Harvesting Green Beans

Greetings gardeners and food lovers alike, August brings the heat we need to make our crops ripen. We are enjoying a bounty of perfect green beans in the Saint Martins Learning Garden!!

Our first crop of green beans went to the Thurston County Food Bank!

August Harvest!

Students from American Seminar class will be harvesting potatoes and garlic in the garden tomorrow.

Lynn Villeilla will be leading the garden lesson and also boiling off some freshly dug potatoes for tasting. Come taste fresh potatoes with garlic and garden herbs as a side for your lunch!

Thursday, August 2, 12pm
In the Learning Garden (located just outside of the dining hall)

Chinese Medicinal Plants in the Garden

Last Friday in the garden - Dr. Louise Kaplan, director of SMU's new nursing program, brought visiting students from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine to plant medicinal herbs and shrubs in the SMU's Learning Garden.

from Dr. Jie, Xu (Daisy) list of medicinal plants for the garden

Thanks to visiting professor Dr. Jie, Xu (Daisy) who compiled the list of medicinal plants for us to get and to  all of the students who volunteered to go to the market, find the starts and to plant our first Chinese medicinal herbs for future classes to enjoy.

Students from Shanghai University. Left to right in front: Chen Luhua (Pearl), Zhu Liangbo (Cream), Huang Zhiwei (Simple), Zhang Zhuhui(Vicky),Chen Lin (Lin), and Zhao Xiyue (CiCi). Left-far back: Xie Yingfang (Catherine) and Shen Dan (Ivy)  Mr. Lee, the chaperone, is the farthest back.

 SMU's ESL students are currently working on information cards to go with the plants!

Shanghai student, Zhang Zhuhui (Vicky), watering the Ginkgo after planting

Ginkgo (pictured above) is an especially good medicine for a university garden as it helps with memory and concentration!

Micro-irrigation continued

setting up micro-irrigation

This is a continuation of last week’s workshop. Newcomers welcome. You did not have to have come to the last workshop to attend this one. Rebeca will continue setting up the micro-irrigation system. Come and learn how it works!

Garden Party Workshop

Micro-sprinkling for a small garden

The Learning Garden (just outside of the cafeteria)

Thursday, July 19

11am-1pm

Learn about how to set up a water-saving small scale irrigation system. You can do this at home. It’s inexpensive and saves you water and time. Learn by helping set up our own micro-sprinklers in the garden beds. It’s so easy you will be amazed.

Everyone is welcome! Workshop led by local gardener Rebeca Potasnik

Also, come taste the ripe berries and take some herbs home – there are still raspberries in the garden and fresh oregano and mint!

Workshop drip-irrigation for a small garden

Where: In the Learning Garden (just outside of the cafeteria)
When: Thursday, July 12 11am-1pm

Local gardener Rebeca Potasnik will teach a workshop on how to set up a water-saving small scale drip irrigation system. You can do this at home. It’s inexpensive and saves you water and time. Learn by helping set up our own micro-sprinklers in the garden beds. It’s so easy you will be amazed. Everyone is welcome! The workshop is free.

drip irrigation

A snack in the SMU garden

delicious red berries

This is what was ripe in the garden today and made for a very good snack.

June Work Party

A lot got done in the garden during the work party. New potatoes dug up, strawberries and currants tasted, herbs picked, weeds plucked, plants planted and watered. Keep your eye out for our next workshop on setting up a micro-drip system in the garden!

tasting strawberries

kids are welcome!

oregano

garlic!

Thank you David Suter for taking the photographs.

Saint Martin’s Learning Garden Party with Lynn Villella

Garden expert Lynn Villella says that “after the new moon is a good time for above ground crop planting.” Lynn will be leading another planting work party in the SMU Learning Garden during this post new moon week.

Come and learn about gardening from an expert, ask questions, dig in the dirt, plant some plants, check out our new greenhouse, find out what’s growing in the garden and taste some ripe berries. Have you ever tasted a red currant? Maybe you can get some strawberries too.

Saint Martin’s Learning Garden Party with Lynn Villella
The Learning Garden is located just outside if the St. Gertrude Dining Hall.
Thursday, June 21
12-2pm

Early Summer in the Garden

The garden overlooks the entire campus and makes for a great place to relax and see the world go by.

best place to eat lunch

The red currant berries are starting to ripen and peppers are flowering in the greenhouse.

ripening red currants

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.