Cory grew up in Burlington, went to BHS and recently graduated from Paul Smith's College with a degree in Natural Resources, with a forestry focus. Cory has extensive experience working with various types of machinery through his years working with the 4x4 Center in South Burlington.  Aside from being very handy, and adept at building and fixing things, Cory also has superior plant identification skills.

 

In his free time, Cory enjoys riding his motorcycle and fishing.  If you see him out in the garden, take a minute to say hello!

 

Below are photos of a few of Cory's recent projects.

 

Cory built this new shed for the Community Teaching Garden in about a day.

  

Rain water catchment system at Champlain Garden

  

 

 

Rain water catchment system at Tommy Thompson

 

 

 

Super Seattle 

A view of downtown Seattle from the Bainbridge Ferry.                     photo: Dan Cahill

Last month I mentioned that I would be traveling to Seattle to attend the American Community Garden Association (ACGA) annual conference.  As promised, I have put together and article about my travels and some things I learned along the way.  Jess Hyman, Executive Director of the Vermont Community Garden Network (VCGN) and BACG Board Member, also attended the ACGA conference.  She contributed to this article and has added reflections and photos.

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The City of Seattle is quite a remarkable place!  During my travels I enjoyed weather in the 80s and bluebird skies.  Seattle is nestled on the shores of the Puget Sound and it also has many beautiful canals and lakes throughout the city landscape.  Community gardens, public trees, and flourishing greenbelts abound.  I found biking around the city to be safe and convenient.  There was also an endless supply of restaurants, coffee shops, and record stores.  All of this left me wondering why everyone in the world doesn't live there?

 

I actually asked that very question to a few locals, who promptly reminded me of the rainy season.  According to the Seattle.gov website, Seattle is in the top 5 rainiest U.S. cities by number of precipitations days, and it gets the least amount of annual sunlight of all major cities in the lower-48 states.  With this in mind, I can see why the population of the Emerald City caps off at a modest 620,000.

 

Seattle to Burlington - How do we Compare?

The BACG program has been around just a little longer than the Seattle P-Patch community garden program (the P refers to "Picardo" for its first community garden, Picardo Farm). This year BACG is celebrating its 41st year with a community garden program, and P-Patch is celebrating its 40th.  Beyond this there are many difference in our networks.  For instance, BACG supports 14 alottment style gardens, whereas the P-Patch program supports 90 sites that are allotment style as well as community style.  Community style is when a group of gardeners work together on one large plot as opposed to a collection of individual plots.

 

Burlington continues to be very strong from a garden access standpoint.  When you look at the per-capita ratio of Seattle's 90 gardens and Burlington's 14, we are doing quite well. Burlington has one garden for every 2,928 residents whereas Seattle has one garden for every 6,888 residents.  Burlington also outshines Seattle in the size of the garden plots. Most of the P-Patch gardens have 10'x10' plots. This compares to an average size of 18'x20' in Burlington.

Special events in the gardens are a great way to celebrate the gardeners, the food, and the P-Patch program. The annual Ballard P-Patch Art in the Garden festival includes local artisans, food vendors, garden tours, and even a beer garden.

 

Beyond gardens, Seattle is a remarkable place for greenway gardens, street trees, and fruit trees on public and private land.    A non-profit, City Fruit is doing innovative work to connect private and public fruit trees into an integrated city wide orchard.  Volunteers harvest fruit and donate most of the bounty to food shelfs.  Some of the harvested fruit is also sold.  There is even a local restaurant, Stumbling Goat Bistro, that makes a jam from food harvested by City Fruit and serves it to its customers.  

 

A greenbelt in the Ballard Neighborhood of Seattle.  Notice the  curb cuts and asphalt swales that direct stormwater into the greenbelt.

 

 

 

 

Greenbelts are used heav

ily for rainwater catchment, traffic calming, and even food production.  Side note in regard to greenbelt food production, this is not encouraged in Burlington due to toxins an

d heavy metals present in greenbelts next to our roadways.

    

 

 

 

The ACGA Conference

(from left) Rumi Sato, Executive Director of NPO Birth, Dan Cahill,  Dr. Yoritaka Tashiro, Professor, Chiba University, and Sakura Tashiro

This year marked the 34th year ACGA has been offering a national conference for community gardening.  In fairness, it is actually an international conference!  There was a large contingent of delegates at this year's conference from Japan. 

 

Below Jess and I have provided a brief synopsis of the various workshops we attended and some interesting take away points as well as links to supporting resources.

 

Moving Forward: How to Collaborate Across Depts. to Achieve Integrated Citywide Food Policy

In this session, two City employees from Seattle discussed work that Seattle has recently accomplished (since 2011) regarding Urban Agriculture.  This was very interesting to hear about juxtapose the ongoing Urban Ag work here in Burlington.  Specifically, the presenters talked about the creation of IDT's (inter-department teams) that are created within city government to address issue that span departments.  In relation to Urban Ag, they have had an IDT working to achieve the following City Code changes:

• Define key Urban Ag terms
• Allow food to be grown and sold in all zones and on private property
• Allow more chickens per land parcel
• Formally recognize farmers markets, allowing them into more areas
• Developing height exemptions for rooftop food production

What's Wrong with My Vegetable Crop - Kill Them All, Insects?

This session focused on the importance of being able to properly ID insects and their impact on gardens. This was a 101 session on Integrated Pest Management, and I found it to be very informative.  I got approval from the presenter to share his power point with you.  You can find it here.

 

Closing the Loop: Nutrient and Carbon Cycling in the Urban Ecosystem

This was a fascinating session.  We delved into the topic of biosolids and their potential role in gardens, cleaning up Brownfields, Superfund sites, and supporting erosion control projects.  Biosolids are essentially the end solid product of what comes out of sewage treatment plants.  Innovative thinkers are now calling "sewage treatment plants," "nutrient recovery facilities."  The presenters gave me permission to share their materials with you. I highly recomend reviewing it.

•  Biosolids Recycling Story
• Biosolids Poster
• You can also find out info about innovative biosolid use in our neck of the woods here.

Tree Fruit in Parks-Sustainable Bounty or Impossible Dream

I was very excited to attend this session in as we have been having exciting discussion here in Burlington about fruit trees on public property.  The presenter of this session was a man who has been working with the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department for over 20 years.  He shared a bit about the challenges of managing fruit trees but spoke even more about the benefits in the form of education, programming and community development in the form of harvest festivals.  Check out an exciting proposal by Kyle Clark here in Burlington to develop a public orchard/edible landscape near the waterfront.

 

Mentoring for Community Gardens

This session was directly related to BACG and Vermont Community Garden Network efforts to provide support for new gardeners. The presenters - both from university extension services - discussed how their programs train and deploy volunteer educators. A few takeaways:

• Pair up garden mentors and have new mentors shadow experienced mentors.
• Remind mentors that they don't need to be experts - their job is to help connect gardeners with info and resources.
• Clearly outline mentor roles.

 

Washington State University Extension Pierce County has a Community Garden Specialist option in its Master Gardener program.

 

Here in Vermont, UVM Master Gardeners are a great resource for community gardeners.

 

Most of the P-Patch gardens have three-bin composting systems with creative signage to educate gardeners and encourage good compost management.

 

Being embedded in neighborhoods and business districts is great exposure for the P-Patch program and provides easy access to the gardens. People who live and work nearby use the gardens as "pocket parks." The downside is some garden theft.

 

Many of Seattle's community gardens are paired with public parks and nestled into small urban pockets. The Unpaving Paradise garden is a 37-plot garden on a reclaimed parking lot in  one of Seattle's densest neighborhoods.

 

Photos by Jess Hyman, VCGN. 

 

See more photos of Seattle's gardens here. 

 

I first noticed what I believe to be "early tomato blight" a few weeks ago when the leaves on the bottom of my plants started to turn yellow and were covered in brown spots. I did some research and learned that blight is a fungus and moisture encourages it to spread. Mother Earth News suggests preventative pruning. Had I known earlier I would have pruned them before there was a problem and kept the leaves as dry as possible by watering the roots only and not the whole plant. It is also suggested that watering happens in the morning so that the soil is not wet overnight. Thankfully I had given my tomato plants a fair amount of distance from each other so that they have room to breathe and a structure to keep them off the ground. This helps keep the disease from spreading as quickly.

The first thing I did was remove all of the affected leaves and branches to discourage it from spreading and disposed of them in a trash receptacle and not the compost. Blight will remain in the soil. Garden hygiene is also important, so I keep everything well weeded and try not to work in a wet garden. In addition to these preventative measures I used a fungicide of 1 tsp of hydrogen peroxide and 1 cup of water and sprayed from the base of the plant up the branches. I spray them once a week and check my plants daily for newly affected branches. Another method that is suggested is a copper spray or wire. I opted to place a piece of copper wire at the base of each plant in/near the roots to fight the blight in the soil. This is often done in the spring when the plants are small toward of the blight before it is a problem.

My plan of action was to see if I could keep the blight at bay until the fruit had a chance to develop. I think I caught it early enough because so far these methods seem to be working. I've had 3 tomatoes so far and the rest are starting to ripen. 

 

Whats up with all the burlap?

You may notice a large pile of burlap sacks at your garden site.  We are using these to support pathway development at sites as well as to cover up abandoned plots to help suppress weeds.  Please do not take these bags unless your coordinator tells you it is okay.  Also, please do not take bags off of abandoned plots.

Bonnie and Colby pay a visit to their asparagus peas in early July

 

When did your passion for gardening begin?

My father grew up on a farm, so gardening was sort-of part of the culture. We always had some tomato plants and things in our backyard. As a little kid I used to love hearing stories about planting and growing things and I'm sure that's where it originally came from. We also had amazing different fruit trees in our backyard and I have really great memories of playing with the cherry tree in our backyard, or swinging on the apple tree. We had peaches, cherries, and plum trees and my mother would can all the different produce.

 

In later years my boyfriend now husband planted a garden in our backyard and that's when we first started doing more big-scale gardening. And then when we moved here to Burlington and we bought our house, the soil had too much lead in it for gardening, and so we became involved with Burlington Community Gardens.

 

What do you enjoy about coordinating at Ethan Allen? 

 

I love the diversity of these gardens, not only are there many countries and state s that the gardeners come from, but there's also a range in age and circumstance. We have several gardeners who have challenges physically who do a beautiful job at their gardens and also make a great contribution to the community as a whole. There are gardeners who have been in Vermont for decades and grown up on farms themselves and have a lot of interesting things to share, and there's college students....I think because there's so many kinds of people there's also so much diversity in what we grow. This is an advantage because I think with climate change we need to start experimenting more. The weather is changing and I see a lot of people trying out new varieties of crops and I think it's going to be what saves us, and allows us to b e more self-sufficient in Vermont.

   

Are there things that have changed for you from how you began coordinating in the beginning?

 

I've learned from my own children that playing in the garden is a very easy way

Colby harvesting a beautiful strawberry

to get them to eat their vegetables. I have a friend who is always surprised when her children who don't usually eat vegetables come to my garden and start munching on my raw vegetables.  At their school, the Integrated Arts Academy there's a lot of garden education involved with that. A wonderful illustration of that to me was the time I saw Bonnie Acker - a food activist that volunteers at the school - in line at the grocery store buying more kale plants. Turns out she was a victim of her own success, as the kids had literally defoliated the kale she planted because they were eating it so often while they were out playing. I think its a really wonderful way of changing food preferences, to have constant exposure to healthy food rather than lecturing or forcing children to eat it.   
 

 Emily Raymond   

I was always raised outdoors, doing fun things in gardens, in the earth, playing in the dirt. I grew up never being limited from playing in the mud or the weeds. So I've always had a really strong love of nature and plants in particular. Then by the time I was in middle school we got more into the gardening at home so I had gardening as part of chores, you know picking weeds or rocks or harvesting, and we also had little gardens of our own. 

 

You have done a lot in the way of making it possible to have your four children be alongside you while in the garden. 

 

This is such a fun place to bring the kids to get out of town. It is like one minute from downtown and it's a million miles away! It's quiet, you hear the birds, you hear the bugs, blue herons fly by. Plus it teaches the kids that you can grow food for survival. That's one of my big gigs, to teach my kids that you can grow your own food - you can grow food for survival and you can grow food for income.

 

For about 6 years I was teaching at HO Wheeler. I was teaching in the classroom, then moved to after-school programs, and then I gradually moved to gardening camps in the summer. I did that for a few years and it was awesome. I had a group of 14 kids and we put in Greenbelt Gardens in the Old North End. I taught those kids too: grow food for survival and grow food for income. These gardens were between the sidewalk and the road, where it is public domain. We decided to put three in front of different student's houses where their families could tend them. A couple of times we were able to sell our produce at the North End Farmers Market.

 

What vegetables have done well for you this year?

 

Great year for lettuce. I haven't see any blight yet, knock on wood. No beetles on the beans this year and some years those have been really bad. Great year for flowers, and for herbs. 

 

We've had some years where the garden was super productive, like we put tons of time and energy in. One year we had so many tomatoes I had literally had to make sauce and salsa and can it, because we had so many. This year I only did a couple of plants because my kids aren't supper interested in them. I try to do snacky things like lettuce, carrots, radishes, peas and beans. Things that they can snack on while they play here, keeps them engaged and interested. And then I grow the herbs because I love my herbs. My two favorite herbs are basil and chamomile - a great cooking herb and a nice medicinal herb.

 

Can you tell us a little about how the ideas for interactive areas in the garden came about, that allow your children to be with you and involved in the garden, and even with you as a single parent?

 

herb spiral

 

Sure. The herb spiral is loosely based on a Native American approach of growing things in spirals, as well as in college I learned about spiral and sensory gardening while working with students who were blind and deaf. We would have students walk through guided by the spiral and they would feel the different textures and smell the different smells. The herb spiral is very centering, very rich with all the different sensory experiences in the garden. It has the various textures of plants - some are soft, some flat and smooth, some scruffy and furry - and all the different rich smells of the earth. The Bean Teepee idea came out of Family Room play where they have had a great Bean Teepee for the kids to hide and explore in for years. And as I've had babies its a great place for them to rest, I can just put the car-seat or blanket right in there for them. The Sunflower House (a square patch surrounded by sunflowers and other tall flowers), I got from a really great book called Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots, which talks about container gardening using boots or buckets. In it the Sunflower House is a place for kids to hide out and play,

James, Honi, and Addy building a home for a giant slug in the Digging Area.

and get that dynamic part of being a kid where you're still there but nobody can see you, and you have you own little spot like a fort.

 

Its been very cool to have some other things here in the garden that are a connection to other parts of our lives - shells, beach rocks, painted rocks, driftwood posts that we hunt for first thing after winter. We always have an adventure finding the ones that have been smoothed down the most and have also not yet become brittle and so will they last a while. 

 

One thing I love about my garden, because I'm such a consistent here-every-year gardener, and this is a huge part of my life, being in the dirt - just this summer alone three different friends have come here and found me, saying, "Well if its summer and it's nice out we know you're at the garden!" That kind of stability for me and my family, that consistency, is a huge part of keeping us stable and level; it's like this is what you can count on. So my friends know if anything else they can find me out here? I think that is not a bad thing to be known for.

 

Steve Yurasits

 

I have been gardening at Ethan Allen for five years. I think the whole place is beautiful. I just find it very peaceful, being out here growing these flowers and vegetables. Of the vegetables my leeks and cabbage came up especially well this year. I'm at the point now that if I get anything, that's fine with me!

Because I'm retired, this garden gives me a reason to get out of the house, get some exercise and do something. I'm not a runner, I'm not going to walk around the block and all that other stuff, so this kind-of gets me out here. And I really like the freedom of it.

 

Before I started this five years ago I grew flowers but I never really grew vegetables. So over the last five years I've gotten to the point where I know where to buy them, I know how big they're going to get. And I'm still experimenting with new kinds of flowers. Like in the back now I have some Dinner Plate Dahlias; they've got a little ways to go, maybe a few weeks before they will be full-sized. The colors that get going in the garden this time of year are very rewarding.   

   

flowers in full bloom in Steve's plot