David King Gave Me Worms!

This Saturday is the last installment of the Growing Food in SoCal work shop with David King for 2013! As usual we run from 10 to noon, in the classroom (or on the patio) of The Learning Garden, at the intersection of Venice Blvd and Walgrove Avenue (enter on Walgrove). 

To get your New Garden Year off right, we are going to give away some  WORMS and teach you how to care for them.  WORMS are on a 'first come, first served basis;' we expect a good turn out for this and have only a limited amount of Red Wigglers to give. BRING A YOGURT OR COTTAGE CHEESE CONTAINER (not the 'single serving' size!) or something similar to take your worms and be prepared to make their bin in short order and give them some scraps or you could have dead worms on your hands.  Yuck! 

Everyone will learn how to care for their worms and how to make an inexpensive worm bin to keep them - they are perfect for apartment dwellers and others who can't have a real live compost pile!  Thye are easy to care for and keep recyclable material out of the waste stream.  And they make a wonderful fertilizer for your plants!  

On this last class of the year, we have a lot to cover – if it's as cold as they say, we'll have hot coffee and tea to help you stay warm.

As usual, $20 at the gate or in advance by PayPal to greenteach@gmail.com.  Thanks!!!  

Thank You LA City Council!

From Left to Right:  Mike Bonin, David King & Paul Koretz with the
Letter of Appreciation for The Learning Garden.

This last Saturday, August 17th, The Learning Garden hosted a new organization's launch in Los Angeles:  Seed Freedom LA.  Seed Freedom was conceived in November 2012 in a meeting of many Los Angeles activists and Dr. Vandana Shiva to carry on with 'what's next' for the anti-genetically modified community in Los Angeles.  The organization's goal is to spear-head the drive to have Los Angeles City Council declare LA a GMO Free Zone - it will be illegal to grow genetically modified plants in Los Angeles in a way that non-GMO plants could be contaminated with the pollen of genetically modified plants.  In the past, industrial agriculture has maintained if their pollen spreads to your plants you are guilty of 'stealing' their technology when in truth most farmers who do not have GMO plants consider it a form of pollution.  This law will protect organic gardeners in their school, community or home gardens from having to wonder if their food has been contaminated with this untested technology.  

City Council Members Mike Bonin and Paul Koretz spoke to the several hundred folks gathered in the Garden and pledged their support for legalizing bee-keeping in Los Angeles and presented The Learning Garden with a Letter of Appreciation from LA City Council.  David King, the gardenmaster, noted in accepting the letter that it was addressed to the community of The Learning Garden and not to any one person and stressed that is how it should be as the garden is a community of many and it has taken everyone's effort to make the garden the success it is today.

Pretty good looking letter!  

Would You Buy Some Plants From This Guy?

Two March Events for your calendar...

Plant Sale
March 16 10am to 2pm

Brian Bailey, Organizer, Sign Sandwich 

Veggies, herbs, flowers, succulents and much more… lettuces and tomatoes; heirloom varieties, SLOLA seedlings, squash, cucumbers, roses, sunflowers, fruit trees, and medicinal plants

Six Packs and Individual plants priced from $1 to $4 .Proceeds from sale go directly to grow and maintain the Learning Garden.  




Spring Equinox Celebration

March 23 12pm to 3pm

No Maypole yet, but...

Spring is officially here, it is time to plant and rejoice in another new growing year.  Join us for lunch, music, live art, presentations, demonstrations, continued plant sale, garden tours, yogic dance and more.

Presenters include: David King; gardenmaster, educator, author and seed saver. Sasha Rovin; founder of Better, local nonprofit that is open sourcing engineered permaculture to create DIY sustainability curriculum. Matt Van Diepen; grower, Home Grown Gardens, local activist. Jim Tate, Our Time Bank – neighborhood service and skills share and trade group. Musicians Include Lokah with Bhakti music Percussion and Yogic Dance. Arianna Solare, singer, songwriter harmonium maestro. Sweet Beets, with David King and KZ G  and Special Guests. 

As usual,enter on Walgrove and park on the street!  

Check back for additional updates; we're still adding stuff!  

david 

No Potluck This Friday, February 8th

The Learning Garden will be closed this coming Friday - so NO POTLUCK.... :-( 

Catch us next week!

david

Pssst... Wanna Grow A Few Veggies?

The man who wrote the book... 

02 Febuary - from 10 to noon, the Gardenmaster tells all on Growing Food in Southern California, also called What To Do And When To Do It - this workshop takes you through February in YOUR garden.  All your gardening questions answered by someone who's been at this for more than 50 years; an excellent hand-out of your monthly gardening activities, a free plant or seeds every month! Get your hands dirty and learn the techniques of a real master gardener, from planting to recipes on how to use what you've grown.  

*  Got bugs? 

* How do you tell when it's done? 

* Are you over (or under) watering? 

** All this and so much more the first Saturday every month!**

The best gardening class in west Los Angeles and still only $20!  Pay via PayPal or pay at the gate.   

One Class or a Series

Single Class $20.00 USD Six Classes Prepaid $100.00 USD

See you there!  

Mar Vista Farmers' Market Pest Control Handout

An adult lady bug from The Learning Garden

Insect Control That Really Works

1. Stop spraying poisons – especially 'organic' ones – organic pesticides are 'full-spectrum' meaning they kill a wide variety of insects the entire time they are active. They do not discriminate between your harmful insects and lady bugs, honey bees or other insects we rely on for help.
2. Have plants in bloom throughout the growing season – in our part of the US that means something in bloom 365 days a year – to provide adult beneficial insects with forage so they will stay around.
3. Set your own personal 'threshold limits' of acceptable damage to your produce – the higher your threshold limit, the least intervention you will do. The threshold limit will vary by crop – if you are desperate to have loads of peppers, you will allow less damage to the peppers than to broccoli which you might be ambivalent about.
4. Patrol your garden frequently to spot harmful insects in their initial stages before they are a bigger problem.
5. Use barriers to prevent infestations before they start
6. Yank plants that refuse to thrive or use them as pest attractants to build up populations of beneficial insects by providing them with available food.
7. Patience, which is free, is more valuable than a ton of poison.

Using insecticides

1. Supports the oil industry – all those pesticides are formulated in oil-based products.
2. Makes you at war with nature – and you can never win!
3. Kills the biology in the soil even if it fails to control the 'bad' insect.
4. Probably kills more beneficial insects than the ones you are targeting.
5. Leads to the unreal expectation of 'perfect food' which is often just a visual lie.
   
   

   

   Aphids and Gardenmaster From The Learning Garden
   

   
   

Plant Communication: Practicing Kinship with All Life, A Workshop

A two-hour class at the Learning Garden, Sat. Jan 19^th Reg. 9:30 am, class 10-Noon

Bring food for shared lunch! SLOLA* meeting at 2:30 PM

$25 at the door, $15 in advance

Health Intuitive Bruce Dickson leads highly interactive, non-talky, exercises to accelerate your Plant Communicator skills. The context is Kinship with All Life. We'll focus and practice on feeling safe again to hear our own Inner Communicator, the One who can harmonize with plants, animals and people.

We'll practice understanding plants on their terms and addressing plant disturbances with both strategy and tactics.

Gather with other plant communicators, increase your effectiveness solving garden problems with pests, soil conditions--anything to do with plants and trees.

We will do case studies and you can bring sick plants. Miracles not guaranteed while more understanding is!

Q: What are Best Practices in Plant Communication?

A: In general, healthy plants have a gentle upward flow of nutrients up from its roots, thru stems, and  up to the leaves. It's possible to feel and track this activity because we have it too. Stress interrupts this flow. It’s possible to measure this upward flow in your self. It's possible to play “20 questions” with the plant and learn what needs correcting.

Familiar with Findhorn, Jim Conroy’s Tree Whispering, or Machelle Small Wright's Perelandra Garden? This has similarities to all.

The main service we can perform for plants is: imagining plants’ optimal life flow, testing and tasting what disconnections exist, testing and tasting to discern disturbing causes, test again for solutions.

Bruce co-founded the Westside Holistic Chamber of Commerce and works as a Health Intuitive. He has 13 books on Amazon-Kindle on self-healing and Energy Detective topics. See 60 online articles on self-healing.

*Seed Library of Los Angeles