News Blog

The propagation house has been a huge success!  Here are some pictures of it as it stands today: http://www.flickr.com/photos/inspeyere/sets/72157623131170200/

We received 600 dollars from BWB, of which 500 was spent on our shade cloth.  We purchased it locally through Simm’s Tree Farm, an education center like ours here in Riverside.  They installed it for free, and donated the cabling to hang it, and we’re working on securing more funds to build a permanent wooden frame for it to prevent drooping and hang our irrigation system off of.  For now though, its working great, giving our seedlings a cool place to grow and allowing us a head start on spring planting.

We spent the other 100 dollars on seeds from seedsavers.org.  Due to the large number of plants we’re planting to support our own and other gardens, we spent more than the $100 BWB donated and used money from our workshops to cover the rest.  We’re very passionate about growing heirloom species, and are going to be doing as much as we can to encourage all the citizens we interact with and gardens we support to use high quality, non-GMO seeds.

As for where we’re going, there are alot of amazing things in the works for us.  The mayor of Riverside (recently promoted to President of the National League of Cities) has asked us to implement a community garden structure for Riverside.  We’re taking it a step further, and proposing a whole new food culture!  We’re starting a garden exchange with the master gardeners and other individual gardeners to spread the harvest around, and will be donating excess to soup kitchens and needy families.  We’re partnering up with dozens of local churches to have them plant their own gardens where they currently have lawns, and we’re getting the city to start a flagship community garden that will support all the other gardens in the city.

These ideas are all scalable, and look to eventually evolve into economic opportunities for our volunteers and fellow citizens.  The propagation house that BWB assisted us in building will be a key component of supporting these organizations and expanding our own garden.  If any BWB volunteers are interested in coming by to visit, share a homegrown meal, or volunteer, let us know!  This is just the tip of the iceberg!

-Nick Heyming
Growcology.com