Quick Mark Your Calendars!

Upcoming In The Garden

February 6^th – 1:00 to 3:00 PM – First Annual Seed Swap, in conjunction with Environmental Change Makers, The Learning Garden will host a seeds swap!

Swap out those seeds you didn’t use last year for something new and different! The Learning Garden will sponsor our first seed swap on our patio February 6th. Email the Gardenmaster, greenteach@gmail.com, if you have questions.

February 6^th (again!) - 2:00 to 3:00 PM – Introduction to New Volunteers with David King, Gardenmaster. Tour the Garden, learn some about gardening and get on board with The Learning Garden events and happenings! We need volunteers all the time, your service will be rewarded! Free.

February 13^th – 9 AM to Noon The new year's first What To Do and When To Do It comes along just in time to help you plan your summer garden. Want the best ever tomato that wins the taste test on your block? Come on down and we'll get you started. (The Gardenmaster grew the first and second place tomatoes at a Tomato Tasting this last year, he knows what he's doing with tomatoes!) Still only $25 for one class, $100 for five...  (Note that this is a week later than our usual class meeting due to scheduling conflicts - in March, we'll be back on the first Saturday of the month!)

February 13^th – 1:00 to 2:30 – At Ocean View Farms, the Gardenmaster will speak about The Beautiful Food Garden to members of that community garden, the public is invited as well. Free.

February 27^th – 9:00 to 4:30 PM, Small Space Gardening Think you can’t grow your own veggies, fruit and herbs because of lack of space? Think again! In this class designed specifically for apartment, condominium, and other urban dwellers without land, gardening expert Darren Butler will demonstrate how easy it is to grow edibles in spaces as big as a porch or as small as a windowsill. Contact Darren Butler at butlercdarren@gmail.com for registration information.

Ongoing In The Garden

Friday --12:30 PM, The Garden Feast, a potluck with staff and volunteers (and anyone else who show up with a good attitude) at our picnic tables.  The food is always fresh, delicious and abundant.  It is the essence of the SLOW Food Movement, so come prepared  with a tasty bite, a healthy appetite for the bounty of others  and a desire for eclectic conversation. And yes, we continue to meet throughout the season - unless the weather doesn't permit, which means, if you have to put on a coat, the weather isn't permitting that day!

Sunday --10 AM Seth Leon has an informal Harmony Style Qigong practice on our Chi Patio. It is free.

david

Harvest Basket

Red and yellow tomatoes co-mingle with green, yellow and orange peppers that is just a glimpse of our harvest right now! An awesome year of production with tomatoes getting hauled out of the Garden every day! In addition, I have been collecting the yellow banana peppers getting ready to learn how to pickle them this coming Saturday. There are few red jalapenos that I'm going to slice up and dry and the tomatoes, we're just going to eat. There are a bunch more in the Garden that are better for preserving and those will be the ones we roast and freeze (more on that in another post) and make sauce from.

Oddly enough, this has been a lousy year for tomatoes for a lot of nearby gardeners. I'm not sure why that should be so, but we haven't had as good a harvest as this since I started working here in 2002!

My paste tomatoes (San Marino) are being eaten by a mammal. As the remains are being left on the vine, I doubt it is the human mammal, more like squirrels, racoons or something along that line. One portion of corn near the tomatoes has been smashed down, and the corn stalks are all splayed out in all directions. It looks to me like a great fight or some mating took place in the middle of my corn. No dead critters, so I'm thinking the latter. Just don't tell school administration!

david