Photos from Throwdown!

Hi all! We had a great week at Roots & Rays, the highlight of course being the Kid’s Garden Throwdown that happened last Saturday. We were a bit worried about the rain, but thanks to the help and support from all of our neighbors, the event happened without a hitch and we found that it takes more than rain to stop us! Thanks very much for all those who rallied together at the last minute to lend us the much needed tents!

Arts, crafts and education

We had several activities happening throughout the day. Mia set up a safety table, with interesting first aid info and some coloring activities for our younger friends. On another table, we made seed bombs to further beautify our neighborhood! We also had some plant pot decorating and planting going on, thanks very much to our friends at the Greater Pilsen Economic Development Association for the buttons, and to Patricia Domiguez for the lotería, which was also a big hit!

Food!!

We had some great food! Hurray for Yotl Ramirez from the San Jose Obrero Mission, who kindly donated his time, skill and goodwill to be our grill master and spent the day cooking up hotdogs and veggies.

All of our produce was kindly provided by Daniel Suarez from Blue Island Wholesale Produce, the biggest hit being the cucumber salad. We must have gone through nearly twenty enormous cucumbers. Which just goes to show that healthy foods can also be delicious! We also served up a couple of items from the garden, in particular greens, radishes and herbs. And how can we forget those amazing worm cupcakes? Thanks Lauren!

Thanks also to Nathalia from The Greater Pilsen Economic Development Association, who is a total star, and arranged sweets and pastries from Starbucks; and to Israel Vargas, also from San Jose Obrero Mission and Families in Crisis, who provided our much needed tables for the event.

Music, entertainment  and special guests  ♪ ♫ ♬ ….

Our DJ Goerge from Gimme Da Mic did a terrific job with the  music, playing special hits that were total crowd pleasers, we were very lucky to have him!

Our party was so special that we even had a special guest appearance: Dora!! Dora was a hit among young and old, boys and girls. Everyone wanted to get their picture taken with Dora! A very special thanks to Matt Kissane from Absolutely Entertainment for arranging her visit; it was very special indeed!

Piñatas

Well, you can’t have a party without a piñata, which is why we had two!

Diego’s was the first to get hit, followed by an Angry Bird! And boy, are those kid’s strong! When they were through with them, all that was left was a pile of shredded paper, and every last sweet was gone, LOL!

After the piñatas, the party started to die down, but even the clean-up was fun, thanks to the enthusiastic boys who helped us by lugging the heavy stuff back to place, and the many neighbors who stayed behind to lend a helping hand. 

Exhausted (but very happy) team after the throwdown…

Thanks again for all the help. So many organizations, families and individuals chipped in and worked together to make the throwown a very special day. We had a lot of fun, we hope you guys did too! Hopefully we can plan another event soon, so please send us your suggestions. Next time, if we’re lucky, we may even have some sun shining down on us!

More photos can be found here thanks to our friends at Victoria Lynn Photography!

Kid’s Garden Throwdown!

Hi guys! We have a great event planned for this weekend: Roots & Rays Kid’s Garden Throwdown!

We’ll have some arts, crafts and gardening workshops, a DJ, some pinatas, and food! We’ll also have some local artists painting the shed and others doing face painting!

 

Here’s the flyer, and if you want to get involved, give us a call!

 

 

 

 

Not-so-brief update…

Hi all! Tons of pretty amazing stuff has been happening at Roots & Rays this Spring!  A not-so-brief recap of the last couple weeks is below…

Plants-a-plenty

We have officially started gardening and some of the beds are looking lovely! The community bed is all planted and the beets are looking especially beautiful with their bright pink and green leaves shooting up.

Arugula and radishes also doing well, and our first little strawberries of the season are starting to peek out from under the leaves. The bees are also buzzing away happily with all the flowers that are coming up.

We also have a gorgeous mystery purple flower that is 3-feet tall and is about to open up. Maybe we’ll find out what it is this week!

The chive flowers are also all opening up beautifully, and, tip from Sue: now is the time to harvest them and hang them up to dry; the brilliant purple color will last all year and you can use them to liven up your house.

We’ve also started a perennial ornamental bed (photo on the right) on the Northwest section of the lot that is starting to come together. Anything you’d like to see there? We’re looking for ideas, so please share your thoughts!

If You Build It…

Dan’s been pretty busy building amazing things like the kick-as arbor which now stands proudly at the entrance of the garden. He’s also building a new picnic table and benches and all sorts of cool stuff with Sergio, and he is also going to be leading our New Fence Project. We’ll hear more about that soon, but for now, save the date: Friday, 4^th May.

Our favorite neighbor Arieli led Emily, Amanda, and Sue in painting a pretty bad-ass rain barrel to be continued in 2 weeks.  Arieli is an expert painter of jellyfish and other underwater life forms, so keep an eye out for those! I’ll get some pictures up as soon as they’re ready.

Emily installed a lovely and effective bee barrier which looks great!    Especially with the strawberries growing underneath… It looks really nice!

Dan and Amy also put up our lovely signs, many of which were painted by Amy’s AmeriCorps Group. Thanks guys!

Igor and the Freeloaders (such a good band name!) are doing a great job on the fireplace (still some work to be done but it should be up and running soon) and José has started digging a hole to put our grill in. BBQ season is about to start, yay!

Community

Amy came up with the fantastic idea to host a Kid’s Garden Throwdown on May 12th. We will do all sorts of super fun activities like face painting and arts and crafts. We also hope to BBQ and have music. If you or your business or organization are interested in promoting  this festive community event, there are many ways to get involved. Please contact Amy for more information.

Also, big thanks to Amy for the pictures which adorn this blog entry! They were all taken at the garden this week.

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We have a lot to get done this season and have many fun projects in mind. Do you have an idea you would like to share with us? We would love to hear what you, our community, would like to see in the garden. Or better yet, come help us make it happen! We will be putting info up on the chalkboard in the garden, and please feel free to leave messages or suggestions for us on the board also.

Group gardening days are: Sundays, from 11am to 3pm

Hope to see you all Sunday!

All Things Considered Considers Community Gardens on The Salt

This is a short but interesting dialogue about the pros and cons of communal community gardens.  It is particularly relevant to Roots & Rays this year as we are offering allotments for the first time.  Either way, allotment or communal, we have some fantastic members this year which makes me feel like we are on the right path!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/03/20/148999066/at-the-community-garden-its-community-thats-the-hard-part

Reporting Back From the Good Food Festival

As if this ridiculous weather wasn’t enough, the Good Food Festival this weekend at UIC would make anyone antsy to get to planting.  There were some great vendors and organizations there, many of which had yummy samples – http://goodfoodfestivals.com/chicago/tradeshow/.  I was also able to attend a few workshops covering composting, small space gardening, and community building and would like to share some of my favorite tidbits.

 

Composting

Urban Worm Girl was propagating some great wisdom about apartment and garden composting.

 

Bokashi composting

Regular composters know that awful feeling you get when you have to throw “non-compostable” food stuffs into the trash. We’re talking animal products, prepared foods, left-overs.   Bokashi composting is an anaerobic composting system that can take care of all of that. And you can keep right in your apartment!  Yes, please.

 

Hauling mulch

I figure I was about 1 more destroyed $30 wheel barrel away from breaking down and shelling out the money for a decent one. But wait!  There’s another option. For that same 30 bucks you can get a 50 gallon trash can on wheels and drag that bad boy where ever you want.

 

Fertilizing

Those of us in cramped urban growing spaces know the importance of setting our roots in crazy fertilized soil.  What I did not know is that it’s also important to fertilize the plant parts above ground through a process called foliar feeding.  Just mix up a cocktail of fish emulsion, seaweed, and water and spray away!   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foliar_feeding

 

Pest Control

Just like the vampire, bugs hate garlic.  Throw some garlic liquid in with your foliar spray and ward off those little blood suckers.

 

Resources

The panel speakers also offered up some fantastic local resources! Here are just a couple:

 

Soil testing: University of Massachusetts Amherst will test your soil for $10! http://www.umass.edu/soiltest/

 

Organic Soil: Lake Street Landscape Supply was touted by more than a few panel speakers – $35 per cubic yard. http://lakestreetsupply.com/

 

Reference:  If you can only own one gardening book it should be Rodale’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening.

 

Seeds:  Johnny’s, Seed Savers, Seeds of Change, and Territorial Seed Company.

 

Vegetable Garden Design: Gardener’s Supply Company is the place to go to plan your plot. You can choose from one of their pre-designed gardens or use their free tool to create your own.  And seriously, how great is this URL – http://www.gardeners.com/.

 

 

If anyone else was able to attend, please tell us about your experience or handy tips you learned.  For me it was a great exhibit of our green revolution.  And thankfully tomorrow is our first work day in the garden!  Hope to see you there but there’ll be many more to come.

Spring Cleaning!!!!

We will be having our first official work day in the garden this Sunday from 10am-2pm!

Activities will involve general clean-up and preparation for the coming growing season. We will provide tools and work gloves.  All you’ll need to bring are a sturdy pair of shoes and plenty of water!

We will also start assigning allotted beds. Please get in touch to find out more about having your own growing space for 2012.

Can’t wait to see you there!

Pilsen Garden Walk this Saturday!!! Paseo de Jardines

Roots & Rays is excited to be part of the 2nd Annual Paseo de Jardine/Garden Walk! This event was organized by Alianza Verde and is not to be missed!

The tour starts at 10AM at TRP Zocolo Plaze (1818 S. Paulina) and goes until 3PM.  Stop by Roots & Rays for a Bee Keeping Demo given by our resident bee keeper Emily Ingram.

Saturdays in the Garden and Everything is Green!!!

The garden is flourishing and bursting with green.  With the addition of over  300 sq ft of new growing space we’re expecting a busy and productive season.   The beds are already housing dozens of different types of fruits, vegetables, and herbs and there are still more to go in the ground.  We have our old favorites like kale, basil and tomatoes but we’re also trying out some new things this year like garlic, onions, potatoes and epazote!

We’d also like to welcome Casa Juan Diego to Roots & Rays!   This Monday will mark the beginning of a beautiful partnership founded on community, sustainability, nutrition, and education.

Get Involved!

Our weekly volunteer days will be switching from Sundays to Saturdays as of this weekend.  Stop by the garden any Saturday between 10AM and 2PM to lend a hand.  No previous gardening experience necessary!  If you’d like to help out but are not available on Saturdays, please send an email to rootsandrays@gmail.com.  Any day is a great day for watering and weeding and we of course would love to hear about any special projects you would like to do.

April Showers Benefit Party

Roots & Rays Community Garden is hosting this April Showers Fundraiser to raise money for a sustainable water capture and irrigation system.  These April showers aren’t going to last the whole summer, and with six new raised bed we need to make sure we can sustainably water all our May flowers and June veggies!

Join us for food, drink and music next Thursday,  April 28th from 6:30 to 10pm at Cafe Mestizo, 1738 W 18th St.

$10 suggested donation.

Hope to see you there!

1st Workday of 2011

The start of the planting season is quickly approaching and we are quickly preparing! Our starts are sprouting and Sunday we had our 1st 2011 workday in the garden!

Thanks to our hardworking volunteers we got a ton of work done! We marked out 4 new beds courtesy of GreenCorps, prepped for the arrival of our bees this Saturday, did a ton of clean-up and planted 5 bushes generously donated by our neighbor, Lupe.

A big thanks to our new volunteers Lisa, Traci, Adam, and Ryan as well as our tried and true; Rachel, Ben, Jasmine, Nick, Christine, and Sue for making it a successful day.

If you’d like to help out on one of our upcoming workdays we’d love to have you! Just shoot us an email to rootsandrays@gmail.com and we’ll let you know our upcoming schedule. Or just stop by the lot any Sunday between 10AM and 2PM – 1513-1519 W. Cullerton in Pilsen.