GICD Ever Growing News

[Don Lambert]

EVER GROWING May 31, 2011

News

Buy Fresh Asian Vegetables at the East Dallas Community Garden, 1416 N Fitzhugh
The garden market is now selling mustard greens, spring onions, garlic chives, Malabar spinach, mint leaves, taro stem, amaranth greens and cilantro.  Your best time to drop by is early on Saturday mornings.  This market is a little bit of Southeast Asia right her in Dallas.  All earnings go to support these hard working seniors.  

Center for Growing People:  Crops are Planted!
We have been scrambling at the Center to get “Just Greens,” our pantry mini-farm planted.  We have now planted all of the 150’ long rows -- one of tomatoes in March; two rows of peppers, one of eggplant, and a mixed row of squash and cucumbers in early April; and two rows each of okra and Asian longbeans, a mixed row each of pole beans and bush beans, and lima beans and squash on the fence in mid May.  We also planted a few hills of melons and about 150 sweet potato slips.  Oh, and we also planted a small patch of rice!

Some tomatoes and cucumbers are already being harvested, and the peppers and eggplant are beginning to set fruit.  We anticipate bumper harvests this year, with many pounds going to the food pantry, and extra tomatoes and peppers for the salsa and the pickled peppers that Tiah loves to make during our summer canning workshops (hopefully attended by some of you).

A couple of weeks ago, a great group of Coca-cola employees helped mulch about half of the farm (just one of the many jobs they helped with), and if we can get a few volunteers out this next Saturday the mulching can be completed.  Do come by if you get a chance to help out, or just to see this wonderful project.

GICD Program:  Projects are Thriving
GICD community gardens are doing well.  The three gardens for refugees, East Dallas, Live Oak, and Peace, are recovering from cold weather that damaged their Asian tropical crops.  We are continuing to get new refugees at these gardens, with families from Burma, Congo, and Bhutan joining to work plots alongside the older Cambodian and Laotians that have been the main gardeners for the past two decades.  We appreciate the support from IRC (International Rescue Committee) in this endeavor. 

Hope Community Garden is really looking great this year.  In April a volunteer group, the 2007 Class of UT Dallas’s Eugene McDermott Scholars Program, spent a day weeding, mulching, and helping get plots ready for planting.   

Our associate gardens, including those at St. Thomas, UTD, Greenhill School, Cliff Temple, the Bicycle Garden at Mercy Street, Acers at Central Christian, and the group of Healthy Harvest gardens, are all showing great progress.  We are continuing to offer training at the Center for Growing People for these and about 20 other new start-up garden projects in the North Texas area.

Thanks to all for Your Votes, and Please Keep it Up!
Please vote daily and get your family and friends to vote too!

The Center for Growing People (Our Saviour Community Gardens) is competing for a grant to build accessible pathways and beds for gardeners with disabilities.  This contest includes 15 community gardens from across the U.S.  The five receiving the most votes will share $20,000 from DeLoach Winery.  Winners will be announced in the October/November issue of Organic Gardening magazine. 

You can vote once each day from now until August 1, 2011.  Visit www.deloachcommunitygardens.com to view videos from nominated gardens.  GICD's entry is next to the last, Center for Growing People.  Please look, and click on the picture below:

Thanks to everyone who has been voting and spreading the word. With your vote daily we have a very strong chance of wining this much needed grant.  Please help us in our goal to build more accessible enabling gardens.  

VOTE NOW

Visit Gardeners in Community Development at www.gardendallas.org

 

-- 
Don Lambert
Executive Director
Gardeners in Community Development
972-231-3565
www.gardendallas.org