Sunnyvale Teaching and Demonstration Garden
First Year - November, 2006
Overview:
The demonstration garden within Sunnyvale's Charles Street Community Garden holds monthly public classes on organic, sustainable gardening and demonstrates such techniques and principals by using them in the demonstration garden.
Over the summer of 2006, our team moved and translated an existing MG demonstration garden and volunteer team from Sunnyvale's Heritage Center to the new Charles Street Garden site. We placed emphasis on using recycled, recyclable or salvaged materials in garden construction and demonstrating organic and sustainable growing techniques. These efforts support the MG strategic goals around sustainability and the community garden’s organic and sustainable gardening goals.
Active public teaching via monthly scheduled classes supports both our traditional mission of extending research-based horticultural information to residents of Santa Clara County and our strategic goal of outreach to an ethnically, ability and age diverse gardening community. During the period June through October, we delivered 14 hours of vegetable gardening training classes to 216 participants and consulted with 42 community gardeners on site with plant and pest questions.
Field Project Report:
This teaching and demonstration project began in late winter 2006 as the city of Sunnyvale made a vacant property available for the building of a community garden on Charles Street and our existing Sunnyvale Master Gardener demonstration garden lost its location in Sunnyvale's Heritage Center.
Garden Building:
Building of both the community garden and our MG Teaching and Demonstration garden began in early May with our installation of in-ground irrigation runs that supply water to hose bibs in each of our growing beds. Growing beds were outlined with salvaged, broken concrete chunks. Beds were dug and amended with compost . Four 4’x16’ raised beds in our garden were built and supplied by the community garden. To suppress weeds, areas of our garden between the growing beds were covered with discarded cardboard salvaged from retailers and wood chips provided free by tree trimming companies.
Seeding/Planting/Transplanting:
Two demonstration beds, tomato trials and MG Favorite tomatoes & peppers, were planted in May. These plants established well. However, most of the tomatoes did not continue to grow well and showed signs of phosphorous deficiency by mid-June. They were side-dressed with fish bone meal but never improved. The plants bore small, sparse fruits. In mid-July, the weakest were infested by tomato russet mites that were hard to control even with sprays of wetable sulfur. Interestingly, most of the pepper plants grew and fruited well and showed no signs of soil nutrient deficiency. We learned that more soil conditioning was required to grow future crops well.
Seven blueberry plants were transplanted from our Heritage Center site in late June. They were planted into a mounded bed mixed with native soil, peat and soil sulfur and irrigated by weeping soaker hose. In spite of extreme heat in the days following transplant and 10 days more extreme heat a month later, the blueberries pushed new growth and appear to be re-establishing themselves in the new garden.
In November, we planted two ornamental beds with water-wise California plants that are native to Santa Clara County. Plants were selected for their ornamental value and for their ability to attract native pollinator insects to the garden. Our plan is to irrigate the beds only by hand to illustrate that an attractive ornamental border can be created without an investment in in-ground irrigation. After the plants are established, we’ll water them monthly during the dry season.
Garden signs:
A large kiosk for information and education was provided by the community garden. We used temporary laminated paper signs to interpret each of the garden beds this first summer. Permanent, weather-proof bed signs that allow easy placement of printed information are being built from reused scrap materials. The signs provide interpretation of the garden beds when we are not in the garden to explain our project to visitors.
Watering:
Planted beds were irrigated by weeping soaker hoses turned on by hand twice weekly or as dictated by hot weather. Beds were mulched with straw. Permanent drip irrigation will be installed during winter and paid for with a grant from Santa Clara Valley Water District.
Garden Teaching Program:
Our teaching program began in early June as the new community garden beds were assigned to Sunnyvale residents. We taught a series of two 2-hour classes, "Gardening 101 and 102," to all 90 new gardeners. Classes were offered over 4 evenings to accommodate all the gardeners.
In July we began a class series open to the entire community with "Care of the Mid-Season Vegetable Garden" to a class of 10. Our August topic was "Starting seeds for the Winter Vegetable Garden" where 44 participants seeded 6-packs with seeds to take home & grow. September's class for 24 participants covered "Soil Sustainability and Cover Cropping" and "Dealing with Insect Pests". October's class of 10 recounted "What Worked in the Garden & What Didn't: Planning for Next Summer's Garden." November's class, held in the Sunnyvale Public Library, discussed "Winter Garden Care" for a group of 38. We'll skip December and begin again in January 2007. In each case our class participants reflect the age, gender and ethnic diversity found in Sunnyvale.
Teaching via e-mail:
As we joined the community garden's e-group and read many questions the gardeners posted, we prepared brief e-mail notes on topics like garden irrigation, living with insects in the garden and treatment for tomato russet mites. Often we could direct the community gardeners where to look in our demonstration garden to see gardening techniques we recommended in the e-mails. We continue to receive positive feedback from the community gardeners about this kind of teaching.
Public Events:
We participated in the Charles Street Community Gardens' Harvest Festival and Open Garden on October 1. Five of our team members were on hand in our demonstration garden to meet with the community gardeners and the larger public who attended. Our goal was to show our support of the community gardening effort, introduce ourselves and our project to the attendees and begin a discussion on using sustainable and organic practices in all areas of gardening. There were over 100 visitors to the gardens that day.
Summary:
In the spring, summer and fall of 2006, we worked to build and plant a new demonstration garden and establish a well received public teaching series based on our garden. We worked to recruit and reinvigorate a team of MG's to work on the transformed project. We've learned about working with a community garden and building credibility with the gardeners. The garden's emphasis on garden sustainability and the use of organic growing techniques has been a new chapter in gardening for each of us.