The following definitions can be found here:
- Community Garden
- Organic Gardening
- Food Security
- Seed Saving
- OPIRG
- Loving Spoonful
- Community Garden Network
- Registration Form and Waiver
- Post
- Comment
- Listserv
Community Garden (from wikipedia)
In Canada and the United States, “community gardening” encompasses a wide variety of approaches. Some influential community gardens, such as the Clinton Street garden in the middle of Manhattan in New York City, and the Peralta garden in Berkeley, California, inspired by architect and community garden visionary Karl Linn, are gathering places for neighbors and showcases for whimsical art and ecological awareness, with food production cherished but seen as one part of a much larger vision. Other gardens resemble European “allotment” gardens, with plots where individuals and families can grow vegetables and flowers, including a number (for instance, in Minneapolis and Ann Arbor, Michigan) which began as “Victory Gardens” during World War II. Even such “food” gardens are very different, however — for instance, plot sizes range widely from as small as 1.5m × 1.5m (5 ft × 5 ft) in some inner city gardens and art gardens, such as the Dovetail Garden in Charlotte, North Carolina, to relatively large plots of 15m × 15m (50ft × 50ft) such as those at Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Some community gardens, in contrast, are devoted entirely to creating ecological green space or habitat, still others to growing flowers, and others to education or providing access to gardening to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as the elderly, recent immigrants or the homeless — for example, the Community Garden for the Homeless, also in Charlotte, not far away from the very different Dovetail Garden. Some gardens are worked as community farms with no individual plots at all, shading into becoming urban farms.
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Pesticide and Herbicide free. Ideally, soil-improvements are also organic.
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Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). (USDA)
Community gardens can develop and strengthen local food networks, making all of us, even the food-secure, more secure. Community Gardens can serves as hubs for knowledge and skill sharing. Community Gardening often leads to seed-saver, food storing and preserving, as well as the consumption of other local products.
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Seed Saving is a big part of food-network durability and sustainability both on local and global scales. Open-pollinated seeds are those that will reproduce true-to-type: what you liked about the plant that you saved seed from is what you’ll get. A lot of the food you buy in a grocery store are ‘hybrid’ varieties. You could save a seed from that red pepper, but your plant will not bear fruit (or it will bear strangely).
Most seedlings and seeds you buy at a garden centre are also hybrids. Those that you buy at a seed-saving or hierloom seed facility (Foxfire Farm at the Sisters of Providence here in Kingston, or Terraedibiles near Belleville) will have local performers, varieties that have evolved and been bred to succeed in this region.
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OPIRG
Loving Spoonful is another OPIRG working group that works to combat hunger and food waste by reclaiming surplus food from local sources – food that would otherwise go to waste. With the help of volunteers they transport this food to local emergency meal providers, such as homeless shelters and hot meal programs.
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This OPIRG working group is dedicated to advancing community gardens in Kingston through: networking between the gardens; promoting and supporting new gardens; working towards a comprehensive and supportive Urban Agriculture policy at the municipal level. Anyone can join it. To subscribe to the listserv, go to riseup.net, click ‘find a list’ and then type in ‘communitygardennetwork’. You can self-subscribe.
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This is the gardener contract, necessary for participation in the garden. Find it by clicking here, print it out, fill it out and give it to the site coordinator. Email oakstreetgarden@riseup.net if you’re not sure who that is.
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Anyone can introduce a discussion topic. Topics can be anything. You would start a discussion with a Post. You have to login to the blog to do this. You will have to check your email and will find in the email of Nov 3 2008 that you were sent the username and password. Then, you’ll have to find your way around. First click ‘log in’ at the top. Then click on ‘new post’ on the grey banner at the top of the page. Another way is to login and go to ‘my dashboard’ and then ‘write’ then ‘new post’. Please email oakstreetgarden@riseup.net if the effort makes your eyes bleed.
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A comment is related to a Post, or to someone else’s comment on a post. You don’t have to login to do this.
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An e-mail lst of e-mail addresses of people with a common interest. Software enables people who belong to a list to send messages to the group without typing a series of addresses into the ‘to’ box. Oak Street Garden will use the listserv only for monthy digests and really important emails.
