The Giving Garden of Carrollton

The Giving Garden will have a work day this Saturday, May 4th, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to spread mulch in the garden pathways and add compost to existing beds.  In addition, Keep Carrollton Beautiful will host a day of environmental education seminars in the portable nearest the garden.  Here is more information from Keep Carrollton Beautiful:

Keep Carrollton Beautiful

                  Education Day

Saturday May 4 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

To register for all classes please email lisapstav@gmail.com

This first time event is going to be held at:

Aldersgate United Methodist Church 3926 Old Denton Rd, Carrollton TX 75007

Classes being offered:

9 a.m. – Keeping the outside out – allergies and asthma tips – taught by Lisa Stavinoha, volunteer asthma educator with over 1000 hours of presentation time

10 a.m. – Sue Hudiburgh Master Gardener @ Harvest Community Garden will present a 45 minute program on rain water harvesting

11 a.m. – Texas Xeriscapes will discuss ways to make our yards and gardens more water friendly

Noon to 12:30 and 12:30 to 1 – tour the Giving Garden and learn about organic gardening with Cindy Baxley

*Also we will offer two children’s classes, Recycling Made Easy, taught by Marysol Gallegos –

10:00 a.m. Recycling Made Easy – Ages 4 -7 – limit 15 spots – this is a 30 minute class

11:00 a.m. Recycling Made Easy – Ages 8 – 11 – limit 15 spots – this is also a 30 minute class

To register for all classes please email: lisapstav@gmail.com

Hope to see you at the garden on Saturday!

The Giving Garden is offering a quilt raffle in order to raise money to build our “Environmental Education Pavilion.”  The quilt top is made from premium quality cotton fabric and the backing is muslin.  It is 79″ wide and  96″ long.  Raffle tickets are $5 each or 6 for $25.  Each gardener at the Giving Garden will have raffle tickets.   Checks are accepted and they should be made payable to “Keep Carrollton Beautiful” with a notation to The Giving Garden.  The drawing will be held at the monthly gardeners’ meeting on December 13, 2012.

The Giving Garden had its first fundraising garage sale on Saturday, March 24. It was a huge success with the garden raising $963.55 for the support of the garden. Thanks especially to Willie Lane, who came up with the idea and did the legwork to secure the date and work two nights to gather in folks’ treasures. Thanks to all the gardeners and friends who brought their donated goods and thanks to Aldersgate UMC for letting us use the front parking lot. Laura Margadonna, Willie Lane and Helen Marsee also raised vegetable plants from seed to sell for this fundraiser.

Gardeners are trying to raise the funds to build a gazebo to help fulfill one of the garden’s missions of helping to educate the community about best practices for raising organic vegetables. The gazebo will be used for educational purposes and recreational purposes for gatherings at the garden.

Below is a vision of our gazebo. The estimated cost to build ourselves is just over $2,300.00. We’re well on our way toward our goal.

Our Gardener Support Meetings will be held the second Thursday of each month at Indian Creek Clubhouse, located at 1689 Bandera Dr, Carrollton, TX 75010 at 7 p.m. The purpose of the meetings is to allow a time and place for gardeners to socialize and to exchange gardening information. Please join us. The meetings are open to anyone interested in gardening.

Also, don’t forget to check us out on Facebook. Be sure to click “Like” for updates about The Giving Garden.

It’s almost time to get back out in the garden…start planning!

Saturday Harvest

Harvest has begun and for several weeks, The Giving Garden has gathered produce to donate to CCA. Today we picked 44 pounds of beautiful, organic vegetables. Potatoes, squash, peppers, chard, kale, onions, tomatoes and okra are producing right now.

The garden is growing not only delicious, healthy produce but we are developing a caring community. Quite a number of gardeners turned out about 8 a.m. to help pick, wash and sort the produce. Thank you all, Giving Garden Gardeners.

Thank you also for the many folks who have helped finish up the third mulch delivery. We are close to completing the aisle and common areas and will soon be able to use the remaining mulch for the garden beds.

The garden is looking just beautiful! Happy Gardening All.

Herb Garden

With two deliveries from Living Earth of 25 cubic yards of mulch, the garden is looking so beautiful. Believe it or not though, we still need to buy more to complete a few rows and the common area between Phase I and II. The mulch has made a huge difference in the neatness of the garden and will help with the weeds between the beds.

Here is a photo of the newly planted herb garden that is available to all gardeners of The Giving Garden. This bed was initially planted by Daisy Troop #3959. Kirsten, Amy and I had fun with the nine 5-6 yr. old girls and their parents, planting out the bed on Saturday, April 9. Soon the herbs will be mature enough for harvesting. Thank you, Daisies.

Some gardeners are already harvesting onions, carrots, potatoes, chard and kale. David Strickland took 25 pounds of veggies to CCA this past week. Soon we will start our Saturday harvests for our food share program. The soil seems so much better than last year, our first year. We have identified some pests this year-the harlequin bug and the flea beetle. So far, we have not seen the squash bug, but we are on the look out! Many of us have taken steps to deter the squash bug, such as planting radishes around the squash and setting out beer traps. So far, so good.

We soon will be harvesting tomatoes and squash. Happy gardening all!

Growing Plants for the Garden

Many Giving Garden gardeners having been growing vegetables to sell to other gardeners in order to raise money for the garden. The plant sale will be at the garden on Saturday, March 19 at 10 a.m.

Please come and support our efforts to raise funds as our needs are many. There will be many varieties of tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, among other varieties.

Each plant will sell for $3. Please bring cash or checks made payable to Keep Carrollton Beautiful with a notation for The Giving Garden. I’m looking forward to seeing you all at the garden on March 19th.

Happy Gardening!

Ladybugs on Arugula

I stopped by the garden yesterday to check on the “greens bed.” I’ve planted a variety of greens-butter lettuce, kale, spinach, chard, mesclun and argula. I was surprised and delighted to discover a ladybug explosion in the bed. I stopped counting at 20 ladybugs. I’m sure they were finding some bugs to munch on and they were also busy making more ladybugs!

Last spring, Willie Lane released a bunch of ladybugs in the garden and I’d like to think that these are their offspring. Hopefully the greens bed will keep them around until the next planting. I’ll be covering the bed to protect them from hard freezes.

Be sure to order your seeds for next spring’s garden now. If you want to grow your own seeds, many should be started around mid-January.

Happy Garden Planning!

A freeze is on the way next week, so David and I built a hoop structure to hopefully protect the greens I recently planted in bed #28. I hope to be able to pick greens all winter. The arugula, chard, bib lettuce, spinach, mesclun and carrots should be able to take a freeze, but will need to be covered if there’s a deep freeze. Here’s a photo of the structure:

Hoop Structure for Winterization

The cloth is rolled up to the center top board and will be rolled down and secured with binder clips when needed. It’s a fun experiment and we’ll see how it makes it through our winter this year.

Happy Gardening to all and have a safe Thanksgiving.

Square Garden Layout

Saturday was a beautiful day to work at the garden. Although we had only a few gardeners, those few got quite a bit of clean-up done.

All the beds are now numbered, 1-32, so it will be easier to locate a certain bed. Fire ant mounds were drenched with orange oil and horticultural molasses. Lots of weeds were pulled around the plots and in between the beds, but sadly, there is still a lot more weeding to be done. Hopefully, all those who were not able to come on Saturday will weed around their own beds in this next week. We were starting to look pretty raggedy!

The fall veggies are really starting to take off, so be sure to take out those old, spent summer vegetables and put in a fall crop. We’re still collecting each Saturday for the food pantry and this past Saturday we collected 12 pounds of eggplants, okra, peppers and basil.

Here’s a picture of our new shed with its new forest green paint job. Thank you “Mark the Painter” for doing such a great job. Mark is Cindy Baxley’s brother and the Baxleys sponsored Mark to paint our shed.

Our New Garden Shed

Happy gardening all!