Beacon Food Forest fans and friends are invited to come out this Saturday (June 30) from 10 a.m. until noon, to the workshop “Permaculture and the Beacon Food Forest: Building skills and leaders for the food forest planting and care.” The workshop will be held at El Centro De La Raza, room 310, 2524 16th Ave. S.
Topics covered will include permaculture concepts, soil building, plant guilds, and leading a team in planting the first stages of the Beacon Food Forest. Attendees will begin to design plant communities and plan productive work parties.
Two founding members of the Beacon Food Forest will present a talk tomorrow (Saturday, June 16) about permaculture practices and how they will be used to build the food forest.
The talk, “Permaculture and Food Forests: Taking care of our Fruit Trees in Holistic and Long-Lasting Ways,” is at Jefferson Community Center, 3801 Beacon Ave. S., from 10 – 11:30 a.m.
According to the announcement, “We will be sharing formation on building soil, food forests, permaculture and plant communities. These skills will enable our community to care for fruit trees, including those we planted last month into pots for the fall, helping build a resilient community and local food source.
“Thanks to the efforts of City Fruit, in partnership, we have been funded by an ACT grant to bring this information to our community. Please RSVP cramerjacqueline99@gmail.com.”
If you can’t make this class, there will be another one on June 30 at 10 a.m. at El Centro de la Raza.
Earlier this month, neighbors toured the Food Forest site to see where the plants and features will be. Photo by K. Shuyler in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
This is the site that will become the Beacon Food Forest. Construction will start later this year. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Beacon Food Forest.
The Beacon Food Forest team invite the community to visit the Food Forest site during the Beacon Hill Festival this Saturday, June 2, to imagine what will soon be.
Christina Olson tells us: “The Food Foresters will have their site ‘planted’ with over 40 varieties of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, compost bins, beehives, and everything else needed to realize a great community gathering spot and food resource.”
There will be signs in the ground to show what will eventually be planted or built in each location. Olson says, “You stroll along the path, you see a sign that says ‘#1: Apple’ then you look at the handout and see that #1 is the Chehalis Apple, which is large, yellow and sweet; it ripens in September. You stroll further and see #40 and read that that is the location of the beehives. And on and on. There are over 45 trees, berry bushes, or built elements that will be located.”
Grading of the site will begin in July, after which it will be a construction zone for a while as waterlines, retaining walls, paths, and other features are constructed. This weekend is the best opportunity to visit the site and visualize the future Forest before the mess begins.
The Beacon Food Forest is located immediately west and downhill of Jefferson Park, on the big grassy slope along 15th Avenue South between Dakota and Spokane Street. Follow the signs along the Park footpath to the tour starting point.
Photo by La Grande Farmers' Market via Creative Commons/Flickr.Hey, gardeners! Starting tomorrow, Saturday, May 19, Master Gardeners will start selling vegetable and herb starts at the Cesar Chavez Demonstration Garden, located at El Centro de la Raza, 2524 16th Ave. S.
Master Gardener Mick Duggan says, “We are regularly there on Wednesday and Saturday from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Other times as well if you see us there in the Garden. We have so many extra Sungold tomatoes they are only $1. We also have other varieties of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, chard, lettuce, leek, chives, chamomile. Come by and check it out.”
There will also be free gardening information handouts available.
This past Sunday, in honor of Earth Day, we organized a litter clean up in North Beacon Hill. Twelve neighbors gathered together to make the neighborhood a cleaner place for all and collected over 60 pounds of trash. We focused our efforts on the area around the Beacon Hill Playground, gathering trash from South 12th, 13th and 14th Avenues from South Massachusetts to South Hill and the adjacent alleys. Plus — we all had a blast! We hope to make this a quarterly clean up — let me know if you would like to join us next time!
Photos of the Earth Day clean up, courtesy of Sergey Smirnov:
Photo by thebittenword.com via Creative Commons/Flickr.Have you always wanted a cupboard full of homemade jam or pickles from your own garden? This could be your year to learn how. Rainier Valley Eats and the Beacon Hill Garden Club are hosting a basic canning class next Tuesday, April 24, from 6:30-9:00pm at the Garden House (2336 15th Ave. S.).
The class will cover the essentials of safe preserving, the equipment needed, how to gather recipes and resources, local fruit trees, and what you can find at farmers’ markets. The class costs $10. To register, email ankataa@yahoo.com and put “Canning Class” in the subject line. Please include your name and a phone number.
A Beacon Hill roadside veggie garden. Photo by Wendi Dunlap.Did the warm weather this weekend make you think about gardening? You may be interested in a series of free gardening classes that will be held through September at El Centro de la Raza, 2524 16th Ave. S. Master Gardener Mick Duggan is teaching the “Growing Your Own Groceries” series on the second Saturday of each month, from 10-11:30 a.m.
Each class will include free information handouts to take home. All are welcome to “join when you can, for as long as you can.”
The first class is on April 14 in room 310 and covers:
Climate zones and frost
Soil and fertilizers
Crop rotation
Site selection and bed preparation
Botany basics
What to plant: Now, soon, and later
Seed starting and spacing
Organic pest control
Here are the agendas for the rest of the classes this summer:
May 12, Room 106:
What to plant now? Inside, outside, and under cover
You may notice a lot of new trees like this one on North Beacon Hill. These are two of the 300 or so trees that the Seattle Department of Transportation is planting along some of our neighborhood streets this month through the SDOT Community Tree program.
The trees pictured here, on 17th Avenue South, are Paperbark Maples, which are known for their decorative peeling red bark and for spectacular autumn colors. Other trees offered to the neighborhood included Serviceberry trees and American Hornbeams.
Illustration by Stephanie Bower; image courtesy of Seattle City Light.
All are invited to come out to Jefferson Park on Wednesday, March 21 from 9:30 a.m. until noon to be among the first to see the new Community Solar picnic shelters at the Park. Local dignitaries and representatives of Silicon Energy, the company who manufactured the solar modules that make up the roofs of the shelters, will be on hand to celebrate the grand opening. The Jefferson Park project is estimated to produce 24,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, enough to operate 3 households.
In the Community Solar program, Seattle City Light customers have the opportunity to enroll in the program as founding members by purchasing “units” of solar power for $600 each. Members then receive credits to their electric bill, using the power generated by their portion of the project. See more about it here. Members will also have their names included on the shelters: “artistically inscribed on colored metal bands surrounding the structure support columns,” according to City Light.
Wednesday’s weather forecast currently calls for rain, so the solar part of the project might not get too much of a workout. The shelter part ought to come in handy, though.
Photo by Gavin St. Ours via Creative Commons/Flickr.
You have probably heard of the Beacon Food Forest, the new urban farming project being created west of Jefferson Park. Suddenly, however, much of the rest of the country is hearing about it as well. The Food Forest has picked up a ton of press in the last few weeks.
“It’s a great day if you like the organic food!” Craig Ferguson of CBS’s Late Late Show spent part of his monologue on Monday night’s show riffing about the Food Forest and organic food.
