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Gardening 101 Lesson #2

This month's gardening method to discuss is traditional tilling with a rear tine tiller. I'm not much of a fan of this method for a few reasons. Tilling works against the natural soil building methods employed by nature. Soil is naturally built up over time in a similar way that the sheet mulching is structured. Tilling is a fairly violent act that mixes the layers of soil and it really hurts all the beneficial critters in the soil. While it creates a lot of tilth in the soil I would use it sparingly. If you have a large area you may have to till it, unless you are willing to wait years to sheet mulch the whole thing. So, what do you do?

You either buy a tiller (or check out one of the 3 tillers in the tool library) and line it up at the intended location. Fire it up and go from there. I find that it's easier to make a pass or two rather than try to do the whole thing in one pass. Personally, I would also recommend that instead of tilling your full area you just till the intended planting space. This will give the critters in the soil some safe areas to go that won't be in the tillers path, as well as protect an area for the existing critters to come out into your garden beds from. These might be worms or other beneficial critters and you will want to encourage them to come into your garden beds.

Most tillers have a 15-17" wide tilling path so you can build your planting beds off of that scale. If you plant using the french intensive method you can still obtain a lot of production in a small area like that. For example, at the farm I would plant at least 4 rows of lettuce plants in a bed that wide. You can do much the same at your home garden. Planting intensively is how you can maximize your production at home and keep your garden area to a minimum, and keep your work effort to a minimum.

If you would like more info on these things pull up our friend Google. You can find plenty of info related to tilling and if you have questions about French Intensive or Biointensive put those terms into the search engine and it will pull up some great information.

AmeriCorps NCCC team at the farm!

AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) team Cedar Three began serving with Matthew 25 March on a six week long project. The team has begun working on creating and maintaining several urban farms throughout the area. Made up of eleven 18-24 year olds, the members come from across America; CT, IL, NJ,NY, VA, and WI. AmeriCorps NCCC is a team based program focusing on community development in five separate areas; disaster, energy conservation, environmental stewardship and conservation, infrastructure, and urban and rural development. Seeing the partnership develop before their eyes for the first time Cedar Three is excited to be working with Matthew 25 for their initial project. Motivated by the progress made thus far, Cedar Three is excited to witness and be a part of the final outcome of this project, and the impact it will have on the Cedar Rapids community.

If you are interested in following their progress they have a Facebook page you can like. Search for CedarThreeYeah to find it. They are very prolific with their pictures!

Ribbon Cutting for the Urban Farm set for April 27th 10AM

Matthew 25 staff, donors, sponsors and supporters will be hosting a ribbon cutting at the Urban Farm location on Friday, April 27th at 10AM to highlight the work that has been completed so far. We will be giving tours and having speeches from participants and sponsors. Please plan to come out and talk with our staff, as well as our volunteers, and see what we've been up to! We will be set up around the 435 G Ave NW location. It is easiest if you plan to park along 4th St NW or between 4th St NW and the river on G.

Gardening 101 Lesson

As we build up the Urban Farm we thought it would be great fun to discuss the different methods we are using on the site to prepare the garden beds. We have primarily been using 3 methods. 1.) Sheet Mulching using bio-degradable materials and compost 2.) Traditional tilling with a rear tine tiller and also 3.) Double digging beds where the soil is especially poor.

Sheet mulching is a fairly simple method of creating a planting bed wherein you use cardboard, newspaper or even carpet to kill the grass and weeds and then apply compost, leaves, grass and other biodegradable materials to the top. The best time to build a sheet mulch system (also called Lasagna Gardening) is in the fall so that the materials can break down over the winter. The best part is that in the spring you simply pull back what isn't decomposed and plant right into the soil below. We are doing a quicker method where we are applying cardboard to the ground and then applying fresh compost to the top. The Solid Waste Agency compost is great material and we can plant directly into it. This method works the best when your soil below the cardboard isn't too heavy with clay. Unfortunately a few of our lots are very heavy clay so we will discuss those in the future. The next time you are thinking about starting a new garden bed you should check out sheet mulching.

If you want to learn more about this technique simply Google sheet mulching or Lasagna Gardening, or check out the book called Lasagna Gardening.

2012 Urban Farm

Farm_edited

Out of floodwaters the seeds of new growth are sometimes sown, and the Matthew 25 Urban Farm is exactly such a situation. When the Boys and Girls Club of Cedar Rapids was flooded in June 2008 they decided not to rebuild in that location. Matthew 25 obtained permission from them to use their vacant land and abandoned playground to build an Urban Farm to supply our Summer Meals Program with fresh local produce. We filled multiple raised beds with many plantings using the square foot gardening model, as well as made use of the blacktop by filling swimming pools with compost and planting them to make use of as much space as we could. The produce was harvested throughout the summer and included in the Friday lunch meal.

The second year of this urban farm program we created a 9 member CSA program to introduce people to fresh vegetables grown right in their own city, as well as teaching volunteers and other interested parties how to grow food for themselves. Students from Coe, Cornell, Mt Mercy University as well as Jefferson, Prairie and Xavier High School all participated in helping plant, build, and grow food on our farm space. With this growth we outgrew our single space next to the Boys and Girls Club and the St James United Methodist Church was gracious enough to allow us to use part of an extra lot they have to grow additional food resources.

As we head into our third year of this program we are making some large changes. The drawing above is a landscape rendering of the future farm space. This is a 2 acre space that will house green houses and other season extension tools. We anticipate further growth with local high schools and we’re creating a program with Roosevelt Middle School and expanding an existing program with Taylor Elementary. As we do all of this we are expanding our CSA to cover 25 members; 15 are full price and 10 at half price. We are also anticipating that we will be able to grow enough food to supply the Matthew 25 summer meal program again. The overreaching goal of the Matthew 25 Urban Farm is to bring people into contact with small scale farming, educating them about growing their own food, how to cook, and create and build community via active labor in a fulfilling way.

Long term, our goal for our urban farm is to become the premier Iowa urban farm and to be a regional center for learning and innovation. Over time we are planning to install a diverse set of experimental plantings and hold workshops and classes on how to build these same things in your backyard. We hope that our farm will be an encouraging beacon in the city to help foster other innovation and encourage others.