Neat Vents!

The Greenhouse is Here!

greenhouse arrives

getting placed on the site

done!

Solar Gem crew with owner, designer and SMU alum

Dennis Heitzmann on the right

Spring is here!

leveling the ground for the greenhouse

This morning, students from Prof. Porter's First Year Seminar class prepared the ground for the arrival of our new greenhouse! We are thrilled about this new solar gem greenhouse, which is being donated to us by an SMU alumni, Dennis Heitzmann.

planting potatoes

 Students also planted potatoes and weeded the garden beds and paths.

red currant

You can already see the delicious currant berries forming on this bush!

Winter Garden

students in First Year Seminar grafted an apple tree this winter

Garlic started sprouting. Can you spot what else was hiding in the garden bed?

Students Write about Sustainability

St. Gertrude dining hall

This Fall, 2011 alumni magazine Insights published an article written by SMU's Digital Journalism students. The students researched and wrote about the ways that the monks, nuns and students lived off of the land, right here on the SMU campus. Fr. Kilian and Abbot Neal shared great stories - killing chickens and riding horses through the trails. Fr. Peter helped us find archival photos of the campus back in the 1930 and 50s. Take a look at pg. 16 - A Heritage of Sustainability.

The Farm 1950

Student Liz Wrazien, made this companion video to the article.

Wild Edibles for Pacific Northwest Gardens

The first three edible weeds that every PNW Garden can easily include are Chickweed Stellaria media, Dandelion Taraxacum officinale, and Wintercress also known as Shotweed Cardamine oligosperma. These three weeds are true guardians of the soil. They return and recycle nutrients back into the garden soil. They are succulent enough to be natural green manures. Their flowers, seeds and leaves attract pollinators and encourage birds and wild things to come to the garden. They can be fed to chickens and are easy to control. Most importantly they can be enlisted to compete with and help with keeping the less desirable weeds at bay. All of them provide food that is palatable and high in vitamins and minerals for both man and beast throughout the year.

Cardamine oliosperma is at its best in the winter. It is used like water cress. If you can keep track of the newly emerging basil rosettes they have better flavor. It is very tasty mixed with goat or cream cheese and put on toast or crackers or in a cucumber sandwich. This lovely plant is above ground during the colder wetter months providing a protective cover of green leaves to catch and slow the incessant rain here in the winter months preventing erosion of topsoil. When the soil dries out in the spring Wintercress goes to seed with amazing seed dispersal hence the name Shotweed. The plant dries up and disappears reappearing in the fall from self sowing.

Dandelions are deep rooted and draw minerals up to the top soil. Dandelions have been eaten for millennia. They can be found almost everywhere on the planet. In the PNW they grow primarily in the spring and fall or in areas that are irrigated in the summer. Try them sautéed in olive oil with garlic and then pile between two pieces of crusty Italian bread maybe a little Parmesan cheese hmm delish! Most important always remember Dandelions have only 1 flower per stalk! Lookout for other much less tasty cousins of the Dandelions that have similar flowers but the flower stalk branches and bifurcates.

Chickweed our beautiful Stellaria media star shaped flowers and succulent leaves. Chickweed will linger into the warmer months but disappears in the hottest part of summer in full sun. If you pull it twice a year it keeps pretty tame. The nice thing is, it is a fine green quite lettuce like, and good in omelets soups.

These plants augment the plants growing in the garden and provide early spring greens. It is also good knowing that you could leave your garden fallow for a year or two and come back to find it mostly full of edible plants.

by Lynn Villella

The History of Sustainability at Saint Martin's

Saint Martin's University has a rich history of sustainability and continues to aim at sustainable practices today.  This video gives a brief overview of that history.  Also check out  Saint Martin's Insights Magazine, which comes out the third week of December.

Winter Garden

It is time for another garden party in the Learning Garden!

Growing your own food can save you a lot of money and help you eat well.

Local expert gardener, Lynn Villella, will lead a workshop on how to winterize your garden. Lynn will show us how to prepare the garden beds for the winter and what kind of crops to plant.

Drop by for a free hands on “Winter Garden” workshop in the SMU Learning Garden.

Tuesday, Nov 15
Between 9:30 and 1pm (drop by any time, stay as long as you like)
The Learning Garden (outside of the dining hall)

Be prepared to pull radishes, plant garlic, have some hot cider and more!

FYS students planting our own Kale seedling and put up cloche

We plant our own transplants into a Garden bed and put a cloche over to protect them.

Heirloom Tomatoes

ripe in the garden

Food Summit

Sustainable South Sound is putting on the Food Summit.

"The goal of the Food Summit is to bring our community together to celebrate, network and develop an action plan for a safe, local and sustainable food system."

Read more about it here.

October 14 community potluck and activities are all FREE! The keynote speaker, Mark Winne is the author of Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture and Closing the Food Gap.

Art in the Garden

Olympia artist David Scherer Water will be holding an art workshop in the SMU garden next Tuesday, July 19 from 1:30-3:30pm.

Join the Anthropology of New Urbanism class and help make beautiful garden art out of found and recycled objects.


Please seek out and bring any plastic, metal or non-food lightweight junk you may find, acquire from housemates, family. Broken toys are great.

David Scherer Water enjoys making things out of junk. He's the artist responsible for "The Flat Win Company" which sells neatly packaged found materials back to people. Products include empty beer cans, burnt toast, twigs and small bags of gravel. David got his first "big break" as a visual artist when he was given permission to decorate the lobby and halls of a small apartment complex in downtown Olympia, The Martin Building.

A New Service Program - Grow Gardens in Schools

Wondering what to do after you graduate next year? Take a look at this awesome new program. It's like Americorps but all about growing gardens.

"The vision for FoodCorps is to recruit young adults for a yearlong term of public service in school food systems. Once stationed, FoodCorps members will build Farm to School supply chains, expand food system and nutrition education programs, and build and tend school food gardens.

The ultimate goal of the organization is to increase the health and prosperity of vulnerable children while investing in the next generation of farmers and public health leaders."

This seems like a great opportunity to participate in the new garden revolution. And there are other perks too. Participants receive the following benefits:

A biweekly stipend totaling $15,000 for the year
Health insurance, if not covered under another policy
Child care, if necessary
Student loan forbearance
A $5,550 Education Award for past or future education
Career mentoring, professional development, and strong work experience

Garden Visitors

Garden Parties should always start with lunch in the sun.
for more pics go here

There was a new visitor squatting on the side of the shed - a wasp. She didn't bother us.

and another one, lounging on a mint leaf - a lady bug with no dots.

we built a trellis, planted some lettuce and weeded and fed the strawberries.

Thanks to Tanya from Bon Appetit for feeding us with iced tea and treats!!

for more pics go here

Garden Party #2 2011

The sun is finally out and the weather report says that it should get up into the 70s this week. Come garden with us tomorrow Wed May 18, 12-1pm. We will be planting, weeding and building stuff in the garden. Bring your lunch and eat outside!

First Garden Party 2011

Wake up the Garden!

Come to our first Spring garden party this Friday, April 8 from 2-4. Get the soil ready, plant some seeds, pull some weeds. It's your garden too!

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Subscribing for a CSA share is a way to buy your veggies directly from the farmer. Most CSAs have a pick-up location where you can pick up your box of produce weekly. You sign up for a season and whatever is ripe and ready, arrives in your box on a set day of the week. You never know exactly what will show up. There is an element of surprise each time you open the box. Sometimes you get to try out something you've never had before.

Some things we like about CSAs are that they support local farmers; we get the freshest seasonal and local food; and less fuel is needed to transport the food since it goes directly from the local farm to a nearby pick-up site to our kitchens. It's good for us, the farmers and the environment.

The Sustainability Committee has been working with Bon Appétit and Full Circle Farm to set up a pick-up location for such a CSA on the SMU campus. Imagine being able to pick up a fresh box of organic, seasonal veggies while you're at school!

There are many CSA options in the area and you might pick one based on price, pick-up location, seasonal options, frequency of delivery, etc. Take a look here to see what farms are offering CSA shares near your home.

A few of us who live on Olympia's east side have been pretty happy with Rising River Farm's shares.

Sustainable Business

Are you interested in sustainable business practices? You might find this new book by Zingerman's co-founding partner Ari Weinzweig, an interesting read. During my days as an undergrad at the U of Michigan, I sampled many of Zing's tasty treats. Over the last 30 years, the small Jewish deli has turned into an impressive instution with a bakery, creamery, roastery, restaurant and a candy store that supports local farmers, values good food and practices sustainability.

Winterizing Your Own Garden

Hello again to all our readers, volunteers, and fellow garden and sustainability enthusiasts,

For those of you who, like me, are perhaps more enthusiasts and less experts, we have been doing some further research about important things to remember when putting your garden down to hibernate for the winter months. The following are some important and easy tips and tasks to remember to preserve your garden until Puxatony Phil announces the arrival of spring:

• Rake the leaves—Leaves might seem like a natural cover and a good insulator, but they can mat, and suffocate your plants. So rake them up, and compost, compost, compost.
  
  



• Pull up Annuals—Any plants that have fallen victim to frost, and won’t be coming back next year can and should be pulled up. You can add these plants to your compost, just be sure to check and throw out any you think might be diseased.
  
  




• Cut back the Perennials—Be sure to trim back any dead or unsightly leaves, etc. You probably won’t need to get rid of the whole plant, and those leaves that still look good can add some color to your winterized garden until you start growing again.
  
  




• Weed—Might seem a bit superfluous to be weeding, particularly if you aren’t planning on growing anything this winter, but this gives you the opportunity to make sure weeds don’t get the head start on you in the spring.
  
  




• Dig up tender bulbs—Any summer-blooming plants aren’t likely to survive the winter months in a USDA zone of 9, or colder. (Click on the map below to visit the USDA's website and learn more about your own area) Store bulbs in Vermiculite in a paper bag in a cool (65-degrees F or cooler), dry spot. (Tender bulbs may include: Begonias, Gladiolus, Dahlias, and other summer blooms)
  
  
  



• Protect broad leaved Evergreens—Spray them with antidesiccant. This will prevent water loss and dehydration of your plants from drying winter winds.
  (Broad leaved evergreens might include: Rhodendrons or Holly)
  
  




• Water Evergreens (and small trees)—If your fall weather is particularly dry, you want to make sure that the leaves and stems of your evergreens and trees are healthy and plump to survive the drying winds and winter months.
  
  




• Save your favorite plants before the frosts hits, small annuals and herbs can flourish and brighten up windowsills in the winter months.
  
  




• Be careful to avoid fertilizing your garden, or pruning at the end of a plant’s season, this promotes new growth that will be killed off by frost and cold. Trimming dead or damaged branches or leaves is fine though.
  



• Winter mulch Perennials—If winter temperatures are likely to fall below 10-degrees F, you should provide your perennials with winter mulch to insulate them from the cold. Simple and lightweight mulches such as: shredded autumn leaves, pine needles, or straw will work. Avoid compact mulches and whole leaves since they can suffocate your plants.
  
  But just because it’s winter doesn’t mean there aren’t plants that will flourish in your garden in the winter months. One of the things we did in winterizing our garden was to plant plants which would reintroduce nitrogen and other nutrients this year’s crops may have taken out of our soil.
  
  
  This is a sample of what the Hayes Valley Farm, an urban farm in San Francisco, does to layer and add nutrients to their soil.

Again, thank you to all of you who follow our Learning garden's progress here on the blog, and have volunteered your time and hands to keeping our garden beautiful and running smoothly. And best of luck with your own winter gardens.