November's Calendar...

(Don't forget our weekly potluck, Friday, 12:30 to whenever the food's gone.  Bring a dish and enjoy food and lively, smart, conversation every Friday.  Food choices from red meat to vegan... mostly toward vegan...)

Now that the fall garden is in the ground and growing, let's reflect a little on the wonder of growing some of our food - Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays and we invite you to come and share the bounty of your harvest before celebrating with your family.

03 November – 10 to noon Growing Food in Southern California, the 'What To Do And When To Do It Course' with our own Gardenmaster, David King, always good information about what to do in the coming month – we'll be covering compost and vermicomposting this month! And, as always, your questions will be answered with knowledge and humor – guaranteed to be the most fun and informative two gardening hours you'll get in the whole month! And now you can pay using PayPal! Save your space and do it now. $20 for one class or a series of six for $100, save yourself some dough.

One Class or a Series

Single Class $20.00 USD Six Classes Prepaid $100.00 USD

10 November - Loyala Marymount Day of Service 9 AM to 3 PM - gardeners are needed to supervise and guide the progress of the volunteers... Please contact the Gardenmaster to report for service.  These kind of workdays are always uplifting and joyful - if you need a pick me up, come join us.

10 November  9 to 1  - Westside Produce Exchange - drop your extra veggies on the patio and Naomi and elfs replace the contents of your bag with veggies and goodies from the bags of other participants.  You can't just show up, though, all this takes a little thought - email Naomi and get on board.  

11 November - 9 to when we sell out – The Learning Garden's Seed to Sale program has our booth at the Mar Vista Farmers' Market, with Venice High School Students presenting freshly cut culinary herbs from the garden. Included in the month's offerings will be sage, oregano, thyme, rosemary and others as they come on line. Always a good deal and your money supports more learning for more students at the Garden.

17 November - 2:30 – 4:00 Seed Library Of Los Angeles monthly meeting – check out your winter veggies and check in seeds you might have saved from your summer crops and, as always, an educational and fun program to help you learn more seed saving and better gardening. More Info from the Seed Library.  This is the last official meeting this year - the Seed Library is 'dark' in December.

22 November - 11 to 2 - Thanksgiving.  The Learning Garden hosts the staff and clients of the Program for Torture Victims (LA) to our patio to celebrate Thanksgiving.  This holiday, imbued with gratitude and reflection of the blessings in our lives, resonates through the lives of everyone refusing to be confined by misfortune or circumstances of the past.  Join us for our early feast with enough time left to share in the celebration with your family and friends.  Our feast is all potluck, bring enough of your favorite dish for about 20 people.  We have a turkey and usually massive amounts of bread; we can use more of anything else!

Our last event of the year will be a Winter Solstice Ceremony on Friday, 21 December.  We have a fire pit and an 'ending of the year, welcoming of the new year' simple ceremony that doesn't involve getting dressed up, buying gifts or cooking complicated food:  You will find it heartwarming and a bit reflective.  Join us out of the hub bub of modern life.  

david

Calendar? Why Yes, We Have One!

Quick!! Mark Your Calendar!

Pesto on 'the hoof'

(Don't forget our weekly potluck, Friday, 12:30 to whenever the food's gone.  Bring a dish and enjoy food and lively, smart, conversation every Friday.  Food choices from red meat to vegan... mostly toward vegan...)

22 September – 2 to 5 Pesto Day returns – our longest running annual event! Shine up them tastebuds for the delightful experience of sliding some of our homemade pesto over 'em! Show up for a meal of pesto with pasta, Italian sausage and bread,and if you want more pesto, purchase your own jar of pesto to take home! $10 at the gate - come early while the servers are at their happiest!

29 September 9 to 1 Westside Produce Exchange – what do you have extra from your garden? Contact the Westside Produce Exchange people (through Facebookor email the Garden), and set yourself up to bring down your excess and trade it for other folks' excess. An amazingly simple proposition that hasn't been utilized as much as it could be. We've seen some mighty fine produce exchanged.

30 September – 1 to 5 Modern Backyard Food Production, UCLA Extension's course on growing food here in Los Angeles starts off again for the coming 12 weeks or so. Students get their own little plot at The Learning Garden and, while growing veggies and fruits are a big part of the course, we also explore keeping chickens and bees as well as what to do with the food you've grown. Enroll viaUCLA Extension, but do so quickly, the class shows every indication of filling up!

06 October – 10 to noon Growing Food in Southern California with our own Gardenmaster, David King, always good information about what to do in the coming month – we'll be planting garlic and transplanting some of your favorite winter veggies! And, as always, your questions will be answered with knowledge and humor – guaranteed to be the most fun and informative two gardening hours you'll get in the whole month!

14 October – 9 to when we sell out – The Learning Garden's Seed to Sale program has our booth at the Mar Vista Farmers' Market, with Venice High School Students presenting freshly cut culinary herbs from the garden. Included in the month's offerings will be sage, oregano, thyme, rosemary and others as they come on line. Always a good deal and your money supports more learning for more students at the Garden.

18 October – 6 to 9 PM – Gardenmaster David King is on a panel at a screening of Jeffrey Smith's movie, Genetic Roulette. The discussion will center on the movie and considerations on Proposition 37. At the Santa Monica Library, seeCooppertunty for more information.

 

20 October – 2:30 – 4:00 Seed Library Of Los Angeles monthly meeting – check out your winter veggies and check in seeds you might have saved from your summer crops and, as always, an educational and fun program to help you learn more seed saving and better gardening.

 

25 October - 6:30 to 8:00 PM Seed Saving 101 - this is the basic seed saving course for anyone interested in saving seeds.  Seed Saving, in the face of our government's unwillingness to legislate any control over the big ag multi-national corporations, is the ONLY way we can act, as individuals to ensure a safe food supply because **all** food begins with seeds.  Class runs three nights and it is a series - details at the Seed Library of Los Angeles web page.

I Can't Believe It's Almost September!

Getting everyone in the speed
weeding mood: coordinator, Annette Pasterak!

We just concluded our first every "Weed Dating!"  Thanks to Annette Pasternak and Ingrid Schneider for doing the work to pull this thing off!  It was our first ever Weed Dating and everyone felt it was very successful - some weeds got pulled, some new friends made and a lot of folks had a fun afternoon.   We have no new relationships to report yet, but you never know!  

August was a fun packed month for those of us with Learning Garden and September, usually one of our more action packed months is just a few days away.  

This is the first blog post of the new web page - now all the posts that used to just hang out on The Learning Garden Almost Daily blog now will be updated on The Learning Garden's home page (http://www.thelearninggarden.org/blog/tlgdaily/).  The posts will continue to go up here and are automatically forwarded to the Garden's page, so you have your choice.  

So our September lineup is, as follows: 

01 September, 10 - Noon, What To Do And When To Do It, with Gardenmaster David King.  $20 at the gate and one of the best bargains around!  We'll be working on getting the fall garden planted and productive for you -always fun and informative.  No need to RSVP, just arrive! (Please note, the time is 10 to noon, not nine to noon - we changed the time but it has just come to our attention that some of our materials still had  the 9 AM start time still... Sorry for any confusion.) While the topic always fluctuates depending on questions and we seize on any 'learning  moments' as they arrive, part of this month's discussion, we will collect seeds from a squash and a tomato and prepare them to be saved, we will plant broccoli and seeds of other winter plants, talk compost and fertilizer and other exciting gardenery things! 08 September 9 to 2, Pepperdine 'Step Forward Day' Pepperdine students come out to help put the garden into shape for the coming school year - come on out and enjoy the energy!  We'll be helping get the high school beds set up for this term and we'll be working in our compost area to put that in a whole new order. 09 September 9 to 2 - Mar Vista Farmers' Market, The Learning Garden's Seed To Sale Program with Venice High School Students learning all aspects of the getting fresh food to the table, from planting and growing to packaging and marketing.  Come by our booth at the farmers' market and see the fresh food for sale! 11 September to 13 September The National Heirloom Festival - 2nd year at Santa Rosa!  We'll need replacement gardenmasters that week because our own is going!  If you can, join him at the Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA) table.*

15 September, 2:30 to 4:00 PM the monthly meeting of the Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA) meets on The Learning Gardne's patio.  Check out your fall seeds; broccoli, cabbage, fava beans, peas, radishes, carrots, beets  and more!

22 September, 1 to 4 PM our 8th Annual Pesto Day returns!  Shine up them tastebuds and come on out and chow down with us!  We make the 'besto pesto!' For a mere ten bucks we  will serve you pasta with pesto, Italian salad, Italian sausage, Italian lemonade (or ice tea, depending on what the Lemon Gods decide) and desert along with our unrivaled pesto demonstration on our patio.   

29 September 2 to 5 - Weedy Sunday in the Garden - helping the Traditional Chinese Medicine Herb Garden beautify and shine - and saving seeds of these often rare plants (certainly most of them are pretty rare in the US!).

30 September, 1 to 5 - first class meeting of UCLA Extension's"Modern Backyard Food Production" taught by Gardenmaster David King - enroll via UCLA Extension's webste.

05 October, 10 to Noon - and it's time for What To Do And When To Do It again!  

And don't forget: 12:30 to about 1:30 Every Friday in the Garden we have our weekly potluck - a wide variety of good food and eclectic conversation - everybody with a good attitude is welcome!

Looking ahead, don't forget to plan on our Thanksgiving Celebration at 11:00 AM on Thanksgiving Day.  We invite the staff and clients of the Program for Torture Victims as our guests for the meal. We do this early in the day so we have the afternoon free for our family events.  This is one of the great traditions of The Learning Garden; please join us!  

*Sign up to be a Gardenmaster! We need folks to commit to being present and responsible for the Garden on these following days:

	Wednesday (12th)	Thursday (13th)	Friday (14th)
10:00 to 12:30
12:30 to 3:00
3:00 to 5:00

The hours are suggested – if you can do more, that's OK – there might be someone who wants to do less. The earlier Friday shifts are always desirable because the potluck happens at 12:30 on Friday and there are always people around. The compensation is negligible, but the rewards are enormous!

Drop by our new and improved web site where you'll find updated information and links, blog posts on events at The Learning Garden as well as gardening information and musings of Learning Garden staff and volunteers.

Follow us on Facebook.

But most of all:  show up at the Learning Garden and join our community!

david

Next Growing Food Class Is August 4th!

Growing Food in Southern California 
  with David King

1st Saturday of Every Month, 10AM - 12PM

 at

The Learning Garden at Venice High

Venice Blvd & Walgrove Ave, Venice, CA 90291

Grow Food classes are hands-on mini-workshop where you experience first-hand what the plants and soil are doing, and what you can do to maximize their production in the coming month.  

Emphasis on sustainable, organic practices, including: water conservation, beneficial pest management, soil maintenance, seed saving, and more.

Sample curriculum from July, 2012:

Ollas, courtesy of El Traspatio.

It is most important to have water at the roots of plants – spraying water into the air to fall on the soil, is not very efficient. A lot of that water can be blown away from your plants (on to the neighbors!) and a lot evaporates off into the air. It is not very efficient at all. But there are other ways to to water that are better. All these other ways involve putting the water close to the root zone. The two ways to do this include some of the newest technology and some of the oldest technology. 

The newest technology is drip irrigation; the oldest is called an 'olla' – pronounces OYE-ya.

 Variations of ollas are found in several different ancient cultures and there is a move to put them back into gardens today.

Individual classes are $20, or buy a package of 6 for $100 and save $20.

Classes are held at The Learning Garden, a busting, year-round educational center located on the campus of historic Venice High School, less than 2 miles from the beach. 

David King, Gardenmaster at The Learning Garden, has been growing food and teaching others how to do so in the Southern California climate for more than 20 years. He is a vocal advocate for food sustainable, organic practices in food production

The Learning Garden at Venice High School
Venice Blvd & Walgrove Ave, Venice, CA 90291
(310) - 722 - 3656

Become A Gardenmaster

Here's your chance to try your hand at being a Gardenmaster at The Learning Garden!   Starting August 9, through August 13, our usual Gardenmaster will be off to San Francisco attending the American Community Gardening Association annual convention and we'll need dedicated volunteers to handle the place while he is gone.  


You can be a Gardenmaster for as many hours as you like, but we usually break the day into several short shifts, in a pattern as follows:  


Thursday:
10 to noon
Noon to 2
2 to 5 (ok, that's not two hours)


Friday
10 to Noon
Noon to 2 (includes potluck!)
2 to 5 


Saturday
10 to Noon
Noon to 2
2 to 5


Sunday 
10 to Noon
Noon to 2 
2 to 5


Please note we'll need to do this again in September 12, 13 and 14, so if you can't do it this time, you have another chance then.  


Let us know if you are willing to be a Gardenmaster for a while!


david

INTERMEDIATE VICTORY GARDENING!

Offered by The Learning Garden under the auspices of the University of California Extension:

Four classes to really give you the dirt on gardening! Expand your skill level and appreciate the world of plants so much better; introducing a new series of more advanced gardening classes!

The four session class will cover the following topics:

May 20 – Crop rotation; perennial food plants; companion planting How do plants interact with one another? What should follow what? How do I care for my fruit trees? I want to grow asparagus and artichokes, but I am a little intimidated; what do I need to know?

May 27 - Seed saving/vegetable breeding Why should I be concerned about saving seeds? Is it hard to save seeds? How can I tell if it's good seed? Isn't breeding vegetables best left to the professionals?

June 3 – Propagation and grafting and budding What is grafting and why is it important? Can I really have two apples on the same tree? Is grafting 'natural' and not some biotech kind of weirdness? When can I do it?

June 10 – Vermiculture/Composting What if I don't have room for a compost pile, I just have plants in containers on my balcony? Isn't compost a lot of work? How can I really compost in a small garden?

Each class is a stand alone unit so participants may attend all four for a discounted price, or take any combination of the classes – they are designed to be modular units of instruction. These are practical classes with hands on participation in each class. Taught by Gardenmaster David King and Master Gardener Emi Carvel, these classes will hone your gardening skills to new level.

Classes are $20 each; the series of four is discounted to $75. We may have some scholarships available depending on enrollment. A minimum $20 deposit is required to hold your space. You are encouraged to dress for our often cooler days here in The Learning Garden. We will make hot tea and/or coffee on cooler days; bring your own cup as we try to edge closer to zero waste. 

 

Contact David for other options.

The Learning Garden Is Closed...

...not forever, but this Friday and Saturday, March 23 and 24. The Unified School District has an opportunity to earn some money with a commercial being filmed in the Garden, so we will be closed and there will be no potluck this Friday  

Hopefully, all will be returned to 'Normal' by next Wednesday and we will resume our normal, peaceful gardening routine.

david