Tomato-planting season is almost here! The folks at Feed will be selling heirloom tomato starts for your garden on the next two Sundays, May 8 and 15, from 2-4 p.m. (rain or shine) at the corner of 19th Ave. S. and S. Lander. Starts are $3 per quart pot. Please bring your own box to carry them home.
On May 8, varieties for sale include Red Brandywine, Stupice, and Black Sea Man. On May 15, the available varieties will include Japanese Trifele, Limmony, Taxi, Tigerella, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Plum Lemon, Reisentraube, Juliet Grape, Paul Robeson, Gold Medal, and Red Oxheart. You can see more about these varieties on the Feed website. Heirloom tomatoes. Photo by John Morgan, via Creative Commons.
(Article has been updated with correct date—we made a mistake!)
Tomorrow, May 4 at 6:30 p.m., the Friends of the Beacon Food Forest are hosting a free screening of Geoff Lawton’s film Establishing a Food Forest.
In the film, Lawton explains the fundamentals of food forestry and then goes outdoors to show examples of active food forests at various stages in their existence. You can read a review here.
The screening is at the Washington Federation of Garden Clubs Headquarters House (the Garden House for short), at 2336 15th Ave. S. Food and drink will be provided.
These plants were part of a recent planting-strip improvement project on Beacon Avenue, across from the library. Photo by Jason. Local urban gardening and farming groups will convene on Beacon Hill on Wednesday, April 20 at 6:30 p.m. for a South Seattle Garden Summit and Potluck at the Garden House, hosted by ROCKiT Space and the Washington State Federated Garden Club.
The event will include a potluck dinner and social hour, then presentations and discussions among a variety of South Seattle garden groups, with a goal of planning a joint calendar of events to enhance use of community resources, avoid conflicts, and improve communication.
Groups participating include Beacon Food Forest, Friends of Lewis Park, City Fruit, local P-Patches, the Maple School Ravine Project and more.
All are welcome. The Garden House is located at 2336 15th Ave. S.
Here’s the agenda:
6:30 p.m. Potluck
7:30 p.m. Presentations by partner organizations
8 p.m. Open discussion of common garden resources and needs. Review of calendars to avoid conflicts and make the best use of volunteer pool.
Photo by Anne Norman via Creative CommonsCompost Days in Seattle begins on Friday, April 1 with local activities including garden-building and free compost.
The day starts at 10 a.m. with a garden-building project for the Hohlfeld family at S. Bayview and 16th Avenue S., in conjunction with Spring into Bed, a non-profit organization that constructs gardens for low-income families so they can grow organic food in their own backyard.
Immediately afterward there will be a compost giveaway at El Centro de la Raza, across the street at 2524 16th Avenue S. City of Seattle residents can pick up one free bag of compost between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., while supplies last. (We hear there are 500 bags.) There will also be coupons available for compost and Green Kitchen Kits. You can get some of the coupons online, if you prefer:
Earlier this week the City Council approvedOpportunity Fund grants for two Beacon Hill parks, Lewis Park and the Santos Rodriguez Memorial Park (El Centro de la Raza Play Area). The grants were awarded for the amounts recommended earlier by the Levy Citizens Oversight Committee: Lewis Park was awarded $260,000 for reforestation, and Santos Rodriguez Memorial Park was awarded $350,000 for improvements to revitalize the park and increase public awareness and access to the park space.
Previous BHB posts about this round of Opportunity Fund applications are here.
Volunteers are needed for a work party this weekend to improve these planting strips across from the Beacon Hill Library. Photo by Wendi.A group of Beacon Hill neighbors invite you to help beautify the neighborhood by re-landscaping Beacon Avenue planting strips at a community planting party this Sunday, March 20, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
The project was awarded a grant from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods to remove the existing clover and plant a perennial garden on the planting strips at the corner of Beacon Avenue South and South Forest Street, across Beacon Avenue from the Beacon Hill branch library.
Please wear work clothes and bring gardening tools if you have them. If you’d rather not garden, you can participate in a litter cleanup on Beacon Avenue as well. Food and drinks will be available. Questions? Contact Sara Stubbs at sara.mcdonald@gmail.com or 206.595.1829.
Photo courtesy of Glenn Herlihy.In late 2010 we received a grant from the Department of Neighborhoods to select a Design Team to create a schematic design for a Food Forest in Jefferson Park. The Friends of Jefferson Park Food Forest formed a Selection Committee with eight members for the purpose of interviewing and hiring as much talent as possible. After publicly posting our Request for Qualification (RFQ) we received seven highly qualified Statements of Qualification (SOQ) from design teams in the western Washington area. From there we narrowed it down to four design teams to interview.
This week the selection committee is pleased to announce a final decision to hire Harrison Design Team to facilitate and create a schematic design for the Jefferson Park Food Forest.
We chose this design team for not only their past work experience but their outstanding ability to engage, educate and facilitate the public in a design process. They are fun people with multiple talents for landscape design, permaculture food systems, ethnobotany and the facilitation process.
Briefly the team consists of:
Margarett Harrison is Principal of Harrison Design. She has over 25 years of experience in planning, designing, and managing landscape projects in both public and private sectors. She has worked for several local design firms including Mithun.
Jenny Pell is Owner of Permaculture Now. Her experience covers all aspects of permaculture consulting, design, site assessment, managing installations, and budgets. Fluent in Spanish, she has worked and taught around the globe.
Kris Pendleton is the Owner and Principal of Sound Urban Edibles, based in Seattle. He has traveled the world studying temperate agriculture landscapes.
Now we need you more than ever.
In late March, date yet to be announced, we will be holding the first of several design parties. They will be festive and educational workshops for the whole family. We plan on offering an ethnically diverse spread of food because food and nutrition is what we are all about. This project offers you the seeds to positive action, the seeds for a future with affordable nutrition for our community. Please join us; everyone is welcome.
Long live your Mother,
Glenn Herlihy
Friends of the Jefferson Park Food Forest
If you plan to volunteer, you should wear sturdy shoes and dress for the weather. Gloves and tools will be provided. Meet at the entrance located at the top of the stairs at 20th Avenue South and South Lucile Street. Bring a dish to share for the potluck, too.
Lewis Park volunteers are also starting up for the year this Sunday, February 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Gloves, tools, and snacks are provided. Neighbor Lenny promises hot coffee and hot chocolate this week, too. If you plan to volunteer, please notify Vinh at vngyen.green@yahoo.com. Lewis Park is located at Golf Drive South and South Charles Street, near the Amazon/Pac Med building.
On MLK Day weekend last month, many volunteers worked in Beacon Hill parks, including a large group at the Cheasty Greenbelt. The crew was organized by EarthCorps and included volunteers from Starbucks and elsewhere who worked on planting trees and clearing out invasive ivy and blackberry vines. See a post and photos at the City Year Seattle Blog.
Volunteers in a mulch bucket brigade at the Cheasty Greenspace MLK Day work party last year. Photo courtesy of EarthCorps.It may be winter, but volunteer activities in Beacon Hill’s parks are ongoing.
Even in this off season inclement winter weather, work is going on in little Lewis Park. Crews have been busy removing the invasive laurel and ivy plants and putting in ground cover to prevent erosion in the ravines. Further, a crew has been working with the foundation for the eventual kiosk along 15th Avenue South at the 14th Street “Y.” To be completed by mid-January. More ground cover/compost material will be spread on the upper south area of the park on MLK day, January 17th.
There is still much work to be done in the lower east side of the park, with further removal of invasive plants, but planting of native plant species will begin in early spring, when we will look forward to more people in our neighborhood, and groups will volunteer to help with this worthwhile renewal project that will make Lewis Park the jewel entrance to Beacon Hill from the city.
This year’s event starts at at Dr. Jose Rizal Park on Saturday, January 15, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. Volunteers will continue work to reclaim the forest area of the park, including mulching, planting trees and other native species, and doing trail maintenance. You can sign up to participate here.
On Sunday, January 16, volunteers will move to Dearborn Park from 10:00 to 2:00. Sign up here. Then on Monday, January 17, the work party moves to Cheasty Greenspace from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. Sign up for the Cheasty volunteer party here.
Craig Thompson reports news about orchard projects in area parks:
On January 22, Saturday, 10:30 – 12:30 am, City Fruit will conduct a training class for volunteers working on the orchard projects it has selected as part of a city-wide program. It will be held at the Jefferson Community Center, and is open to all who wish to volunteer on these projects. The orchard at Dr. Jose Rizal Park was selected as a model, sustainable, organic orchard for Seattle.
The fruit tree steward workshop will address basic tree biology (why are roots so important?), orchard management month by month, and basic orchard safety (how not to fall off a ladder). Our instructor is Ingela Wanerstrand, owner of Green Darner Garden Design. She specializes in edibles, has been working with fruit trees for more than 15 years, is an active Friend of Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park, and is a wonderful teacher.
Come February 19, City Fruit will hold a pruning workshop for stewards in the orchard at Dr. Jose Rizal Park. Significant work has been done in the orchard area over the last six months, including brush removal, initial pruning, typing, and even a small harvest of winesaps. A gate has been put in at the southeast corner of the off-leash area fence, just off the access trail. With the Mountains to Sound Greenway project going through the park this year, the OLA will be reconfigured, so more forest will be added to the woods, and the orchard will become a separate feature for the park.
On December 6, the Levy Citizens Oversight Committee gave their final recommendations for Parks and Green Spaces Levy Opportunity Fund grant projects. Two North Beacon Hill projects made the final list, which will go to the City Council for approval in March.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dee Dunbar, Vinh Nguyen, and the other Friends of Lewis Park, Lewis Park has been recommended for an Opportunity Fund grant for $260,000. These funds will be used to pay professional crews to take care of the steep slopes which are inaccessible to volunteers, as well as restoration of native plants and trees.
Santos Rodriguez Park at El Centro de la Raza, in the snow. Photo by Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons.El Centro de la Raza was also recommended for a $350,000 grant for Santos Rodriguez Memorial Park on the west side of the El Centro building, to revitalize the park and increase public awareness and access to the park space. This grant would be conditional, requiring improvements in public access; the recommendation reads: “Must provide public access during non-childcare program hours. Entrances/access should be provided to make the site clearly open to the public and gates must be unlocked during non- school/program hours.”
