Grab Your Trowel and Tighten Your Laces!

Running Fit, a local running store extraordinaire, is hosting the Third Annual Big House Big Heart Run on Sunday, October 4th. This fun and friendly event is a great way to get outside after a busy morning in the garden, and run around (literally) in support of Project Grow.

Interested in running and organizing support for community gardens? Then grab a trowel and sign up!

From the Front Yard to the Farm

Edible landscaping is all over the news (and this blog), and this article about Will Allen and Milwaukee's Growing Power Farm should offer even more motivation. Allen and Growing PowerFarm have won awards and garnered national attention for growing good food locally and intensively, and making it - the food along with the knowledge of how to grow it - available to local people.

Want to see what kind of farming is happening locally? You're in luck! Come along to the Big Community Harvest Tour and see what good stuff is growing here in Ann Arbor, including Project Grow's work with Avalon Housing at Edible Avalon. Download the map and take these self-guided tours, and we also recommend bringing a notebook to plot your own little farm once you get back home!

Big Community Harvest Garden Tour

Wednesday, July 22nd, 6pm - 9pm

Saturday, August 1st, 10am - 1pm

Calendula - Not Just for Salad!

The bright petals of calendula often grace the garden, and subsequently make a summer salad tempting even to the most vegetable wary nibbler. The stickiness of calendula also makes it a great ingredient for salves and lotions.

Caryn Simon, local doula, is offering two classes on turning those bright blossoms into soothing salves for garden weary hands.

Fresh Calendula Salve Making Class

Saturday, July 11th and Saturday, July 25th

Saturday, August 8th and Saturday, August 22nd

Register by email or call Caryn at 734.646.1351 quick! Space is limited.

Bountiful Garden Volunteer Opportunities

The growing season is in full swing at Project Grow, and opportunities (like weeds but better!) absolutely abound at this busy time. A sampling of possibilities are listed below, and we can tell you even more at our upcoming Volunteer Orientation. Leigh Ann Phillips-Knope, Assistant Director for Project Grow offers a short, sweet, and action-packed hour to let you know how you can get involved and be part of the fun this season!

Project Grow Volunteer Orientation

Tuesday, July 14th 6pm - 7pm

The Nature House,

Leslie Science and Nature Center

1831 Traver Road

RSVP Leigh Ann by email or call 734-996-3169. See you there!

Food Bank Coordinators

Help gather and share the abundant harvest from Project Grow! Volunteers are needed to collect vegetables from our 15 scattered sites throughout Washtenaw County for Food Gatherers to then distribute.

Garden Site Coordinators for Edible Avalon

A partnership between Project Grow and Avalon Housing, Edible Avalon offers a unique opportunity for low-income tenants to learn gardening skills, build community, and gain greater access to nutritious food. Site coordinators offer hands-on gardening assistance, cooking/food preservation ideas, and support at a garden site 1-2 hours a week. (Extensive gardening background not required.)

Go! Gardening Program

Enrich the lives of elementary school students through a dynamic experiential gardening program at Mitchell Elementary! Gardeners are needed to help maintain the gardens throughout the season. (No experience necessary.) Camp counselors are also needed to assist the Program Coordinator in facilitating lessons on Wednesdays from 9am until 12pm. (Read about this great program and come on out!)

Discovery Gardens

Are you community minded and enjoy working with seniors, children, and gardeners with disabilities? Volunteers are always welcome in our gardens serving these special populations. Join this inspiring gardening community and help raise some good food and have some fun, too!

Gathering Stories/Testimonials

Visit our community gardens and unearth (pun intended!) some of the awed-inspiring stories integral to any good garden. Use your creativity - write a short story or blog post, make a video, create a photo album - to share them with the community.

Design and Technology Support

Are you a computer, website, or design expert looking for ways to put some green in your work? Project Grow is always looking for technological and creative design support to showcase our programs!

Herb Garden in a Pot!

This time of year finds most gardeners out tending rows of vegetables, flowers, and herbs that are adjusting to a new life outdoors. Not every gardener, though, works a plot of land. Some work a series of pots and containers containing favorite herbs and vegetables, and beginning gardeners often begin greening their thumbs with a pot of basil on the porch. This great little Q&A in the New York Times offering tips on growing herbs in pots is invaluable. Covering annual and perennial herbs for a variety of uses and suggesting new ones for experimentation, the novice and the experienced gardener alike will find useful information to explore a whole new realm of gardening.

Garden Maintenance Tips

Gardeners are perhaps the most enthusiastic (or pleasantly nervous!) in the spring. Seed packets and plant tags litter nearly every surface, and it is nearly impossible to pass any display of seedlings without stopping "just to look." As the season carries on though, the gardener may find themselves wilting in the heat and humidity, and interest waning. 

It may be in the best interests of those seeds and seedlings to think about some simple tactics for reducing maintenance in the garden. Suggestions range from switching to shrubs from perennials (although caution should be used when choosing non-native species) to using mulch. 

Mulch is maybe the easiest way to take care of two garden maintenance issues - watering and weeds - while simultaneously building soil  health for years to come. A nice layer of mulch (three inches or so) in the garden can see even young plants through an unexpected drought. And if water is a particular challenge for the garden, this book (suggested by one of the gardeners over at the Hunt Park site) offers insightful ideas for gardening where water is in short supply.

So clear a little space among the seed packets or just have a seat out on the edge of the garden (you know you want to!), and start plotting a little more how to do a little less.

More Ideas for Bringing in the Beneficials

National Gardening Association ran this nice article on attracting beneficials in a recent e-newsletter, and it is well worth sharing. The only thing to keep in mind while perusing the list is that some ornamental grasses, flowers, and herbs can be quite invasive. (Think of the mint or Bishop's Mantle marching undaunted through garden beds and yards and stopping only short of the living room door, and you'll get the idea.) 

One thought for those that could be invasive - either because of seeds literally being thrown to the wind or burrowing rhizomes or both - is to perhaps look for a native species that is similar or put that mint in a pot. Things like garlic mustard wreak havoc everywhere, and there are some good local efforts to eradicate it. If perennial plants are not an option, a good annual can do quite a bit to help out. (Alyssum is mentioned in the article, and it is well worth it as an attractor, a dense ground cover or living mulch, and a darn pretty plant, too.)

(And you're right if you seem to recall that we've mentioned this before. Like a good pile of compost, attracting and supporting beneficials - like bees - is pivotal to the success of any garden and especially to an organic one.)