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Exciting announcements!

Beginning in May, we’ll be having a monthly VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION, every first Wednesday from 7:00 to 7:30pm at the Seedlot*.

We’ll cover our brief history, the vision for the project, different ways folks can be involved, and our liability waivers.  My hope is that if I can get some help keeping the place maintained and get a consistent presence there, I can spend more time on the administrative end instead of weeding and we can get some classes up and running–maybe even some potlucks and seed swaps!  Please come prepared with any questions and ideas you may have–this is an invitation to participate just as much as it is a request for help.

Youth volunteers are welcome (with adults, please), and please don’t hesitate to get involved if you’re a novice or a brown thumb–we’re here to teach, that’s the point!

Please RSVP to: seedlotgarden@gmail.com

*Please note: I am happy to arrange alternate orientations for groups or individuals by appointment if you are unable to make it or don’t want to wait a month to get involved! Just be in touch.

In other news, The Seedlot has taken a further leap into the social media realm, and you can now keep visual tabs on our efforts and progress by following us @projectbeetgeneration on Instagram, or by tagging your pictures with #theseedlot (or just watch the feed right here!).

Goodness, it’s been a while. Something about the winter chill makes it easier to get back on the computer, and something about the growing season makes it so hard to work at a desk. Forgive me for my lapse.

Rest assured, however, that The Seedlot is still shaping up to save the world, one gardener at a time.

Among many other reasons (did anyone get through 2012 un-humbled?), part of why there wasn’t much going on in our Community Learning Garden last year was that I realized I still had much to learn about the space before I could teach there from a place of confidence.  I didn’t truly realize before that the gardens where I had learned to grow had been organic gardens for decades–and just how profoundly this affected the soil, the plants’ growth, the weeds, the countless creatures living there.  It was one of those things that I knew, but didn’t fully understand.  Our first growing season at The Seedlot, though not particularly productive in terms of edible output or community engagement, taught me a great deal about what it means to start from scratch.  

The poor (i.e. clayey and mineral-rich, lacking in organic matter and structure) soil meant more than just a hard time digging.  It meant roots couldn’t root down, it meant mineral deficiencies that not only stunted growth, but made plants and seedlings more vulnerable to pests and diseases, ones I’d never even seen before. (THRIPS, you little buggers).  Building soil–and thus, building a garden–is a slow and incremental process, and unless you’ve got raised beds, it is nowhere near as simple as trucking in some fresh manure and compost.

With this in mind, I ripped almost everything out early at the tail end of summer last year, and thankfully three of our beds took well to cover crop. Another three fared less well, either due to bad timing (I just had to leave one bed of tomatoes till they froze), or the wrong type of planting (just because the cover crop is sold at the same time as winter-hardy varieties does not mean it will be winter hardy! I’m looking at you, Sudan Grass…so much for trying something new!).  It will be interesting to compare how things grow in these beds this season, and I’m already itching to get a cloche up and plant another round of winter wheat and field peas. 

The most significant obstacle to our goal of community engagement (namely, a lack of liability insurance and the need to form a legal entity in order to acquire any), however, has resulted in perhaps our most significant accomplishment to date. Since realizing I’d have to start my own venture, I’ve felt immobilized by the for-profit vs. non-profit dichotomy of the business world.  After working for/with various non-profits for several years–being subject to their changing boards of volunteers and their collective ability to compete for and secure grant funding year after year–I knew that there was nothing sustainable about attempting to teach sustainability under this model.  But designing the endeavor as a profit-seeking business seemed equally contradictory and limiting to my intentions.

And so, while researching the concept of social entrepreneurship last summer, I stumbled upon an incubator program through PSU’s School of Business Administration.  I applied right then and there–four months before they even began reviewing applications–and I got in!  Last Friday was my first day with the Social Innovation Incubator (SII) Circuit Program, and already my mind is ranting and reeling around the immense changes the next six months will bring to my life and my little garden as I officially attempt to coax Project Beet Generation into existence (you’ll see that blog also cuts off after a sunny April day… I’m learning myself).  It’s truly wonderful and inspiring to be among a cohort of other “social innovators,” and to have the structure and mentorship of a school environment without actually going back to school. 

There’s much I could review here, but I mostly wanted to post a quick update for any new or returning visitors, to let you know that things ARE still unfolding here, and we still very much DO want and need your help.  (That is another thing I’ve learned in the last year–I’m not very good at asking for help when I need it! Anyone who’s seen the latest wood-chip pile out by the garden for the last couple of months knows that I could probably use it.)

So if you’re excited about this project, if you like the idea and you’d like to participate, please pipe up and bear with me as I emerge from a period of personal dormancy and start manifesting this long-imagined plan. In the next several weeks I’ll be starting up seedlings again in my sun room, scheduling a spring’s worth of work parties, and setting/posting a schedule for myself to have regular hours in the garden.

On a final note, I’d also like to take this chance to thank to everyone for your continued support and enthusiasm, and for the kind tokens I find in the garden from time to time (no more dog poop, thankfully!). A couple of weeks ago I found a couple of rose buds resting on a stone, and yesterday morning I found this adorable little blissed-out bumpkin who (in addition to COMPLETELY MAKING MY DAY–THANK YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE) is now perched in our window box to soak up all the sun:

Thanks to everyone, and more updates soon, I promise!

The season’s pace is picking up speed at last. The days are warmer and luxuriously longer, the birds wake me with their songs every morning, and the landscape is quickly recovering from the pallor that was winter. Already there are flowers that have faded, and we’ve crossed that threshold when you’d better hope all your rainy-day work is done by now.

At The Seedlot, that’s precisely what we’ve been focusing on: getting all the prep work in order so that we can be in full swing by the time summer’s here. Our shed is complete. Well, it’s missing a couple of pieces of trim and maybe a little paint–but it’s full, functional, and possibly the prettiest shed you ever did see. 

We received a donation from our new friends at Hankins Hardware (just down the road on SE 17th & Hawthorne) of latches for our windows as well as a 20′ roll of 1/2″ mesh hardware cloth (pictured above right) which will provide the basis for our two-bin compost structure–next week’s project!

Meanwhile, we’ve made the happy discovery of free wood chips. After a few calls around town, we connected with the friendly folks at All Around Arbor, who work here in SE Portland removing and caring for trees.  They’ve worked with local gardeners for some time now and are happy (even thankful!) to empty their chipper at your site for free–they even know not to include black walnut or black locust in their deliveries for gardeners, both of which contain toxic compounds which can harm plants and animals respectively.  Thanks to All Around Arbor, we received 8 cubic yards or so of freshly-chipped Western Red Cedar trees–bark, leaves, branches and all–perfect. Moving these up into the space was, as you can see, a bit challenging, as we a) don’t have a wheelbarrow, and b) have a rather steep slope with steps leading up to the garden, so we really couldn’t even use a wheelbarrow if we had one…. However, clever minds prevailed, and with help from our friend and neighbor Curtis at North St. Bags, we cleared the sidewalk and spread the chips using a cardboard box and a recycling bin in just a couple of hours.

The visible impact of the wood chips is striking: goodbye slippery cardboard and the hazardous logs that held you in place! 

Already, the garden looks, feels, and smells much more pleasant, and the pathways are much safer and more stable to walk on.  I feel so much less nervous when people step into the garden now.  Next up we plan to get our second truck-full of soil from Mt. Scott Fuel to cover the straw mulch (which renders most of our beds invisible in the pictures above) and begin planting in earnest.

{While we’re on the subject of wood chips, I’d like to share this movie I was recommended by Master Volunteer Diane Emerson–Back To Eden.  Irrespective of one’s thoughts about the film’s discussion of spirituality and gardening, it shares some great ideas and techniques regarding the use of wood chips as a mulch directly on vegetable beds–not just paths!–mimicking the layered loam of the forest floor.  We’ve got a lot left still, so I think we’ll try it!}

Now that the weather’s warming up, I’ve been making a point of being at The Seedlot any sunny chance I get, and the results so far are promising.  Up till now, the weather has been so erratic that we haven’t set a schedule for being there, but once the sun is back, it looks like Saturday afternoons will be prime time.  This past weekend, I set out our little signs and flats of starts at the main corner of the garden and set to work weeding and moving more chips.  In a few short hours, I’d met at least a dozen curious passersby, received $40 in exchange for plant starts, and was graced with the wonderful bit of advice that it’s possible (and even quite easy!) to file as a non-profit corporation without also becoming a 501(c)3. Very encouraging indeed! Everyone I met was eager and excited to learn about the details of our project, and very supportive of our goals. And after one afternoon we’re just $10 shy of the cost for registering as a non-profit.  Once we’ve got that set, we’ll start working toward liability insurance (which we can hopefully do in payments), and we’ll have a set schedule for open hours as well as classes and workshops in no  time.

It’s lots of hurry-up-and-wait in the mean time, but that’s what spring’s all about, right?  It’s still plenty early yet.  Please keep an eye on our Facebook page as we go, as that’s the best way to learn about upcoming events and weather-sensitive activities. Soon, we’ll have more herbs and flowers as well as warm-weather crops for our plant sales. Now, if only I could fit more seedlings in my sun room….

Well, it’s been a busy busy month at The Seedlot, lining up ducks before Spring arrives in full force.  Now that we know our soil is safe to work in and we have permission to teach in our space, we’ve been diving deep into the logistics of urban food production, hashing out everything from zoning and insurance to amending our clay-ey soil and finding a place to stash our tools. All the while stretching our $250 grant from the Portland Enhancement Project as far as humanly possible. So, let’s start at the beginning, eh?

First, we got a taste of everyone’s favorite subject, zoning regulations! The City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has been working for several years now with the Food Policy Council and other local groups to update the city’s zoning codes with the intent of encouraging and facilitating urban agriculture and neighborhood food security.  Zoning codes regarding Community Gardens, Market Gardens, Farmer’s Markets, and CSA drop sites are all getting an update this year, and the proposed changes are now up for public review.  What this will mean for The Seedlot is not quite clear, as our intent is to be a teaching garden that is accessible (though not open, per se) to the public as a resource center and hands-on learning space. We intend to sell starts and produce, but as a means to an end, that is, teaching gardening. So I’m not sure how we’re categorized. Fortunately, it looks like any existing sites will get grandfathered in under the new codes on July 1, so the fact that nowhere within the city limits is currently zoned for agricultural uses shouldn’t be a problem…

OK, so, soil: check. Zoning: check. Next on our list is the only thing more loathsome than city codes: insurance. As we are not the owners of this property nor, officially speaking, any kind of legal entity, we’ve got to make sure that we are protecting our own assets as well as those of our generous landlords when we invite others into our space. Our initial plan had been to use waivers or hold-harmless agreements (you can find ours here), but it turns out that you really lose that feel-good community-building vibe when you hand someone a legal agreement the moment they set foot on the property. And I doubt many parents would let their kids take classes here without coverage. So, in we dive.  Thanks to our new friends over at The Garden at Lot 13 , we’ve contacted an agent and got a bid of $500 for one year of basic liability coverage. Eeep. And of course, we’d have to file as a business with the state first, another $100.

So, shoot dang! I guess we’re starting a business. Admittedly, the last thing I was going for, but it’s looking kind of inevitable right now.  Starting a non-profit is another option, but we’d really like to operate somewhere in-between, a classification that regretfully does not yet exist in the state of Oregon. Six states have what’s called a Benefit Corporation, where social and environmental benefits have equal priority with financial profit. More aligned with our ideals is the Social Business model, or the new word-of-the-day: Sustainopreneurship, but I’m not sure which is the best for us or how to go about it. Regardless of the path we choose, we’ve got a lot of homework to do, and we’ve got to do it quick, and then start fundraising…That’s a lot of seedlings to sell just so we can start teaching classes!

Ultimately, considering we have no idea how long we’ll be able to work at this site, I’m most interested in starting a bigger, over-arching organization–Project Beet Generation–that could function as a cooperative or collective of educational gardening sites/programs around the city.  One organization going for big grants and donations, one organization securing insurance and doing background checks on volunteers. One organization throwing big fundraising events and distributing resources equitably, one organization that could have a pool of resources (think school bus, greenhouse, curriculum library, mobile kitchen!) accessible to any sub-group that wants to join in with a shared mission and best practices….One organization employing a pool of garden-based educators and providing a living wage and training for those of us trying to make a career in this emerging field. It’s time to start casting the net a bit wider, I think.

In the mean time, we’ve been focusing largely on getting our space in working order; building a shed, adding fresh soil, and carving out steps and paths from the glass-filled clay we occupy.  Before I go (sorry, you’ve got an English major typing here, I have a hard time posting quick notes and blurbs here), a quick shout-out and HUGE THANKS to the local businesses, friends and organizations that have donated time and resources to The Seedlot:

SCRAP–for donating $15 in credit that will supply us with countless Popsicle sticks and thank you cards;

The ReBuilding Center–for donating reclaimed lumber and a window for us to frame our shed and finish building terraces;

Brown Lumber Service–for donating plywood and 4x4s to help us finish our shed;

Do it Best Hardware–for donating the hinges for our door and windows and the deadbolt for the door so our shed is safe and secure;

Mt. Scott Fuel–for donating a yard of soil to get our seedlings started and our beds amended, as well as beautiful patio stone and sand to make the steps leading into The Seedlot welcoming and safe;

Diane Emerson–for sharing your passion, inspiration and goodwill, inviting us in for a most delicious lunch, and sharing extra materials that will soon be our compost bin and mulch for our beds and paths.

And last but absolutely not least, a big squishy thanks to the inimitable Jay Cryer and Kris Hargis, without whose time, expertise and tools, the above resources would remain a big pile of stuff, and not the beautiful tool shed we now have.

It’s almost finished now, I will post more pictures as well as updates about upcoming activities soon (and you can check our facebook page for more pics). Thanks also to my wonderful sister Ava for making the awesome signs that help people know what we’re up to and will the basis for our logo.

Meanwhile, the slushy snow-rain has subsided, and I’m way behind on sowing seeds… tomatoes and peppers, it’s go time!

Well, the results are in from our soil test, and we are safe and sound, well below the recommended 100-parts per million limit.  What a relief! And thanks to our new friends at Wy’East Environmental Sciences for great, friendly service at a great price ($25)–and right down the street on SE 11th, just north of Division.

Testing for lead is very important before starting a new garden, particularly in our case where the lot has an unknown history and a structure that long predates the ban on lead paint.  Plants don’t absorb or accumulate very significant amounts of lead as they grow (what little there is can be generally be mitigated by peeling and a good scrub); the greatest risk is from direct consumption of lead-contaminated soil. And as someone who has had a life-long appreciation for playing in the mud and eating fresh-pulled carrots rubbed clean on my jeans and eaten with dirty hands (and who longs to instill this love in others, particularly kids!), knowing that the soil is safe is of the utmost importance.

Fortunately, as I’ve learned from the handy fact-sheet that came with our test results, good nutrition mitigates lead absorption in the body.  Iron, Calcium, Vitamin C, Zinc, and Protein are indicated to reduce your body’s uptake of lead, while fried and highly fatty diets allow the body to absorb lead faster. Leafy green vegetables such as kale, arugula, spinach, parsley, and members of the brassica genus are among the best sources for these nutrients, and will fill many of our garden beds this year.

So if you’ve never had your soil tested–particularly if you’ve got kids gardening there, have high traffic or older structures nearby–please look into it.  It’s affordable and fast, and as a fellow gardener once pointed out: if you don’t feel safe consuming a little bit of soil, why would you feel safe eating anything that grows out of it?

Well, we’ve been working hard through the winter, and like everything around us, it seems, we’re itching to jump into action.

Last fall, we dug beds, pulled weeds, set paths, and planted alliums (onions and garlic), bulbs, and cover crop. More recently, we’ve been pruning, and just set up a cloche over one bed to warm up the soil and start our earliest crops. We secured a huge donation of seeds from our good friends at Portland Nursery, and received a $250 grant from the generous folks of the Portland Enhancement Project. Between these two developments, we’ve got trays and trays full of seedlings started, got our soil tested for lead (picking up the results today!), and are working on this website and painting signs for the space to start making ourselves visible.

Coming up soon: We’ll be meeting at The Seedlot next Monday, the 20th from 1-4 to follow the northwest tradition of “planting our peas by President’s Day.” (Of course, being big pea fans, we’ll be planting them every week or so for a while, and then again mid-summer…).  Really, it’s just an excuse to put ourselves out there and get things started! So please come by (SE 23rd & Clinton), lend a hand in the garden, introduce yourself, and go home with some baby plantlings.

We’re also working on a donation request for lumber to build a shed, compost bin, and terraces, and as soon as we find the best deal and a truck, we’ll be getting a load of compost and manure to give our beds a boost.  Also making grand schemes about upcoming classes and workshops (for  adults as well as kids), and looking into getting a food swap started. We’ll probably organize some sort of “grand opening” festivities around the equinox next month to really kick things off. So keep a close eye on us, the days are getting longer, and we’re in for quite a growth spurt.