27 September 2018
www.sunshinecommunitygardens.org
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Workday
Saturday, October 6, 9-11 am, hosted by Mary Gifford and Marilyn Landberg
SCG Education - Free Talk and Discussion
Sunday 9/30/18: 3:30-5:00pm - On the Trailer Porch
"The Soil Food Web, Low-Till Gardening and Soil Micro-nutrients"
Charlotte Jernigan says, "I have been at Sunshine almost 18-years. I have been investigating and using low-till, soil-microbiome preservation and enhancement techniques, in my plot for the past 5-years with great success. This is often called in the literature "The Soil Food Web" or "No Till Farming." I want to share what I have learned (45-minute presentation) and then open the floor for questions and comments from others at SCG who are using low-till methods."
It is very strongly encouraged to RSVP to this educational event to Charlotte at charlotte@cybermesa.com.
Fire Ant Season is Upon Us - Let's get rid of them Appropriately
Gail Reese says: "With all the recent rain, fire ant mounds are popping up all over the garden. In the tool trailer on the little table there are white molassas bottles of pre-mixed molasses and orange oil to use to drench the Mounds. The bottles are all already mixed so please do not go get extra supplies from the locked trailer area.
Shake the bottle very well to distribute the orange oil and molasses evenly then pour one cup of the premix into the five gallon bucket, which is usually below the table. Rinse the cup and put it back on the table please. Take the bucket to your plot and fill it with water and stir well then pour 1/4 of the bucket on each ant mound. Please rinse and return the bucket to the tool shed for the next person to use.
A 5 gallon bucket of 1 cup of the mixture with water should cover about 4 ant mounds. The cost to the garden for this mixture is $2 a cup so please use it sparingly and wisely. There is no cost to the gardener for this supply.
Do not pour the molasses orange oil premix directly onto your garden. You must mix 1 cup of the liquid premix with a bucket of water. The molassas creates a rich environment the ants don't like and the orange oil impacts the shell of the ants (feel free to google this for a more technical explanation)."
New Member Saturday - September 29, 2018
New Member Saturday will be held hosted by Randy Thompson occur on Sept 29th at 9:00am. It's similar to an orientation and meant for folks who are already at the garden, but have questions about how things work. There will be a labor hour given for attending the orientation and asking questions. According to Randy, the labor hour is being given because you have the penalty of listening to him for the orientation.
Seed Saving & Seed Exchange - Oct. 20, 2018
A new organization, the Central Texas Seed Library invites you to our first public event, at the downtown public library, October 20, 1pm to 3:30pm. We will host a seed exchange open to everyone, whether or not you have your own seeds to exchange. We will also have a free seed saving class from 1pm to 1:30pm. Come and learn about how you can save seeds and exchange them with our growing network of gardeners and farmers. This event is free and everyone is welcome!
Wise Words About Community Gardening From a Decade Ago, But Still Relevant...
Gardening and Community Gardens by Valerie French - 4/08
A wise gardener commented recently that we should not describe the process of providing spaces to garden as "plot rental". What Sunshine Community Gardens provides is not a 20x20' piece of private property, but the opportunity to commit to gardening. Sunshine gardeners are not 'renters', but stewards.
Tenancy is a legal relationship: the tenant has responsibilities to the landlord usually detailed in a long document with small print, mostly involving paying rent on time and leaving everything in working order at the end of the lease. Paying rent is a good and necessary start - but it isn't gardening.
Each plot in Sunshine Community Gardens is a garden - a piece of land intended for the cultivation of plants. Cultivating plants requires ongoing commitments: to till, to plant, to water, to weed, to maintain, to harvest, and to clear for the next season so it can all be done again. Gardening is something like a job: if you don't show up regularly, the tomatoes die, the flowers droop, and you don't get 'paid'. And eventually the garden stops being a garden.
In a community garden, failing to tend a garden has immediate and wider effects. For most of the year, a garden can be overrun by weeds within two weeks. Plants that are not tended become insect breeding grounds. In mid-summer, unharvested produce rots on the vine, and the rats come for it. The neighboring gardeners - and neighbors are rarely more than three feet away - battle weed-seeds, runners, insects, and vermin attracted or bred by the failing garden. They cannot address the source of the problem without trespassing on their neighbor gardener, violating both written rules and basic courtesy. For the same reason, what produce there is goes to waste instead of being harvested and donated to a food bank, or simply eaten. Those who have volunteered to help maintain the organization spend their time policing "messy plots" instead of helping the community as a whole, and become burned out and disillusioned. Gardens that "return to nature" cannot be left there: eventually, someone will have to uproot the weeds and re-create the garden.
And then there is the wider community. It includes the people waiting for a space to garden here; the Micah 6 Food Bank and its constituents; the summer farm stand patrons (now defunct); the many people who stood in line to buy our tomatoes and peppers this spring; our landlord, the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired; and the State of Texas that ultimately owns the land. To all these people, we represent that we use this space to garden, and we are all responsible to them as well.
These outside commitments - to other gardens, to the organization, to the wider community - make community gardening an act of stewardship: an ethical responsibility.
As Board secretary, I have seen and participated in closely-reasoned legal arguments referencing the Site Rules and Bylaws point-by-point, mathematical debates about the acceptable ratios of weeds to vegetables, and the fine procedural points of mailing and verifying receipt of "clean-it-up" notices. These distract from the ultimate point. If the natural law theory applies anywhere, it ought to be here, and that higher law is this:
Each plot is a garden. Therefore, each plot should be readily identifiable as a garden (i.e., space used for the cultivation of plants), and each plot needs at least one gardener (i.e., person actively engaged in cultivating plants).
That simple. The purpose of our organization is to provide opportunities to garden, to ensure that each garden has a gardener or gardeners that take care of it, and that the gardens as a whole are maintained and are an asset to the wider community.
Equally, every single gardener here has a duty to tend the land that has been entrusted to them as a garden, and to maintain it as an asset for themselves and for the wider community.
Please make certain your plot has a gardener this winter!
Weeder Content
Please email your article or suggestion to Holly Gilman by end of day Wednesday.
Officer and Zone Coordinator Contacts - Sunshine Gardens
Officers
- President - Nick Sweeney nick.sweeney@hotmail.com
- Vice President - Marilyn Landberg marilynlandberg@utexas.edu
- Secretary - Noelle Letteri - nletteri@yahoo.com
- Treasurer - Caroline Limaye scgtreasurer1@gmail.com
- Director - Linda Booker - lindaruthbooker@gmail.com
- Director - Jeff Taylor - kscjtaylor@prodigy.net
- Director - Randy Thompson jartdaht@gmail.com
Email the board.
Zone Coordinators
- Zone 1, Susan Wallar swallar@gmail.com
- Zone 2, Wayne Kuenstler wckuenstler@gmail.com
- Zone 3, Ludmila Voskov lvoskov@austin.rr.com
- Zone 4, Ila Falvey ila.falvey@gmail.com
- Zone 5, Mary Gifford mgifford@austin.rr.com
- Zone 6, Charlotte Jernigan charlotte@cybermesa.com
- Zone 7, Maria and Philip Wiley m.stroeva@gmail.com, philip9wiley@gmail.com
- Zone 8, Shannon Posern sposern@hotmail.com
- Zone 9, Kerry Howell casonhowell@gmail.com
- Zone 10, Christopher Schroder
christopher.s.schroder@gmail.com &
Karl Arcuri karl.w.arcuri@gmail.com
Other Personnel
- Weekly Weeder Newsletter - Holly Gilman hollyjgilman@gmail.com
- Plant Sale - Randy Thompson & Janet Adams jartdaht@gmailcom
- TSBVI Liaison & Volunteer Coordinator - Janet Adams jartdaht@gmailcom
- Plot Assignment - Kay McMurry scg.plots@gmail.com
- Compost Coordinator - Janet Adams jartdaht@gmail.com
- Education Committee - Shannon Posern shannonposern@gmail.com
- Carpentry & Repairs - Robert Jarry r.jarry@sbcglobal.net
- Water Leak Repairs - Steve Schulz sschulz784@aol.com
- Tools & Wheelbarrows - Bob Easter beaster1@austin.rr.com
- Kitchen Supplies - Anita Keese
anodekraft1@msn.com
(If supplies are needed for events, contact by email or at 512-773-2178) - Compost Tea - Jennifer Woertz jen@enjeneer.com
- Micah 6 - Dana Kuykendall kuykendall@austin.rr.com
- Micah 6 - Mary Gifford mgifford@austin.rr.com
- Website Coordinator - Sharon Rempert scgardenweb@gmail.com
- Spanish language contact - Andriana Prioleau gabp8dec65@hotmail.com
Record Service Hours Online - Green Binder
