In the zone

Thanks to everyone who stopped by Firehouse 13 last night for Green Zones: From the War Garden to Your Garden and the first-ever Urban Ag Spring Start Party.

The talks and discussion went over really well, and the seed-swapping table was hopping.  I got a chance to connect with gardeners, historians, and gardening historians from all over.

A spring party was a great outlet for gardeners with seeds, plants, and stories to share. As RI’s food gardening network continues to grow, imagine another garden event this fall?!?!?!?!

Today: Urban Agriculture Revival!

All the vegetables are ready to rumble at Firehouse 13 (41 Central Street, Providence).

Start at 5:30pm with Green Zones: From the War Garden to Your Garden. Check out 3 presentations on past and present gardening movements, and join the discussion.

Then at 7:30pm, it’s the first-ever Urban Ag Spring Start Party. Seed-swapping, plant-swapping, sharing info about garden and green groups, meeting other gardeners, etc. It’s a potluck, so bring a dish…as well as your seeds and plants to share.

Let’s start the spring together!

Green Zones Event…and Urban Ag Spring Start?

Check out the updated page for Green Zones: From the War Garden to Your Garden, a presentation on Victory Gardens, the Women’s Land Army of America, and how/why gardeners are growing their own food today. The event takes place on Tues., May 5, starting at 5:30pm at Firehouse 13, 41 Central St. in Providence.

A plan is stirring to hold an Urban Agriculture Spring Start Party afterwards. This will include seed/plant swapping, exchanging ideas, food, music, and kicking off the garden season together.

Community gardeners, backyard gardeners, local foodies, green folks, farmers, teachers, kids. . .can you help out with this emerging event?  Contact me at szurier at wesleyan dot edu or leave a comment, and I’ll be in touch.

Save the date! Green Zones: From the War Garden to Your Garden

On Tuesday, May 5, starting at 5:30pm, I’m hosting Green Zones: From the War Garden to Your Garden, a presentation on Victory Gardens, the Women’s Land Army of America, and how gardeners are growing their own food today. The event takes place at Firehouse 13, 41 Central Street in Providence.

Panelists include: Judy Barrett Litoff, Professor of History at Bryant University; Rich Pederson, City Farm Manager at Southside Community Trust; and Sarah Zurier, creator of Green Zone.

Green Zones: From the War Garden to Your Garden is made possible through major funding support from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, an independent state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More details to come this spring.

Botanical bailout

Found this illustration by Justin Gabbard in the New York Times letters-to-the-editor last month. It accompanies letters on “Playing Politics With the Auto Bailout.” See here for a better view. Plants in tires takes on a new resonance.

A bunch of people have asked if I will replant the Green Zone garden at Firehouse 13 in 2009. Unlikely. I intended for the garden to last for the season, so I could move on to research and presentations.

That said…I bet that Firehouse 13 will develop another garden this year. Jarrett, FH13’s director, grows veg in a West Side community garden, so he’s got green thumbs. And we know that the sun shines on Central Street.

I wonder if the firemen of the former Good Will Engine Company ever planted a garden. Firemen are amazing cooks. Are they also great gardeners?

Seed you next year

Over at Green Zone for the first time in weeks to collect some seeds for next year. Firehouse 13 is thinking about building a bigger garden along the parking lot and perhaps taking over the lawn. Good riddance, grass! I figured I’d give them a headstart by saving them some seeds from Green Zone.

If you’re local, go over to Firehouse 13 and help yourself to some seeds: (clockwise from top left) dill, morning glories, bachelor’s button, and for those of you who are farsighted, scarlet runner beans!!!  Just wait until the morning glory husks and/or runner bean pods look brown and dry. Go ahead and snack too. Pick all the basil and make yourself some pesto. Pick all the kale and cook it up. Go for it! Frost is coming soon.

Saving seeds is kind of like sending a letter to the future. Today, I filled some seed envelopes for Firehouse 13 and sealed them shut. In just a couple months, the days will start getting longer. And in a couple months after that, it will be time to open the envelopes and plant some dill, morning glories, bachelor’s button, and scarlet runner beans.

Dear future,

Wish you were here.

xoxo, Green Zone

Out of the garden, into the frying pan

Green Zone has been slacking transitioning. As September winds down, I’ve slowed down on tending the garden and blog. I cooked up Green Zone’s kale and beet greens with a whole lot of garlic and oil for the Firehouse 13 potluck. How’s that for closure?

I still have some seed gathering to do: morning glories, bachelor’s button, dill, and black-and-pink scarlet runner bean beans. If you can get to Providence for a pickup, I’d be glad to set aside some Green Zone seeds for you!

Now, I’ve got to hit the books, looking for information on Rhode Island’s history of war gardens, liberty gardens, victory gardens, community gardens, school gardens, allotment gardens.  If you’re familiar with an example in RI, please let me know. Is it true that there’s a guy who still tends his WWII-era Victory Garden in Bristol?  Did your parents garden at school, or did your grandmother volunteer on a farm during during the war? Did you tune out during the Vietnam War and go back to the land?

I’ll share bits and pieces from my research as it progresses, and I’ll continue to blog sporadically about gardens I encounter. Doesn’t this look like an installation artist’s work on Parcel 12 (“triangle parcel” at Exchange St.)? A cluster of mossy bumps amidst the seven grassy hills (or was it six)? Actually it’s a bunch of those gorgeous Downtown flower and vine baskets dumped on the ground.

Green$

Thanks to everyone who showed up for Green Drinks on Thursday. I enjoyed hanging out at Green Zone to talk gardens, consumption, and war with a bunch of gardeners, activists, greenies, bloggers, and friends.

One of the people I met is studying the economic value of community gardens. If you’ve visited the community garden outside Brown University’s Urban Environmental Lab this summer, you’ve seen the  signs stating that an experiment is in progress. Grad student Marie-Laure Couet weighing the carrots, counting the lettuce leaves, and tallying it all up. If you’ve seen your grocery bills go down in the summer as your community garden thrives, contact Marie-Laure.

This morning, I picked some beans, kale, and beet greens for the upcoming Firehouse 13 potluck. There’s still more to graze on in Green Zone, but it was time to do some serious harvesting. And that means serious eating tomorrow.

Green Drinks: plants crave Pabst

I stopped by Green Zone this afternoon to discover the aftermath of drunken revelry. The plants had downed a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and left the evidence strewn about. I have used PBR in my home garden to drown slugs, but who knew that the plants were sots for it, too?

Thankfully, Firehouse 13 will be serving up Narragansetts at Providence Green Drinks. That’s Thursday, from 5pm to 8pm, people. There will be non-alcoholic alternatives as well. Drinks are for sale; snacks are sponsored by me and my buddy Eva of Glasswing Design. NO PABST WILL BE SERVED.

And so as to avoid ending this post with the word or the taste of Pabst, here’s a little something from the Ladies Aid Society of Arnsville (probably Barnesville), Ohio. researching ladies aid groups and the U.S. Sanitary Commission will get me started on Civil War gardens. In their 1862-63 report, the B/Arnsville ladies called out:

Come then and help us. There is a great call upon everyone to aid in this great work. There is a great call for vegetables. Will you give them? Let every family form themselves into companies and pick and dry fruits. They call for dried fruits rather then canned. See to it that there are pickles prepared to send in abundance and you who have friends or sons in the Army, will you not pick out your longest row of potatoes and cultivate them nicely and when ripe, dig them and send to the Sanitary Commission. Or any other vegetables, you may have, will be acceptable. Bring them on, we will send them for you. Any contributions can be left at Mr. A.B. Glazer’s store so they will go safely and you will have no expense. Will you help us and prove that it is more blessed to give then to receive.!!!

On the verge

Green Zone is teetering on the verge.

The garden is slowly shutting down as bugs and autumn and rootyness take over. I’m aiming to keep the plants alive through September. Green Drinks (on Sept. 18, be there!) will be a closing reception for the garden. Firehouse 13 is thinking about installing a bigger and brawnier garden next year, possibly with tires, so I’m leaving the Green Zone eight behind. Soil will be dumped back in my compost bin–or maybe at a new compost at Firehouse–and I’ll take the shopping bags to the store for recycling. I think the shoes will walk home with me for future planting.

The end of the September will also mark a new direction for the blog. RI Council for the Humanities gave me a grant to pursue research on the history of Rhode Island’s wartime gardens. Thank you, RICH! This will give me a chance to follow the leads I’ve found so far…30 acres of War Gardens at Brown and Sharpe, a guy in Bristol who still tends his WWII-era Victory Garden, local garden clubs who coordinated activities during the wars, etc. I’ll use the blog to post updates from my research.

As part of the public outreach for the grant project, I’ll organize a discussion panel to present my research and some other points of view on victory gardens. Look out for that next spring.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the verge…just like this pink and orange zinnia-filled verge on Doyle Avenue