Santa Fe Seed Exchange

ATTENTION ALL SANTA FE GARDENERS!

Come to the Santa Fe Seed Exchange Wednesday — March 20

If you are looking for seeds and ideas for your vegetable garden, come to the Santa Fe Seed Exchange on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 from 4 pm-7 pm in Frenchy’s Barn on Agua Fria and Osage Ave. Last year we had over 200 people come and pick up and exchange seeds! Hope to see you there! For more info about what this is all about go to the Home Grown New Mexico link here:

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=1918a75deae1c54e3561e368c&id=c96905515a&e=fa40006742

Pictures from the Santa Fe 4th Annual Pumpkin Bash

Nov11

Santa Fe 4th Annual Pumpkin Bash!!

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Yesterday I held the 4th Annual Pumpkin Bash here in Santa Fe and about 35 people came! IT was COLD but not as cold as later on during the day and people warmed up swinging an axe! My friend Jill Foster called them ‘the choppers’! I also supplied my pumpkin soup (the recipe is in the previous post) to warm the bones. This was the biggest turnout to date. All my friends, Master gardener friends and Homegrown friends came out for the big event. Everyone had fun and afterwards took some pumpkin home. Must have given away over 300 lbs to friends and the other 85 lbs is going to Kitchen Angels! Let’s figure out how many pies it would make- Take 385 lbs x 16 oz (16 oz in a lb) = 6160 oz. Divide that by 12 oz (1.5 cups is the standard amount of pumpkin used in pies) and we get 513 pies!! Even if we subtract some out for that stringy stuff and seeds we still get around 500 pies!

2012 Kitchen Garden and Coop Tour is Sunday! Don’t Miss It!

Jul24

Excerpt taken from HomeGrownNewMexico.org:

We look forward to seeing you on our Second Annual Kitchen Garden & Coop Tour on Sunday, July 29th from 9am-2pm. This event is presented by Home Grown New Mexico and Edible Santa Fe.

The tour is self-paced. Guests will go to the homes in any order that they select with a wrist band to identify them. The homeowners will be the main tour guides, but also have help from the Master Gardeners and volunteers from each location to review edible gardens, chickens, bees and any other self-sustaining items such as solar, water catchment and more. Cold drinks will be available at each location sponsored by Whole Foods. Revolution Bakery and Joe’s Dining have also sponsored the event.

For questions contact homegrownnewmexico@gmail.com or 473-1403.

Click Here to Download Map for Tour– Note Exit 62 is closed on 599

Click Here to Download Addresses & Bios for Tour

Truck Farm Movie! Monday July 23 at CCA at 6:30 pm

Jul22

Monday night the movie, ‘Truck Farm’ presented by Whole Foods is about people in New York who wanted a garden in New York City and didn’t have a place to put one so they planted it in the back of a truck! Afterwards Homegrown New Mexico will have a panel discussion on community gardening. Come see our own ‘truck farm’ which will be on display at the movie.

Truck Farming (rochesterurbanagriculture.com)

Lettuce bowl ready for first thinning

Mar20

Here is the lettuce bowl I planted on Mar 7, only 13 days ago. Remember how it was barely coming up where it hung off the seed heat mat-well no more! It is coming up beautifully. It’s so nice to see a ‘sea of green’ in the house. I will thin the baby seedlings (eating them) to give the rest of the seedlings some room to grow bigger. This is a mesclun lettuce I got from the Homegrown New Mexico seed swap event. It is about 2 weeks ahead of the the lettuce I just planted outside. All part of trying to keep a continuous supply of lettuce for awhile. A couple more weeks and I think I’ll have a salad!

Time to plant spinach and lettuce

Mar18

Now is the time to plant spinach and lettuce OUTSIDE as well as peas if you haven’t already done it. This year I am putting them between the rows of garlic I planted last November as APHIDS DO NOT LIKE GARLIC so I’m hoping the garlic will help keep them away from the greens this year. I took the temperature of the soil in the exposed raised bed with my compost thermometer where I want to plant them and it was 60°F. Lettuce seeds germinate best at soil temperatures of 40° to 80°F so I’m in the right range. This will be mesclun so I spread the seeds over the area as shown on the left side of the picture, then put a fine layer of sand over the seeds as shown in the right side of the picture, I planted ‘Provencal Mix’ from Cook’s Gardens and ‘Rocket Arugula’ ‘Tyee’ spinach (which is slow to bolt), and another lettuce mix with Arugula that I got from the Home Grown New Mexico’s seed swapping event we had a couple of weeks ago.

Homegrown New Mexico-Vegetable Gardens, Potagers and Coop Tour

Jul24

Today I volunteered at the first Homegrown New Mexico tour of 6 homes featuring vegetable gardens, potagers and chicken coops. I can’t say how impressed I am with this organization. First, they picked some fantastic examples in our city. The tour was incredibly organized AND they are only 5 months old. Phew! A big chunk to bite off and they did it extraordinarily well. At every site I got several ideas that I will want to incorporate into my own gardens. Here are some of the things I particularly enjoyed. Great job to all!

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Teaching ‘ORGANIC PEST AND DISEASE CONTROLS’ class-Tomorrow-June 25

Jun24

Photo Courtesy of Homegrown New Mexico

Tomorrow (Saturday) I teach an ORGANIC PEST AND DISEASE CONTROLS CLASS-JUNE 25 for vegetable gardeners at the Milagro Community Gardens from 9 am-10:30am put on by HOMEGROWN NEW MEXICO organization. I will cover organic insecticides for various insect control and other organic methods to control many insects. I will also cover identification of many diseases and organic disease control. LOCATION: Milagro Community Garden on Legacy and Rodeo Road. Turn on Legacy and the parking lot is on the right, behind the Lutheran Church.

Home Grown New Mexico, a non-profit organization, creates venues where individuals, businesses and organizations that support home grown food production can exchange products, ideas and expertise. The vision is to enable New Mexicans to take personal responsibility for growing, raising, making and storing healthy food. For more information on them go to: http://www.homegrownnewmexico.org/

Here are pdfs of all my handouts for the class for those interested:

ORGANIC CONTROLS IN THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

ORGANIC INSECTICIDE CONTROLS

ORGANIC DISEASE CONTROLS

TOMATO DISEASES

PLANT RECIPES

As a bonus here are 2 more pdfs that were not available in the class but are available here.

SQUASH BUG PREFERENCE CHART

ATTRACTING BENEFICIAL INSECTS