns are a badge of honor, but Paul Tukey claims that brown isn't necessary:

The founder of SafeLawns.org, however, said that in most cases lawns and gardens could remain green and lush if homeowners and landscape professionals utilize organic methods. He’ll offer specifics when his organization participates in the DC Environmental Conference at the University of District of Columbia on Saturday, Oct. 20.

“If you avoid synthetic chemical fertilizers and switch to compost and organic fertilizers, you’ll reduce the need for watering by up to 75 percent,” said Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual. “These natural soil amendments help the soil store water and, therefore, help the grass stay green.”

Now truth to tell, I didn't attend the training but then I'm already a convert.  I did pay a quick visit to the Mall this week and took this photo of the new lawn, which is looking darn good.  Kudos to Paul, Shep, and the whole gang at Safe Lawns!

Posted by Susan Harris

Top photo credit. Middle photo by SafeLawns.org. 

DC's Own Women Garden Cyclists Rock!!!

I LOVE these women and how they're spending their summer - on a 3-month cycling trip from Washington D.C. to Montreal and back again, with this very worthy purpose:

We’ll be visiting urban farms in big cities, but also grassroots organizations in small towns – anywhere where people are being reconnected with the food they eat. For example, we’ll be spending time at Mill Creek Farm in West Philadelphia which yields fresh, affordable produce in a malnourished, urban neighborhood. Red Hook Farm in Brooklyn is another site we will be visiting, in which youth from the surrounding neighborhood are employed to harvest organic vegetables and market the produce from the urban farm. 

Then they're bringing that wealth of information back to D.C. to make something happen HERE.  D.C. really needs these Women Garden Cyclers, I'll tell ya.

The tour started July 6 and according to their blog, the cyclers in the New York City area. Follow their route.  Or drop them a line: gardencycles[at]gmail.com.

MORE FROM THEIR BLOG

The bicycle tour investigations will be documented through audio and visual recordings that will be distributed via website and public forums, ultimately promoting the journey as a resource for academic institutions and bringing it back to use in budding grassroots initiatives in Washington DC, where we live.

MORE HIGHLIGHTS

• The cyclers visited City Farms in Baltimore and this farm in Philadelphia.
• Here's a story about them in the Philadelphia City Paper.

I hope to meet them upon their triumphant return and post about them again.

Sustainability - in Fishing

This story is technically off-topic but urban gardeners are so hip to food issues, we thought we'd pass it along.

A tipping point has clearly been crossed because all of a sudden the need for sustainable fishing practices is everywhere.  And not just at The Slow Cook,  which I read religiously, despite my lack of interest in cooking.  It's also here, here and - oh, everywhere.

So I was primed to try the new Georgetown hot spot Hook, the first restaurant in D.C. that adheres strictly to sustainable fishing practices.  Chef Barton Seaver, called a "visionary" in this Washington Post review, visits all his suppliers to make sure they're not using such widespread practices as overfishing, collection techniques that destroy habitat, or farming with the use of antibiotics.

So how do sustainable fish taste?  Like real food, the real meat of creatures of the sea, but with a touch of Barton's culinary magic.  I'm no food critic but yum!

Each customer receives a wallet-sized brochure outlining in detail the fish to avoid and the fish to eat with impunity, a brochure brought to us with the help of Patagonia and the Blue Ocean Institute.  (The brochure's supposed to be on line here, but that link isn't working at the moment.)  And Earth Echo International is also involved somehow and my dinner companion was their secretary-treasurer, the charming Jan Cousteau, whom I'd met at the DC opening of "The Green" on the Sundance Channel.

So that's what I was doing at a "glam new watering hole" that's "swimming with the young and pretty."  A little off my usual beat. 

Posted by Susan Harris.  Photo of Jan Cousteau and Chef Barton Seaver, taken with a camera whose flash wasn't working at that particular moment.

Making Waves

D.C. Urban Gardeners took to the airwaves yesterday in a radio discussion about the impact of global warming on gardening.

An official from the U.S. Department of Agriculture stole the show, however, when she acknowledged that publication of a sophisticated new hardiness zone map based on the most recent climate reports has been delayed because some of the mappers have been in Iraq, and for longer than expected.

I was invited to appear on Pacifica Radio's weekly "Earthbeat" segment to outline ways that we gardeners can reduce our carbon footprint and help alleviate the affects of global warming.

But ahead of me were, first, Patty Glick of the National Wildlife Federation, and author of that group's publication, "A Gardener's Guide to Global Warming," along with Kim Kaplan of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service.

The Wildlife Federation has outlined numerous steps gardeners can take to help the environment, such as eliminating use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, reducing the use of fossil-fueled power tools, planting native species and installing rain barrels.

Meanwhile, federal agriculture officials have taken some heat for falling behind in the race to keep track of the hardiness zone's northward march as a result of global warming. Kaplan was forced to defend the agency, for instance, against the Arbor Days Foundation's decision to publish their own hardiness zone map.

Kaplan said the USDA map will rely on more comprehensive data and will be more internet friendly--they just have to wait for their mappers to get back from the war zone in Iraq.

Also in the box was Todd Forrest of the New York Botanical Gardens, who said gardeners should be heartened that they are now at the forefront of the climate struggle. "By maintaining healthy green spaces we help mitigate the climate locally," Forrest said.

Forrest said one effect of warming trends in New York City is that the Botanical Gardens are now able to grow camellias and crape myrtles, which until now have been typical of more southerly climes.

On the downside, hemlock trees are now more vulnerable to pests that used to be killed off during cold winters, but are now surviving because of balmier temperatures.

Adrian Higgins, garden columnist for The Washington Post, said he is particularly unsettled by summer temperatures that now fail to cool off in the evening. As a result, Higgins said he no longer recommends gardeners in our area plant lilies or Eastern White pine or Colorado spruce or certain junipers.

"The warmer temperatures definitely are forcing people to be more inventive," Higgins said.

And what did Mr. Bruske have to say?

Compost. Compost. Compost.

It's all about feeding the soil, people, so the soil can feed your plants. What are we thinking, spraying all that fertilizer on our gardens? Or using gas-powered machines to blow the leaves off our lawn, then pile them in plastic bags at the curb so someone can throw them in a truck and drive them to an incinerator? 

And lawns? Turfbuilder? What's that about?

This global warming thing is going to require some kind of attitude adjustment.

You can listen to the complete broadcast here.

Transitions at the Youth Garden

The dogwoods are blooming and changes are happening at The Washington Youth Garden.

After an extensive search, the Youth Garden has found a new programming director. Not only is she a D.C. native, not only does she live in the neighborhood, but she was actually a participant in the Youth Garden as an elementary school student some years back.

Meet Kaifa Anderson-Hall, who was feted with a pot-luck lunch today by staff at the National Arboretum, where the Youth Garden has its digs, as well as by several friends and volunteers.

Equipped with a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland, Anderson-Hall until two years ago was the family and social counselor, as well as one of the founders, at Tree of Life Public Charter School on the grounds of the former Children's Museum.

Anderson-Hall graduated as a Master Gardener in 2005. Then she suffered a triple blow: the deaths of her mother and father-in-law and being hit by a car.

She sought comfort at the Youth Garden, a place she had known since childhood, and offered to volunteer.

"I came back to the garden to complete the healing process," she said.

She soon became a regular on Tuesdays, when volunteers help with garden maintenance. Then she joined the Science in the Classroom project, helping Youth Garden staff reach out to area elementary schools.

When the position of program director opened, eyes turned to Anderson-Hall.

"Some of the senior volunteers sort of propositioned me," she said. "They twisted my arm. It's a wonderful program."

But while the Youth Garden is gaining a new program director, it is losing another old (or young) hand, Jenny Guillaume.

Many will recognize Guillaume, 25, as the face behind the Youth Garden's outreach programs, especially the events where families interact with local chefs, cooking meals with ingredients grown in the garden.

Guillaume, who runs the actual gardening part of the garden, has been with the Youth Garden for nearly three years. In fact, this was her first job after graduating from Bates College in Maine.

She's been lured away--at least for the time being--by the chance to be one of two managers at a sprawling, 2.5-acre urban garden in Brooklyn, NY, called Red Hook Community Farm. The farm, built over a field of asphalt, is part of the Added Value organization, working to train local youths in community leadership and sustainable urban gardening.

The farm sells produce through local farmer's markets and to area restaurants.

"The job only runs through December. So who knows? I may be back," said Guillaume.

Posted by Ed Bruske