We Got Sprayed!

Sheri Powell-Wolff of Compost Teana's Organic Landscape Design and Maintenance, came over to The Learning Garden yesterday to spray our basil plants.  We will have our famous Pesto Day on September 25th and we need to have all the growth on these basil plants that we can get by then.  We will prune off any flowers that form (and put them in salads!) and that will help the plants get bigger.  

Sheri's company, Compost Teana's (get it?) provides 'aerated compost tea brewing and application service for Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego' - she also does organic landscape design and maintenance.  And her name is NOT Teana.  Right. The key is ACT - aerated compost tea.  In the past a shovel full of compost was dropped in a burlap bag and allowed to 'brew' overnight - kind of the 'Lipton Tea' model of infusing.  That methodology has gone the way of the postprandial cigarette. 

Sheri started to learn about compost teas and how to make the aerobically active compost teas from a book that I often recommend, Teaming With Microbes, and has gone on to study it much more in depth.  I know that the compost tea she sprayed on my plants will work with the plants to make them more lush and substantial, without a lot of that soft growth that comes from just fertilizer.  If you are a gardener of any kind, I urge you to read the Teaming book.  I had been tapped to teach a class on soils to help out for one quarter at UCLA Extension, and I finished this book about halfway through the course. It opened my eyes and I changed all the rest of my lectures in the course to reflect what I had learned. This books points the way to the future and a new model for how we grow plants. 

A mid-summer crop failure left us bereft of most of the basil we will need for pesto day, September 25th (it gives me the willies just to write that date!) and since we use a special Italian basil, we can't just run out and steal leaves from anyone's basil, although that had crossed my mind.  It is the ingredients in a recipe, any chef or good cook will tell you, that makes a dish special and that's what we have here:  heirloom garlic from European stock, basil that was bred in Italy and really good olive oil and Parmesan cheese.  We grind all these ingredients with freshly picked basil and jar it up for sale - Pesto Madness Pesto.  And we're not the only people who say it's the besto pesto!  This stuff is magnificent over pasta or just on bread.  

Pesto Madness Pesto goes on sale September 25th in the Garden.  You may prepay to reserve yourself a jar or two.  This year, we expect to not have nearly as many jars to sell as last year!  And we always run out.  Orders are filled on a first come, first served basis.  $10 for an 8 ounce jar of heavenly pesto.

david

It's the Bees' Knees

A few of our ladies coming and going from the little hive here at The Learning Garden.  Soon, they will be moved to a home off campus before school starts.

I have tried to adopt swarms of bees several times over the summer - each time a caught swarm and placed them in my hive and each time, they absconded after spending a day to a few weeks in the hive.  They just didn't want to stick around.  After the third attempt had failed, I decided to experiment. 

I put this small five frame hive, often called a 'nuc,' out into the Garden overlooking an African Blue Spice Basil.  The African Blue Spice Basil is a perennial basil and every single plant we have in the Garden is covered with honey bees, which I figured gave my hive a desirable location for a group of bees ("If  you lived here, you'd be home now" kind of advertising campaign.)

Inside of two weeks, I observed bees busily coming and going from the hive.  After two more weeks of observation, I put on my bee suit and opened it up:  bees!  With new comb being drawn and all the signs of a productive hive on my hands.  I opened it up again yesterday and checked on their progress.  They really do have a home there and I find it very exciting.  

School starts on September 13th and the hive will have to be relocated before then.  Here's hoping they make the move intact and once in the new location, they continue to keep house in my little hive!  

david

Free Compost!

The Learning Garden received a fresh load of compost this morning.  It is free to all schools and non-profits - for individuals, we ask for a donation to help keep our gates open.  It is entirely voluntary, we would rather you have the compost and garden than not, but if you are comfortable giving a donation of any size, we are comfortable in accepting it.

Note that this compost will move quickly and I have already asked the city to keep another load on tap for us - schools all over the westside are coming into session and there are seven or eight school gardens using our compost site as their primary pick up.  Also note that everyone should ask before taking the woodchips in this same area - we can the compost on cal, but the woodchip supply is a little less certain and we will need lots of woodchips to get ready for the coming school year ourselves.  

We are here 10 to 5 everyday except Monday.  

david

Upcoming Events in The Learning Garden

August 28^th – Henry Jun Wah Lee, L.Ac will hold a lecture: Introduction to Chinese Taoist Face Reading: Understanding and Using Your Deepest Gifts and Transforming Your Greatest Challenges Your face is a mirror that records your past, reflects your present and forecasts your future. Each feature, shape, line, wrinkle, mole and marking tells a story about who you are. It reveals your life’s deepest gifts and greatest challenges. To know Chinese Face Reading is to know your true nature and the nature of those around you. It can help you find your soul mate, identify the ideal business partner or employee, build stronger teams, and strengthen relationships. More importantly, it can help you recognize your own innate strengths and weaknesses so you can leverage them effectively to live a more powerful and fulfilled life. In this 90 minute lecture, Lee will introduce the nearly three thousand year old practice of Chinese Taoist Face Reading. You’ll gain insights about your own true nature — your unique gifts and challenges — and learn powerful tools for utilizing Chinese Face Reading to improve your life. RSVP: Please RSVP by calling 323-540-4180. Space is limited. Admission: $20, of which $5 will be donated to benefit the Learning Garden.

September 11^th – 9-Noon – The Annual Pepperdine Day of Service in the Garden, preparing the Venice High School beds for the fall term. Come out, get sweaty and do good work in the Garden

September 25^th – 11:30 to 1:30 Our Time Bank Monthly Meeting and Potluck Our Time Bank is a community of people living and working in the Culver City, Palms and Mar Vista area who support each other.  For every hour you help another member, you gain a Timebank Hour. Come out and see why a local economy based on the exchange of time rather than money is a way to create a more meaningful life.

 

September 25^th – 2:00 to 5:00 PESTO DAY Returns! For a mere $10 admission you get to eat a plate of pasta with Italian Sausage, salad, genuine Italian bread and a drink. You may also purchase jars of pesto to take home and enjoy or give as gifts and enjoy – it freezes magnificently and can be a healthful and inspiring addition to meals throughout the long cold California winter.

 

October 3^rd – 1:00 to 5:00 PM UCLA Extension class 'Modern Backyard Food Production' starts in The Learning Garden and runs for the next couple of months. This elective course in Extension's Gardening and Horticulture Certificated Program brings students into the world of really local food where the 'back forty' really is square feet and not acres. Not only does the course cover vegetables but includes raising chickens and herding honey bees. Homegrown and homemade food is featured weekly! Contact UCLA Extension for registration details.

 

Also in October – Victory Garden Circle Master Gardener volunteers will organize and lead low-cost Victory Garden Circles and teach the basics of gardening. These classes of instruction and hands-on activities will introduce gardeners to the basics of growing your own food. You can attend one or all, but by attending all four classes, participants will become UC-certified Victory Gardeners. Contact the Gardenmaster for details.

david

 

Seed Library of Los Angeles; SLOLA

Vegetable seeds tightly closed in jars to keep them more viable are all from The Learning Garden's growing over the past couple of years. These very seeds could be the beginning of a seed library for the Los Angeles area.

The Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA) has been brewing for some time – and it's not quite soup yet – there are hurdles still to cross. But it is closer to reality because The Learning Garden has taken on the challenge of making it happen.

A seed library works very similar to a book library or a tool library. The main difference – and the real nut of the difficulty in making it viable – is that seeds are living entities having a life expiration that puts a whole new urgency into the program.

Once you have joined a seed library – you check out seeds from them just like you would a book. You plant the seeds and grow out your crop, at the end of the season, you return fresh seeds, from your crop, to the library. The library benefits from being able to offer the next person fresh seed and you benefit from having free seeds. It's a win/win and it keeps Monsanto out of your garden and denies them profit from feeding your family.

The Learning Garden, more than any other local entity is the perfect place for a seed library because of the wealth of variety we alone can bring to the table. We have vegetables, California Natives and medicinal plants from which we can store and provide seed – our own inventory of seed is massive giving us the lead in this field. We also have space to be able to grow out seed that needs to be refreshed.

The challenges of making this work are, as follows:

1. We need volunteers to run the seed library – catalog and inventory the supplies and to run the 'open' days
2. We need a database complicated enough to thoroughly track the seed and insuring viability for those checking out the seed but simple enough to be used by volunteers – I have experience with Access and it is certainly complicated enough, not so much usable. Friends suggest File Maker Pro, but I have never used it and don't have the cash to get it, making that a moot point.
3. We need to create a space just for the library to store seeds and have available to them. That, I think can be managed by the Garden by rearranging some of the space in my office and we can turn part of that over to a seed storage space.

So, at this time, I'm looking for some folks willing to devote some of their time to start and run a seed library and some way to log the seeds and the persons who have joined. AND I'd like to learn who is interested in joining a seed library and checking out seeds. At this point, I'm considering a nominal $10 membership fee, which I think should net someone life time membership (your life or my life or the life of the seeds?) – other than the start up costs, I can't see a seed bank costing a great deal to run. I've got an ancient computer around here, if I can get a database program on it to run, that solves that end of the equation. Perhaps there will need to be a fine if you don't bring back the seeds on time, like an overdue book.

Let me know – and I'll keep you posted as we move forward.

david

A Hatful of Beans!

Just a day late from the first anniversary of The Learning Garden (Almost) Daily, I've picked a few beans - a whole hatful, it turns out! Set against the leaves of the plants themselves, there's quite a bit of yummy here!

These are my favorite yellow bean, Pencil Pod and they've been picked at their peak of goodness.  I hope to supplement these with a few other beans from a famers' market and make my delicious pickled basil beans! 

Pencil Pod is a good variety for anyone's use, but they are especially suited to canning and pickling.  They tend to be very straight and that makes getting them in a jar a  *drum roll, please* snap.  Curvey beans need not apply - getting a jar tightly packed with wiggly beans takes more than twice as long and is less than half as satisfying.  They never seem to come out with nearly the same appeal and the beans are never tightly packed which makes keeping them under the brine solution almost impossible - you'll end up with tips that just aren't appetizing.  

You will be able to find my recipe for pickled beans in my forthcoming book and that's the only way unless you know my secret.  But this one tidbit alone will make the book worth its price - guaranteed.

david

Growing Organic Food and Summertime Garden To Do’s

 

 

The Learning Garden was 'on the air!'  This last Saturday, Gardenmaster David King was on the Cindy Dole show talking about August in the garden and some of our upcoming events in The Learning Garden.  You too can surf on over to Cindy Dole's website and hear the whole shebang!

I'm going to - I was so excited to be on the air, I'm not sure what I said!  

david