GICD Growing People News
Don Lambert
EVER GROWING
July 12, 2011News
Our Enabling Garden project is in second place!! Just three more weeks and this contest ends. Have you gone online to www.deloachcommunitygardens.com, invited your friends as well, viewed the Center for Growing People video, and voted? Have you been voting every day? If GICD’s project to build enabling walkways and beds at the Center wins, that’s worth $4000. Some GICD team members have already started working on this project, dubbed “Jack’s Garden” in memoriam. Part of the money needed has already been donated. We just need a few more voting supporters every day to help us reach our goal. Thank you.
Sweet potatoes for fall harvest. It is getting late already to plant sweet potatoes (best in April and May), but a donation of several armloads of cuttings from Marie with Coppell Community Gardens (Thank you!) was most welcome. The kids, those being the Team Water Works group, renovated a plot at the East Dallas Community Garden and planted sweet potatoes last Friday. On Saturday, some of us planted several hundred more at the Center gardens. A large early planting is already growing strong. Sweet potatoes are a good crop for Texas because they outgrow Bermuda grass, do well in the summer heat, and are efficient producers of one of the most nutritious vegetables one can grow and give to others.
Volunteer. Come help with harvesting, or come to learn and help at the Center. This week the long beans and okra bore their first fruits. These crops need daily harvesting to keep them producing through summer and into the fall season. We are talking about 100 foot rows, 2 of okra and 2 of Chinese long beans. We grow Zebest okra and Chinese Red Noodle long beans. That’s many pounds, bushel basket loads, to be harvested. The regular weekly harvest is on Tuesday mornings at 9am, but if you call Becky Smith (214-564-5801) and make arrangements, your help is welcome any day (especially early mornings or evenings). This produce is grown in the Just Greens garden at Our Saviour, and is donated to the Pleasant Grove Food Pantry.
How did your tomatoes turn out this year? GICD grew 19 varieties of tomatoes from seed this year, and sold or distributed 384 plants that were planted in 24 community or backyard gardens. If you grew GICD plants please let us know which of these varieties produced well, tasted best, resisted insects and diseases, and if you would grow them again. We choose mostly from those that have done best over several years (Celebrity, Lemon Boy, Viva Italia, Costoluto Genovese, and Cherokee Purple), but also included some newer ones felt to be worth trying out (namely: BHN444, Bella Rosa, Black Cherry, and Box Car Willie). Please contact us at gro...@flash.net and let us know how these tomatoes did in your garden.
Visit Gardeners in Community Development at www.gardendallas.orgTo be removed from GICD’s list of community garden supporters contact us at gro...@flash.net .
-- Don Lambert Executive Director Gardeners in Community Development 972-231-3565 www.gardendallas.org