The nonprofit group sells edible greens once a month.

By Cayla Harvey

Willing to do some weeding, propagating and fixing shade houses – all for a good cause?
The Edible Plant Project is looking for volunteers.

Volunteers are needed on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to help propagate the plants at the project’s nursery, located at the Gainesville Organic Blueberry Farm, 1621 S.E. 15th St. The project is looking for volunteers ranging from college students to retirees to assist in preparing the plants for the project’s monthly sales.

On the first Wednesday of every month, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., the project has a plant sale at the Bo Diddley Community Plaza downtown.

The Edible Plant Project is a nonprofit, volunteer group working to promote landscaping across North Central Florida that provides edible greenery, said Michael Adler, full-time volunteer and program manager of the Edible Plant Project.

“We identify a superior variety growing in the area and propagate them in our greenhouse,” said Adler, who has been with the project since 2002.

Adler said the project keeps a seed stock of locally adapted, non-hybrid vegetable varieties so the seed can be selected from the plants thatsell the best.

The project specializes in plants that are not easily available at your local home improvement store, said Dan Culbertson, volunteer coordinator. The nursery in southeast Gainesville is used for starting and growing new fruit and nut trees for distribution to the community.

The project has been in operation for nine years. According to Adler, the project’s sales consist of a rare selection of edible plants, fruit trees and seeds.

Due to a shortage of volunteers, the sale is only held on the first Wednesday of every month, Culbertson said.

“Anybody who shows up willing to work, we’ll take them,” he said.

“The volunteer process is really informal,” Culbertson said. Prospective volunteers can sign up using Yahoo! Groups to find the most up-to-date information or just show up on Sunday at the nursery ready to work, he explained.

About 100 people have signed up on the volunteer list but most of them aren’t consistently active, Culbertson said. “We like to get a lot of students involved,” he added.

Volunteers will learn more about the project and its purpose through work; they don’t have to be knowledgeable in the field, he said.

Proceeds from the sales benefit the project’s demand for materials needed to maintain the greenhouse. The profits are put toward potting soil and construction.

“Prices are set just high enough to cover our expenses,” Adler said.

Published August 5, 2010 in the Gainesville Sun

For more information about volunteering with the EPP Click Here

All mixes measured in 5 gallon buckets

The EPP Organic Mix

2 buckets aged stable cleanings (horse manure plus straw, hay and  a few wood chips)

Oh yeah – don’t forget to add a good measure of fire ants to make the potting experience much more fun! 

* Pine bark fines from Griffis Lumber on 441, about $22 per cubic yard – or grind your own from regular size pine bark run through a wood shredder – you need about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch diameter pieces, don’t mill to a powder!)

From Michael to Dan

The EPP container mix usually does not contain any lime or dolomite.  We used to put some in for things that like basic conditions, but I don’t think our mix ever quite gets acidic enough for that to be useful.  We’ve generally been having the opposite problem for plants that like acid, although the same symptoms can be caused by too much potassium.

My approach to the soil mixing is like cooking, I don’t like to measure, I just add stuff till it looks right.  The plants growing in the soil I cook up are almost always happy.

For vegetable seedlings that need extra nitrogen, I mix in blood meal.

This information is really not very useful for gardening unless you are doing it all in containers.  Most gardening uses natural soils and adds things that are lacking.  For that you need a soil test.  Soils around here usually need most of the things you can add, such as, dolomite, organic matter, NPK, and micros.  To know just how much of all those things you need to add, you need a soil test that you can get done for $15 at the University’s soil lab. Contact the IFAS extension and ask for a soil sample kit.  They will mail it to you for free.  It will tell you how to collect you sample and deliver it to the appropriate office.  The only thing you can almost never get too much of is organic matter.  Some sources are low in Nitrogen and will use whatever is there in the decomposition process.  Some people who read a badly written pamphlet often tell me “oh, you can’t use that, the C/N ratio is all wrong.”  No, it means you need to pee on it…or add some other source of nitrogen to balance it – blood meal, fish emulsion, any kid of legume residue, synthetic fertilizer, etc.  I also get “You shouldn’t use oak leaves or pine needles for mulch because it will make the soil too acidic.”  Wrong again.  Adding oak leaves and pine needles for thousands of years will make the soil too acidic.  Then you’ll need to add a little dolomitic limestone, and can continue with the oak leaves and pine needles again.

From Dan to Michael

Yep - the mixes I listed are entirely for container gardening which is pretty much most of what I do other than the fruit trees and shrubs I plant in the ground.  Too many tree roots where I live to grow anything that isn’t strongly competitive so most things go in bins, boxes, trays, bags, and pots and I isolate those from the soil either up on blocks or with black plastic sheeting.   For planting in soil its a whole nother ball game.

For the EPP mix I should have said dolomitic lime for alkaline loving plants rather than not for acid loving plants – in other words we don’t use it most of the time.  My bad.  At home I use so much acid to mildly acid materials (pine bark, coffee grounds, compost) I add the dolomite as a default and only leave it out occasionally (for potatoes, strawberries, etc.). So my brain is set in a pro-lime default mode.   I think the irrigation water at the blueberry farm must add plenty of calcium carbonate (lime) for us from the hard well water.  In fact, I think if you stand still long enough under the sprinklers you’ll develop a bad case of stalactites.

Dan

ps – for the true container gardening geek there is a good article on container mixes at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/CN004 .  Some things there are counter to my experience but it is a great overview of things to use and factors to consider.  A bit too deep in theory for most people. But I rather like theory since it is so pleasant to defy it and still succeed.  Like Michael indicates all that is important in the long run is that the plants do well in the mix, not whether a soil scientist thinks it is properly drained or all the ratios are right.

The programs mission is to provide a place where the citizens of Gainesville can participate in a healthy outdoor activity that can also improve public nutrition and the neighborhood environment.

The program is managed by staff, but the individual gardens are coordinated by dedicated volunteers. If you would like more information about the Community Garden program, please call (352) 393-8171.

The links below take you to a google map showing where the garden is located.

Dreamers Garden – The Grove Street Neighborhood Community Garden (corner of NW 4th Street & NW 10th Avenue)

Green Acres Park Community Garden 700 Block and SW 40th Street (within Green Acres Park)

McRorie Community Garden (corner of SE 4th Avenue & SE 6th Terrace)

NE 31st Avenue Community Garden, 1700 NE 31st Avenue (within NE 31st Avenue  Park)

2947 SW 40th Place Community Garden (SW 40th Place & SW 30th Terrace)

City of Gainesville’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department

An eclectic selection of edible plants, seeds, and more are available.
Most plants are well suited for Gainesville and easy to care for.

Gainesville Community Plaza, 111 E. University Avenue
http://www.unionstreetfarmersmkt.com/

Thanks!
Shirley Siluk Gregory
Lead writer/EcoLocalizer.com
sunnybeaches2@bellsouth.net

Between the rising prices and the rising incidents of poisoning, food is increasingly causing stomach pains of various kinds for American consumers.

But in several Gainesville neighborhoods, residents with hoes and trowels in hand are taking control over at least some of what they pay for and put in their mouths by growing some of their own groceries.

“We’re hoping to expand the garden because right now we have a waiting list. We don’t have enough plots for everyone who is interested,” said Pavel Gubanikhin of the NE 31st Avenue Organic Community Garden. “We are hoping to get more kids involved. It’s educational and a lot of fun.”

The 31st Avenue garden is one of five in a program run by the city of Gainesville.

The others are the Grove Street Neighborhood Community Garden on NW 4th Street and 10th Avenue, the McRorie Community Garden at SE 4th Avenue and 6th Terrace, Green Acres in the Sugarfoot neighborhood off Newberry Road and an unnamed garden on Williston Road east of 34th Street.

A few rules exist. For instance, the gardens must be organic and cannot be used to grow anything illegal.

City officials believe the gardens improve public nutrition and the neighborhood environment.

They also increase outdoor recreation, practical education and positive social interaction. Finally, they build community self-reliance and sustainability.

Community gardens are increasingly sprouting throughout the country as food costs rise, contaminated food sickens more people and as food movements gathers steam.

Community gardens are divided into plots that are allocated to gardeners, who typically grow vegetables and herbs.

“The interest really does seem to be growing,” said Vicki Garrett of the American Community Gardening Association. “Community gardening has always been a great resource to people who don’t have fresh food — inner cities and places where grocery stores just don’t locate. Right now, I think there is a whole lot more economic incentive — groceries are expensive and we have high food prices.”

The consumer price index for all food as of June was 5.3 percent higher than the June 2007 level, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Ann Egan oversees the community gardening program for Gainesville’s Nature Operations Division.

She also believes interest is growing, noting that one garden opened recently and that the Porter’s neighborhood has requested one.

Gainesville’s program was established in the 1990s to bring neighbors together and to provide an area for people to grow food, Egan said.

But Egan added the program could be impacted by the city’s budget cuts.

“It is sort of a healthy outdoor recreation as well as community-building,” Egan said. “It is a wonderful program. I hope it continues to grow but based on the fact that we were just slammed with budget cuts — this is not a budgeted program — and we are looking at how we can continue it.”

Maria Huff Edwards said the Grove Street garden opened in 2002.

From the start the gardeners worked with organizations that provide food and services for people in need and hosted numerous activities.

“Our neighborhood is an old neighborhood and it has always fought hard all of these years because it is inner city but kind of on the edge,” Edwards said. “We saw the community garden as a focal point where people could gather and that we could beautify. It was a restoration and resurrection tool for the neighborhood.”

Various food movements have been gaining steam. Community gardeners and others say that the gardens mesh with those efforts.

The slow food movement, for example, encourages eaters to focus on quality, taste and the source of food.

Another is the local food movement, which stresses the nutritional, economic and environmental benefits of eating food produced close to home.

Stefanie Hamblen, editor of Hogtown HomeGrown, said gardeners have begun calling their plots freedom gardens — as in freedom from oil — or have returned to the old World War II moniker of victory gardens.

“It fits in with the local food movement and it is a way for people to take control of their food supply,” Hamblen said. “When you grow your own tomato you don’t have to worry about salmonella.”

Cindy Swirko can be reached at 374-5024 or at swirkoc@gvillesun.com.

Help Us at The Farmer’s Market!
We need help with transport … with setting up and breaking down. We also need help selling and promoting our plants and answering questions.

For information about volunteering contact:
Dan: 321-501-4927 or danculb@netcommander.com
Michael: ufdionysus@aol.com

Read about other volunteer opportunities here: