Two-Day Introduction to Permaculture with Patricia Allison

Posted on October 1, 2011 by admin

A super opportunity for people in DFW to get some immersion into the world of Permaculture for 2 days is coming up next weekend.  It can be hard to dedicate the time and money needed for a full PDC course, but for 2 days and $100 you can get the in-depth basics of what it is all about with Patricia Allison.  She is well-known in the Permaculture world for her inspiration to her students and for her excellent Permaculture introduction week-ends.

She brings a 2-day Introduction to Permaculture course to Dallas on October 8 & 9 from 9 until 5, both days. The course is a combination of lecture, hands-on experience, hope, and delight. The class location will be in the Dallas area around White Rock Lake.

Go to the events main webpage for more info: http://cyberparent.com/dfw/permaculture/class.htm

 

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Call for Community Gardens that Need Volunteers

Posted on September 13, 2011 by admin

DFW Citizen Gardener Volunteer Map and List

The Citizen Gardener program now has about 60 graduates from the class who are seeking to complete their volunteer hours.  We are looking for additional community gardens that would like to have volunteers help them out.  (how is that for an easy sell?)  The requirements are that the students need to benefit from actual gardening activities that will help them learn and gain experience (not just sorting thousands of seeds or spending 4 hours making labels).  Most valuable are locations with experienced gardeners who will be present and available while the volunteers are helping.

A subsection of the NorthTexasVegetableGardeners.com website has been created that displays a map of the current Citizen Gardener volunteer locations and lists them out also.  The map will provide students an easy way to find participating gardens near where they live.  If you know of a garden that is interested in being on the Citizen Gardener volunteer list, please have a representative from the garden contact us via the comment section below, or email citizengardener@northtexasvegetablegardeners.com.

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Citizen Gardener Class #2 – Promise of Peace – Dallas

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Brian Gallimore

Here are the pictures I took of the Citizen Gardener class held at the Promise of Peace community garden:

201109-citizengardener2

I’ll post links to more pictures on the Citizen Gardener Class #2 post on the forum.

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Future Citizen Gardener Teachers

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Brian Gallimore

Friday night a group of students from Citizen Gardener class #1 met at the Promise of Peace community garden with Dick Pierce from Austin to train to be future Citizen Gardener teachers.  We went over the objectives of the class, the topics, exercises, what to say, what not to say, how to answer questions, where we would locate the raised beds, etc.  This group of people will assist with a few classes and eventually run their own classes in future classes.

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Most Bugs are Good Bugs

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Brian Gallimore

I recently saw a fascinating (and a little gross) picture on facebook that caught my attention.  I’ve had these fat little munchers (hornworms) on my tomato plants in the past, and they have quite an apatite!  Like everything in nature, there is balance and control.  Fat worms like the hornworm are used by certain wasps to lay their eggs in.  The wasps (Braconidae) also like to use caterpillars, beetles, aphids, squash bugs and stink bugs.  It is a pretty gruesome process to think about, having your body used to feed the eggs of a predator insect, but that is exactly how nature works.  If you see a worm like this with white specks on its back in your garden, let it live!  You will be blessed with a new family of bad-bug-killing warriors in a few weeks.  (and don’t worry, that worm’s days are very limited!)  There are probably thousands of little interesting interactions like this one, and even more that occur in the soil that you will never see.  I urge people to keep things like this in mind when you decide to ‘do’ something in your garden.  It is hard to know what repercussions your actions have, so doing the minimum necessary is often the best choice.  You might be ‘fixing’ one thing, but unintended consequences are hard to predict.  Chemicals are like the atomic weapons of gardening, they are very powerful, so please understand the downsides, avoid when possible, and take personal responsibility for your actions.

According to the Texas Bug Book 60% of the bugs we have are beneficial or ‘good’ bugs.

The picture came from Nick with saveourskills.com.  Read more about the Braconid wasp.

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