[Communications] [Test] CCGA Midsummer Newsletter

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Here's a draft email! I'm updating the CCGA calendar now. Amy - Chicago Community Gardeners Association


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News for Community Gardeners
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
~ May Sarton

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A Lesson From Our Gardens

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
— Michael Pollan
The very definition of sustainability means living within the earth’s capacity for life. One could say there is no better form of personal involvement in the planet’s health than that of gardening. Being wholeheartedly involved with soil and seeds is involvement with life itself, in the deepest sense.

As gardeners, we're already doing something great for the environment: we compost. We divert waste from the landfill and transform it into incredibly rich soil. We grow and share our fresh local produce. Organic gardeners benefit from the help of pollinators that are a key to maintaining the genetic diversity of seeds. Gardeners benefit by growing from saved seed or from seed purchased from companies who’ve signed a "Safe Seed Pledge.” The Council for Responsible Genetics posts a current list of companies that have signed the pledge on its ** website (http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=261)
; three of them are in Illinois. Many of us already recycle plastic pots and labels that come with purchased plants. We can all do this.

Sustainable practices include sharing, giving and supporting each other to achieve well-being in our communities. For those who want to 'be more' at home, there are many ways to reduce to minimize our negative impact on the environment. It can feel good to disrupt routine habits and become more aware of consumption patterns. For example, we talked with one community gardener who suggests buying bamboo toilet paper. While recycled tp is certainly better than paper harvested from virgin trees, bamboo tp is actually eco-friendlier. Unlike trees, bamboo doesn’t need to be replanted once it’s been harvested. Other gardeners have found new energy and ideas in ** “things you can do from your couch” (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/takeaction/)

Sustainable practices are easier to achieve together, through experience, in the variety of ways sustainable initiatives truly nourish our communities, and through networking. Check out the CCGA ** website calendar (http://chicagocommunitygardens.org/events/2019-08/)
for events in August, September, and October. More options to check out can be found ** here (https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/sustainability/live_more_sustainably.html)
.

Many see the ongoing climate-change crisis as a crisis of lifestyle–of character; we need to be more, not have more. Gardeners already work and live close to the earth, we have character and we understand the benefits of sustainability. As gardeners, we can be leaders in living sustainably!
DIY Pasta-Making Workshop This Saturday!

If you’re a fan of pasta, you’ll be an even bigger fan of pasta that you’ve made YOURSELF!

Join
** Chef Fresh Roberson (https://www.cheffreshroberson.com/)
this Saturday and we’ll make a few delicious types of pasta that are fun and easy to replicate at home. You may never want to buy store-bought noodles again.

This is a hands-on opportunity to make homemade pasta and top it with ingredients and sauces fresh from our gardens. Come prepared wearing your favorite apron, closed-toe shoes, and a way to tie your hair back.
We’ll supply everything else to make your pasta lunch a breeze.
Stay to enjoy our creations together for lunch, or bring your favorite
to-go container if you’ll be eating on the run.

** Please register in advance on our website. (http://www.chicagocommunitygardens.org)
The fee for this workshop is $25, payable, in cash only, at the door. Space is limited, so if you are not able to attend, kindly let us know so someone else can take your place!

This class will be full of gluten, and gluten-free options will not be possible. (But that’s an idea for a future workshop!) Vegan options are available. If you have any other dietary restrictions, please let us know in advance on your registration form.
Resources Perennial Distribution: 70 Gardens Receive Plants with the Help of Volunteer Power!

This year’s CCGA Resources Committee Perennial Distribution stretched out over two days. Community gardeners showed up—even when it was a sweltering 94 degrees!

On Friday, Day One, an amazing group of volunteers from ages 6 to 75 helped unload 2,800 perennials at New Horizons Garden. They sorted the plants that came off Elite’s trucks into groupings, cultivar by cultivar. Then they put them into 70 groups, and tried to ensure each grouping of plants was as diverse as possible. A handful of young volunteers from Sidney Epstein Center for Youth helped and were able to take plants back to their community garden, all of which went in the ground quickly. This great bunch of kids was led by Kimberly George, their Out of School Time Manager. Thanks to everyone who volunteered!. We appreciate you!

On Saturday, over 70 gardens participated and took home astilbes, veronica, geum, ajuga, dianthus, pulsatilla, brunnera, coreopsis, festuca, iberis, centaurea, calamagrostis, tradescantia and more! The Resources team sends a big thank you to Elite Growers for donating 500 perennials!

Up ahead with CCGA Resources: A Second Elite Perennial Distribution is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, August 23 and 24. If you missed out on the July distribution or you still have room in your gardens and your calendar, there is another chance! Lend a hand! Volunteers will be needed again on Friday to unload and sort plant material into groupings. The distribution will take place on Saturday at a time and place to be announced soon. Watch for the email flyer and register early!
News You Can Use

What’s eating our leafy greens?

For most children, yellow woolly bear caterpillars are fascinating; they make good, short-term pets. For gardeners, maybe not so much! The larvae of the virginia tiger moth are defoliators, skeletonizing the leaves they feed on. But only the late summer hatch of caterpillars is plentiful enough to do much damage. When identified in a north side community garden, the caterpillars were feasting on kale and spinach. Those are leafy greens we love to eat too! Gardeners can pick them off by hand or try a repellent suggested by the Austin Green Team: boil two bulbs of garlic in about a half a cup of water. Then mash it, let it steep overnight and then strain to spray.

Photo by Meganmccarty / Wikimedia Commons.

Openlands TreePlanters Grants Available:
Deadline Friday, August 2!
Openlands TreePlanters Grants provide new trees to communities in the City of Chicago and the near south suburbs! The grants encourage resiliency both through planting trees and creating or reaffirming a network of neighbors to work together. If your community has sufficient places to plant 10 to 40 trees, this is a wonderful way to beautify your neighborhood and celebrate your community!

Find out more: ** https://www.openlands.org/trees/treeplanters-grants/ (https://www.openlands.org/trees/treeplanters-grants/)

Stories From Our Gardens
Maxwell Street Community Garden was founded in 2012. This garden thrived for years; it grew in size and number of gardeners wanting to get their hands into the dirt and share seeds and growing tips.

This past year though, their land was sold to SOS Children’s Village, a foster care organization. Gardeners had to quickly fund raise the cost of building a new garden across the street from the former garden, building the new garden in three major work days. One involved laying barrier fabric and wood chips, another building all the plot boxes, and the last day adding the soil and planting. With over 70 volunteers showing up on their building days, it was truly an effort of all the gardeners who joined together to enthusiastically create the garden again. Over 100 perennials were transplanted from the old garden to beautify the neighborhood and attract pollinators. They’re still formulating a plan to move fruit trees from the old garden.
The garden now has 60 plots. Lara Reddin and Marsha Wyatt, co-presidents of the garden say, “members are mostly from surrounding neighborhoods and are of different age, race, ethnicity and ability. We build community through involvement of our gardeners and through special events like "Weeding and Watering Wednesdays," weekly yoga classes, a salsa dance lesson called "Bring Your Tomatoes and Let's Salsa (Dance)."  MSCG hosted a movie night, story time and rock painting for children in the new garden, a Painting Party with a local artist, and an annual Harvest Festival with a local blues band and a potluck of things grown in the garden.

Lara and Marsha said they have five community garden beds and an herb garden that are grown communally to provide food for neighborhood residents. “We keep a box on our fence that holds produce grown from the communal beds as well as extra produce the gardeners may want to donate.”

Lara and Marsha went on to say that relocating to a new space provided a unique opportunity to start with a blank slate and draw upon their successes and failures at the old garden. Universal design principles (to provide the same means for all users: identical whenever possible; equivalent when not, Rossetti, 2006) were utilized to allow accessibility for seniors and individuals with disabilities. A detailed drawing was developed so the new garden could be built over time as funds became available through grants and member donations.
2019 CEGA Awards Update
Gardeners noticed this year that the CEGA application had a 1200-character limit, not 1200 words!  Mike Novak said, “Last year, we received some applications that went on for pages; the written applications, like the photos, are part of the screening process, a way for us to know if a garden should make it to the next level.” By this time gardens have been notified if they passed the initial screening process for the award as CEGA is in the judging phase for 2019 right now. Forty-two wards made it to this level of the competition. That’s up from 33 last year!  Mike advised that those gardeners who wanted to say more on the application should to talk to the judges, which is where their full story can be told.

As is has done in the past, CEGA welcomed gardens of all shapes and sizes, including residential, community, school, church, business and urban farms. As always, native plants, wildlife habitat and sustainability will be key elements of the judging criteria for the awards. More entries mean more judges and more judging, so CEGA is diving into that this week and has set a mid-August deadline for getting it done. Contest judges include Master Gardeners and other horticulture and gardening experts who will contact the gardens to set up a time when they can view your garden and talk to you.

CEGA became a 501(c)(3) Illinois not-for-profit organization this year, which means that they're hunting down groups and businesses who would like to support CEGA activities, and they're not going to complain if all of you help to make that information public. Mark your calendar for a possible ceremony on October 12 at a Chicago Park District Facility

For gardener and garden profiles, information and much more, visit CEGA online at ** https://chicagogardeningawards.org (https://chicagogardeningawards.org/)
. Follow the awards as the season progresses on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Have ideas, suggestions or news you would like to share with fellow community gardeners in the next CCGA email? Please send those items to ** communications at chicagocommunitygardens.org. (mailto:communications at chicagocommunitygardens.org)

For questions about CCGA and how to get involved, email ** membership at chicagocommunitygardens.org (mailto:membership at chicagocommunitygardens.org)
or visit ** chicagocommunitygardens.org/ccga-organization (http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=00179W6ckE8nHc3_ea7VKAt_U7Qet-JCzLSSeOPh9N6gLUWNELIG_623Uq6CaEg83lQ1WW0jnA6WuALEV1KYm5MScGNmqRYtYgAgBDTodIy-SyCKM58AQz6GunGMbJ4-ek7UqfS8SQG6_xSbq9jDG3ygw1D1zHRazackxCKDCvakZu8s8cYVx8sGl2f1mgl-HYIDcDzXQnxkrapObZi2PTbGA==&c=Q_d2K6wsNreybPhq6TiCSg0zyf5NMPf7aMT2L5QmEGvWL4M9ouukwQ==&ch=86ZxnO5wcbz_NBbECE7jjonhPQ3EptToF6SB0B4xUiWBxWw2KdMzXQ==)

Need resources for your community garden? Have resources to offer? Email ** resources at chicagocommunitygardens.org (mailto:resources at chicagocommunitygardens.org)
.
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** (mailto:info at chicagocommunitygardens.org)
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