Jax Green Daily

Community Gardens of New York City.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:35:00 +0000

Some of New York City's community gardens have been around nearly 30 years. They're stunningly verdant, in the midst of skyscrapers and sidewalks, with the sound of cars and sirens clanging around between the buildings. Within the gates of the gardens you're embraced by the misty, fragrant atmosphere of a forest, and can safely peer out between the bars at the buzzing jungle of the metropolis on the other side. The juxtaposition is enough to make you dizzy.

Both of these images are from Liz Christy Garden, one of the first projects of the Green Guerillas. The shiny building behind the greenery is brand new. The developers were planning to destroy the garden, but the Guerillas and gardeners resisted successfully.

Next up: Shed! And....a greenhouse gas inventory!

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:46:00 +0000

Thanks again to everyone who helped out at our chaordic and sweaty but still lovely and successful Community Cubed Festival.

Next on our to-do list is one of the most exciting parts of the garden project: the sustainable, rainwater-catching, seedling starting, SHADE providing (aaaaah too good to be true!), event hosting shed! This small structure will be made of as much reclaimed and recycled material as possible, and will make a lot of our work in the garden easier and more comfortable. I'm not kidding about the shade thing. It's downright brutal up there in the hot sun right now. The shed will also give us secure storage capacity for seeds, tools, records and books; space to keep sensitive seedlings out of the wind and sun, and out of the cold in winter.

How can you help? Quite simply: stay tuned for info about work days, and find us some 2x6 pieces of wood, 10 feet or longer. That's your scavenger hunt list. Go!

In other news, Jacksonville is getting closer to starting a comprehensive baseline greenhouse gas inventory, using the best software available, licensed by ICLEI.

I can't divulge many more details yet, but we seem to be past the point of scheduling meetings to discuss scheduling more meetings, and down to the point of getting the funds to license the software, pick up a used filing cabinet, sit an intern down in front of a phone and get. it. done!

Stop Planting Grass?!?!

noreply@blogger.com (Danilo Q) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:39:00 +0000

I recently came across some interesting ideas.

Stop planting grass in your lawns and plant some local wildlife 'cause we're in a drought. (Xeriscaping)

Wouldn't it be great to see green roofs downtown? You know, right next to those solar panels that run buildings or supply enegry for our new forms of transit.

On a side note, someone should start a restaurant in Jacksonville that serves local produce straight from their roof top garden.

Celebrate with us! Sunday May 25th.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:02:00 +0000

The Springfield Community Garden, before and after.

Working for something you believe in is essential. But almost as important as discovering just how hard you can work is learning to celebrate along the way. If you don't stop to reflect, praise, and say thanks you'll never fully understand why you're fighting in the first place.

We have been working very hard since October, and now it's time to party! For that reason, primarily, but also to introduce the garden to the community formally, and to raise some money for nails and concrete, we are hosting the Community Community Community Festival (a notion so important we have to say it thrice!).

On Sunday, May 25th, from noon 'til late, we will celebrate with garden tours, workshops, our environmental allies, free food and live music. The evening show, held inside the Pearl, will be a benefit to raise cash for the garden, and to collect food for Ultimate Picnic. $5 or 5 cans of food gets you in the door. Outdoor events are all free. Also, if you've got good condition, second-hand garden tools to get rid of, we'll gladly take them. We've been breaking rakes and shovels left and right!

Activities:
making seed bombs (to surreptitiously spread flowers in empty lots!)
making moss graffiti (to tag walls with living greenery)
recycled crafts (necklaces, fairy lights, and seedling pots)
free food by Ultimate Picnic

Allies roster:
Sierra Club
Jacksonville's Sustainable Future
Jacksonville Seed Exchange
Riverkeeper
Audubon Society
The Gleaning Network

Band roster:
During the afternoon The Homesteaders, The Naughty Pines String Band and Khalid's Crew will be playing outdoors.

Later, inside the Pearl...
4:00 - Wudun
4:50 - Tuffy
5:40 - Sharing Needles with Jesus
6:30 - Helios Eye
7:20 - Airport Factory
8:10 - Manatella
9:00 - America del Sur
9:50 - Fruit Machine
10:40 - Buffalo Tears
11:30 - Heavy Flow
12:20 - Tough Junkie
1:10 - Lazerstar

Bring seeds to swap, picnic blankets, chairs, frisbees, dogs, and kids. We are looking forward to a beautiful and relaxed event.

Seed bombs, trial run. Community vs. JSO, trial run.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:24:00 +0000

I was in the garden yesterday putting together materials for the seed bomb workshop we'll be doing this Sunday at the festival. The last source of fill dirt we discovered was largely clay soil, but seed bomb recipes typically call for potter's clay. I wanted to see if we could use what we already had so I decided to do a trial run.

I laid the clay and some compost out to dry for a few days. Then I took a sheet of screen and laid it on a scrap of our bed-lining plastic. I put the clay on top and started crushing it with a rock to sift it into a fine powder. This took a while.

I did the same with the compost, and put the powdered stuff into separate buckets. Then I measured out some of each, added water, and started mixing. It was soupy, so I added more clay and more compost until I could form balls. It was a lot like making bread by hand.

The mix looked great! It was pretty sticky, and the balls held together just fine. I didn't add any seeds, so I'm not sure how that will affect things. I imagine it'll work.

I laid the balls out on the slab to dry.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Shortly after I finished I noticed a police car stopping a tall black man in the parking lot next door. I have instinctual issues with cops. I can't say I'm correct (in fact I think I'm wrong), but my instinct is to mistrust them, so I was watching this scenario thinking very negative things about the armed party, and sympathetic things about the unarmed and very calm citizen who was having his pockets rifled through.

Another officer showed up, which irked me. Y'all are never where you need to be, but eight of you show up to accost one unarmed black man?! (again, let me disclaim that my feelings about cops are not what I consider wholly rational. I'm sure they had some reason for stopping him. They must have.). Then, a smallish white man in a hawaiian shirt, who had recently walked past, heading north, returned and started mouthing off at the police. He was saying things I couldn't really hear, but probably agreed with. Things like, "F*&$ you, Lieutenant!", and something about false charges. He walked on past the scene, and it was then that the officers yelled, "Hey, come back here!" One officer ran after him (why?!), brought him back (he came along willingly), and then threw him onto the ground (which made my heart drop to my feet). I should have shouted at that point, something like, "I'm watching you." but I just watched, terrified that I would have to watch this crazy but harmless fellow be brutalized.

They put him in the car, and he sat there for a while. Then, inexplicably, they dragged him out of the car and threw him to the sand. His face was in this awful dusty dirt, but he didn't appear to be struggling. The officer was kneeling beside him, subduing him, and kneed him in the side several times. Then the guy started writhing, and his shirt was pulled off one shoulder. He was pretty much crying at this point, acting more pathetic than violent. The black fellow meanwhile, was squatting nearby, waiting to be released, shaking his head.

Then it got good.

Four other cars showed up (again, why?!). And around the same time Philip showed up to get the pickup truck and the grant money to use today. He asked me what was happening and I related what I'd seen. He said, "Alright, I'm going to go talk to them." And walked over.

All Richard saw when he passed the garden on his way to Zombie Bikes was Philip surrounded by five police cars and all the officers.

After Philip finished talking to the police, he returned to the garden and explained to me what had happened, what my rights were as a citizen witness, what the likely motivations were, etc. I was happy to learn this stuff, although it didn't alter my instinctual mistrust of police...at all.

Minutes later, Josh Dunn arrived at the garden. And then I saw Matt Bort biking up. Then Richard arrived, then Chris and Deirdre, and a few others.

I wondered if we were having a meeting about the festival or something. Then Richard explained that he'd seen the police surrounding Philip. He had gone straight to the bike shop, told everyone there, and they all immediately biked over to see what was going on.

I am happy to report that the friend corps' response time was something like three minutes. It was a false alarm, but I was stunned. I've been working with a neighborhood crime watch group in Riverside recently, wondering what to do, how to get it to come together. Yesterday it clicked. All you need is love, a sense of justice, and a willingness to drop everything the second your friend is in trouble.

More From Our Seed Bomb Instructor...

noreply@blogger.com (Danilo Q) — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:16:00 +0000

Check out this link and watch some more guerrilla gardening.
http://current.com/items/76369942_guerrilla_gardener

Bike to work day, May 16th.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:55:00 +0000

A re-post from Matt at Bikejax.

Even though our esteemed Governor decreed March as Bike Month in Florida. The rest of the nation celebrates bike month in May. And May 16th is the holy day of Bike Month. It's known as National Bike To Work Day.

Fred Phillips' children's gardens.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:41:00 +0000

This weekend we had the pleasure of meeting Fred Phillips (in the straw hat), who started an organization that builds Children's gardens in Charleston, South Carolina. His son Dylan lives here in Jacksonville, and is a new friend of the Springfield Garden.

Fred worked with us on Saturday, and when we were finished he sat down and explained some of the ways he works with the children in his gardens. They have only a few rules, that he insists they follow. Things like, no hitting, no throwing things, and listen to instructions. He spoke of how we must keep the promises we make to children, because adults don't always do this. I think the gardens are his promise.

He told us of a garden in a public housing project, which was vandalized repeatedly. After each incident they replaced the cinder blocks and the bulletin board, eventually using concrete to secure them. And after the third or fourth repair the vandalism stopped. They had succeeded in making it clear that this space would not be destroyed. He described it almost like a conversation, in which one party spoke the language of destruction, and the other spoke the language of repair. In the end, repair was convincing enough to win the day.

One thing we wanted to do with our exchange student visitors, Fred's organization seems to do very well. They use the garden itself as a tool for teaching about a vast range of topics. He explained how signs and labels in the garden can be tools for talking about the development of language and communication. He made maps showing where the various plants originated in the world, with stickers for the children to match the country with the vegetable. He gave us a long and detailed list of conversation topics, paced throughout a season, for teaching in the garden. They use the growth of seedlings to discuss various ways of measuring time. They use the need for laying out beds to discuss different methods of measuring space and distance. It's a 20 week list of activities that tie in all kinds of knowledge, and weave them into the space itself, with hands-on activities. If anyone wants a copy of these lists please ask. They're so incredibly rich.

Fred also showed us a few toys, made of wood, that came from the Appalachian tradition. "These moms and dads didn't have any money for toys. All they had were pieces of wood, and a knife to whittle, and they loved their kids. So that's what you get." He demonstrated a "sky hook", and showed us this completely mind-blowing carved toy: a complete set of doll furniture made from a small cube of wood. That probably sounds dull, but the fact that this toy was originally made with hand tools and no calculators, from a single block of wood, is impressive. All the pieces interlock to compose the cube. If you ever get the chance to see one you'll understand.

We fell in love with Fred. He gave us such a lovely vision of the potential our project has.

Also this Saturday we were helped by some industrious neighbors with tools. They built one of the last few beds in the front of the site! We are getting close to finishing this phase of the project. Now we just need dirt. Truckloads and truckloads of it.

If anyone has either clean fill dirt or a pickup truck they'd like to give us, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Soap Nuts

noreply@blogger.com (Lady Nichole) — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:45:00 +0000

There is a tree commonly called a soap berry tree. The tree produces a fruit. The outer casing of the fruit can be used to clean in your washing machine, and dishwasher. You can also use it to clean yourself in place of shampoo and soap. Here is a link to a google search for "soap nuts".

Apparently these are popular in Europe. . . but they seem to call them "Soap Pods"

I did some looking and there is a variety that is native to Florida. . .but I do not know if it has the same cleaning power.

More research into that is being done.

I did ask "he who knows these things" if there were any growing around Duval . . . "he" was not aware of any. . . so that pretty much means there are not. BUT good news. . . it is non-invasive!

I am planting a soap nut tree very soon. Have Fun!

Seed-bombing...

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:58:00 +0000

Here's a video of how to make seed bombs, just one of the many fun things we'll be doing on May 25th in the Springfield Community Garden. Come join us!

Richard Reynolds making seed bombs.

Local commerce.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Another key to re-localization is a healthy local economy that can provide goods and services using local talent and resources. That's a large part of why we want to garden, although the Springfield project is still more of a back-breaking construction site with no paid workers than a lush and delicious paradise garden! Trust me, we'll get there.

Some of our Springfield garden helpers have started a small manufactory of bike messenger bags, called Burro Bags. They coexist with a new bike cooperative called Zombie Bikes. These two operations inhabit the space between Chan's and Shantytown (name that compound, folks!), between 5th and 6th on Main Street.

I just heard about another small business start up: a bookstore in the Gateway Shopping Mall. I think it's called GateWay Book Store, from the caption of the photograph. The name of the shop isn't in the article.

The owner, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, has the right idea when she says, "We're trying to find out what the community doesn't have and try to attract it."

There are problems attached to our market economy, and to the profit motive run wild, but this characteristic of optimism and responsiveness is truly positive: find spaces and fill them. Find hungers and feed them. Find neglect and negate it with care.

I hope she does well.

Babes.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:46:00 +0000

On the side of the garden facing The Pearl is a falling-down fence and a few small oaks. In one of these trees is a nest. In the nest are three tiny mockingbird chicks! Last night while dropping off a load of sand we noticed a mature mockingbird with a caterpillar in its beak. It stopped at the oak, and poked its head into the nest. We waited until it flew off, then snuck over to peek into the nest. The babies haven't even opened their eyes yet, but they open their wrinkled mouths to beg for food whenever they hear something nearby.

Life!

Earth Day.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:04:00 +0000

This is just a reminder to pick your fill of loquats while they're here. The cool snap seems to have made them even sweeter.

Early on Saturday morning we will be hosting 30 high school students in the garden for an educational work day. After that a few of us head to the Landing to man the booth at JEA's ecology fair, in celebration of Earth Day. JCNI will be located alongside The Sierra Club and Jacksonville's Sustainable Future. Come say hello, sign up for our mailing lists, and pick up a few seeds.

Photgraphs from the fruit tour.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:33:00 +0000

Hands stained with both mulberry and prickly pear juice (they remained purple the next day).

Check out the rest of Annie McGuire's photos from our public fruit walking tour.

An email from Annie the day after the tour says,

sarah napier and i picked about 2lbs each today! the trees in the car
lot are incredible -- we barely made a dent in that fruit. there is so
much on the ground that the air smells like wine from the fermenting
berries. i'm chilling the crust for my first pie; we'll see how it
works out.

Can't wait! The car lot she speaks of is the one right next to the garden. They not only give us access to their prolific mulberry tree, they also give us access to their water. As I type this it's raining, but we're learning that there's no good way to predict whether we'll have water one week or not. Until we have a better passive water collection system we're dependent on municipal drinking water to keep the plants alive, and without a tap onsite we're dependent on our extremely generous neighbors. I believe a thank you gift of mulberry jam (or pie!) is in order...

One new food we discovered on our first tour was white mulberries. They have a different, simpler flavor than the red ones, and are deceptive looking. They look almost exactly like unripe mulberries. We only saw one tree (although, since we were looking for red berries we may have overlooked more), it's in the second alley to the east of the garden lot.

Fruit tour of Springfield.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:59:00 +0000

Last night we went on an impromptu edible walking tour of Springfield. More details and photos coming soon...

Two fun websites, Food for thought. Wild Asparagus.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:58:00 +0000

I'd like to share two nice websites. The first is part of a long train of thought I've been following for some time. A recent post included a pdf of an essay from a book I'm reading, which brings up some of these issues. The first site is a good resource for one particular tool. The second site is just a nice piece on urban farming, and includes a lot more information besides that. It's a survival guide for a post-carbon world.

Community and place. Property ownership. Profit. "Not-for-profit". Land. Debt. Food. These are a few ways to describe the things I've been thinking about lately. My day job is with a nonprofit community developer in Riverside. These past few months I've been able to learn a lot about property ownership as a tool for neighborhood revitalization and the slew of organizations that exist in this country to take advantage of federal funding programs for just that. My affection for the job has waxed and waned as I've learned more and more. I love my co-workers and I believe in them. On the other hand I see only problems with the funding sources and the funding intentions. There are a few ways to look at this situation. We are basically a "less bad" developer, and a "less bad" realtor than the conventional sort. We keep costs low, we're not seeking profit, we are building to green standards and pushing to do ever more in that regard. But we are also a gentrification engine. RADO, like the other organizations that exist to take advantage of housing subsidy dollars, works within the conventional mortgage system and real estate market. The stated goal of a group like us in a distressed area is to raise appraised values so that for-profit developers can make a buck. Then they roll in and voila! economic development occurs. Or something like that.

We do nothing revolutionary or even progressive. We are not set up to. We work within the same problematic system that every other realtor and speculator does. We have a few tools at our disposal to avoid speculation, but that's it.

A different model appeals to me quite strongly: the community land trust (CLT). CLTs and other progressive economic models are the focus of this website. This one is an example of a CLT in action, and has some detailed information about how the math works out.

CLTs are not an entirely different solution, but they are a step in a compelling direction. Under this model an organization (the trust) owns the land in a region, and buyers only own improvements to it (i.e. you own your house, not the earth it sits on). In various ways, this makes it possible to avoid treating the land itself as a commodity. CLTs still incentivize investment by allowing owners to keep the equity they build up over time. In the Rondo CLT, for example, anyone who sells their home gets 25% of the increase of its property value. Later I'll post a pdf of another essay I read about this model. It captures some of the more interesting progressive reasons why trusts work.

The Post-Oil Survival Guide for City Dwelling is pretty much self-explanatory. Definitely worth a look. It would be fun to make a Jacksonville-specific survival guide.

I'm working on a map of public fruit around town, which I could definitely use help with. Mostly mulberries at the moment, although I did find a wild asparagus patch on 2nd Street!

Hydroponics

noreply@blogger.com (Lady Nichole) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:03:00 +0000

I am doing some research on hydroponics and found this awesome website with very interesting systems.

www.omegagarden.com

I am amazed at the potential of this idea. Urban gardens grown in farm warehouses!! The space savings, energy and water savings are amazing. . .

On to more research. Enjoy!

Commuter Message Boards

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:13:00 +0000

I don't know what First Coast Metropolitan Planning Organization really gets done, but maybe if we used them more they'd be better. My commute is too short to try them out, unfortunately. I know their counterpart in the Tallahassee is pretty cool. They organized a weeklong awareness campaign called Commuter Choices Week last fall. Check out: www.commuterservices.org for more information. When I emailed to ask if they'd be doing this again in '09, to see if I could volunteer to help and learn about how they organized it, the lady replied that the First Coast MPO does the same work in our area.

They don't do anything like Commuter Choices Week. But I like this idea of the message boards, although they seem a little too moderated (you email your post to someone, who then posts it to the site).

Reading materials.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:36:00 +0000

On my list of reading materials at the moment:

Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place
edited by Wes Jackson and William Vitek

Here's a pdf of a particularly inspiring essay. Don't tell the authors. I'm sure that's not legal.

Jackson helps run The Land Institute of Salina, Kansas, which is the source of this study, and the farm it was based upon. Something we've all been wondering is exactly how much energy can a carefully managed site produce? In the attached essay Jackson talks about developing a system for holistic accounting,

If we must as a future necessity recycle essentially all materials and run on sunlight, then our future will depend on accounting as the most important and interesting discipline. Because accountants are students of boundaries, we are talking about educating a generation of students who will know how to set up the books for their ecological community accounting, to use three-dimensional spreadsheets.

This they've attempted to do on the Sunshine Farm,

The main goal of the project is to conduct year-round accounting of energy, materials, and labor on the farm. The aims are to examine whether the Sunshine Farm can provide its fuel and fertility, and to determine how much industrial energy society must provide from sunlight to manufacture the farm facilities, equipment, and inputs.

I'm trying to find more information on how this study concluded and how the information was utilized.

And then there's this stuff (the ins and outs of land trusts, an interesting way to protect land from development and to hold land as a nonprofit entity).

And finally, once again, this (or, how to make your cockamamie idea sustainable, at least legally).

Tuesday evening we sat down together and went through, as best we could, the economics of the garden project thus far. We totaled up the costs of the materials we've purchased new, and compared the costs of salvaged materials to purchased ones to see what we saved by reclaiming. I'll make a more detailed post of this information soon.

It's very interesting to document how much this costs. Our accounting was not nearly as holistic as Jackson's. We did not even attempt to calculate sweat equity (the monetary value of the labor hours we've spent in the garden), or the embodied caloric energy of the work (assuming we're still not eating most of our calories from the garden itself, this represents an energy imbalance).

Anyhow, happy reading!

Graffiti With Nature

noreply@blogger.com (Danilo Q) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:29:00 +0000

I would love to see some guerrilla gardening in Jacksonville. All it takes is a pocket full of seeds. The graffiti in this photo is actually made from moss instead of paint.

Watch it. (Ignore the ads.)
Read about it.(Wikipedia)
Read more about it.(TreeHugger)

Jacksonville Seed Exchange - In-Depth Info

noreply@blogger.com (jacksonvilleseedexchange) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:51:00 +0000

I started the Greater Jacksonville Seed Exchange in February 2008 for a number of reasons. As a quick background, I have self-educated myself on all aspects of environmental concern as well as progressive ideas, and have strong feelings for doing something worthwhile in the local community.

Concerning the seed exchange, I had some seeds on hand that I wasn’t doing anything with. I have long thought about doing a seed exchange and decided to start a blog for it, at http://jacksonvilleseedexchange.wordpress.com/.

I envision it to be a great way to trade and exchange seeds, as well as stockpiling seeds for future use, such as community gardens, personal gardens, etc. Also, I want to express concern on a number of issues and try to educate people about them. The local food movement, organic status (foods produced without fertilizers and pesticides), promotion of biodiversity, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), ownership of patents and claiming intellectual property on food items are just a few of the issues I hope to raise some awareness on.

Just a few generations ago, people grew their own food. They were usually limited to what their region had available, as well as seasonal fluctuations. With industrialization, free trade, and a host of other issues, food started becoming more and more manufactured for convenience.

Now, few people can or do grow their own food. Most of the food we eat is processed and contains many additives, preservatives, and genetically modified organisms. If every part of town in the greater Jacksonville area had a community garden, backed up by farmers markets, we could avoid many of these problems as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The average American meal travels 1,500 miles to reach the plate.

As to how the seed exchange works, most importantly we do not accept genetically modified seeds. If you are unsure if it is genetically modified, or where it came from, please do not send it. The most common GM seeds are soybean, corn, canola (from rapeseed), cotton, maize, and wheat. GM food has not necessarily proven dangerous, but it is too early to tell. Further, behemoth corporations such as Monsanto control most of the GM market, meaning a corporation controls much of our food supply, which is inherently dangerous. Groups have tried to get GM manufacturers to include a label on food products if any of it is GM, but they continue to fight it.

You can request one seed if you have none to exchange. I appreciate a seed or two coming back to the seed exchange after harvesting, of course. If you mail five seeds, we will send 3 in exchange. Feel free to mix and match.

Please try to include the species of the seed as well as the source (whether seed company, supermarket, back yard, farmers market, etc.)

I do accept seed and monetary donations. 100% of all monetary donations will go towards purchasing additional seeds.

If anyone has any recommendations, thoughts, etc. please let me know. I am available at jacksonvilleseedexchange@yahoo.com.

Just An Idea...

noreply@blogger.com (Danilo Q) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:06:00 +0000

I came across this article, and I thought it would be a fun project. I know there's a lot going on already, but I think this would be a good idea for the community gardern's lack of an electricity source. Of course, everyone could just throw in a little money to get a DC input that could be used to charge extra batteries or other equipment from a car. Nonetheless, it's still cool to know. I hope to make one of these for myself soon.

Solar Powered Generator For Less Than $300 Bucks...

1) Buy yourself a small solar panel. For about $100 you should be able to get one rated at 12 volts or better (look for 16 volts) at an RV or marine supplies store.

2) Buy yourself a battery. Get any size deep cycle 12 volt lead/acid or gel battery. You need the deep cycle battery for continuous use. The kind in your car is a cranking battery--just for starting an engine. Look for bargains; it should cost about $50-60.

3) Get a battery box to put it in for $10. (This is good for covering up the exposed terminals in case there are children about.)

4) Buy a DC input. I like the triple inlet model which you can find at a car parts store in the cigarette lighter parts section for about $10. This is enough to power DC appliances, and there are many commercially available, like fans, one-pint water boilers, lights, hair dryers, baby bottle warmers, and vacuum cleaners. Many cassette players, answering machines, and other electrical appliances are DC already and with the right cable will run straight off the box.

5) But if you want to run AC appliances, you will have to invest in an inverter. This will convert the stored DC power in the battery into AC power for most of your household appliances. I bought a 115 volt 140 watt inverter made by Power-to-Go at Pep Boys for $50. More powerful inverters are available by mail. Count up the number of watts you'll be using (e.g., a small color television (=60 watts) with a VCR (=22 watts), you'll need 82 watts).

6) Use a drill to attach the meter and DC input to the top of the box.

7) Use insulated wire to attach the meter to the wing nut terminals on the battery. Connect the negative (-) pole first. Only handle one wire at a time. Connect the DC inlet to the battery in the same way. Connect the solar panel to the battery in the same way.

8) Close the lid (I use a bungee cord to keep it tight). Put the solar panel in the sun. It takes 5-8 hours to charge a dead battery; 1-3 hours to top off a weak one. It will run radios, fans, and small wattage lights all night, or give you about 5 hours of continuous use at 115 volt AC, or about hour boiling water. This system may be added on to with larger panels, inverters, and batteries. Options: A pop-up circuit breaker may be added between the positive terminal and the volt meter. Some of you will want an amp meter as well. The panels I recommend have built-in bypass diodes, but I recommend charge controllers for people who have panels without diodes. Another option is a voltage regulator, which is not necessary for a system this small, but a larger system would require one.

wishlist.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:10:00 +0000

All's well in the garden. We fed the confederate park ducks some leftover FNB bread today and then headed up to Inertia for bike polo, which was a lot of fun.

Things we need:

We need a refill on 3mil black landscape plastic for lining the beds. We line them because some of the wood we're using is pressure treated with chemicals we don't want to eat.

If anyone has any spare pry bars or hammers, we could use them at the moment.
If you happen to have both pry bars/hammers AND spare time, you're welcome to come help with one of the more annoying ongoing pieces of work we've got to do. Philip's been salvaging tons of 2x4s, but they're full of nails that need to be taken out before we build beds with them. This takes very little thought or skill, but is time consuming.

Next thing we need to do is collect Zoo compost and fill dirt. We're seeking a truck to borrow for a day or so. Truck + hands with shovels in them = bonus.

Jacksonville Area Seed Exchange

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:25:00 +0000

Just got this link from Michael Jewett.

Jacksonville Seed Exchange

This is a seed exchange website for the greater Jacksonville, FL area. We accept only non-GMO, preferably organic and heirloom seeds. You can request 1 seed if you have none to exchange, or 3 seeds if you mail us 5. Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for seed delivery.

Let's start trading seeds!

Mike, our red oak lettuce is about to go to seed in Springfield. We'll send an envelope or two once we harvest and dry them.

Thank you!

Tuesday morning.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer McCharen) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:01:00 +0000

I'm working on a small grant for the garden project, and it all started coming together last night. But I wasn't able to make it up to Springfield to water the seedlings, and I was worried. The soil we're using has a really high organic matter content, and seems to hold water very well even when it seems dry. Even so, we've got a bunch of young plants and they need to be kept moist.

I went up this morning, with seven gallons of water in the trunk of my car, but when I looked around it seemed like things had been watered since Saturday. Hooray! I thought. But I watered them a tiny bit anyhow. They'll get sunbaked all day and they don't seem to be complaining (*anyone with more knowledge here want to let us know what a plant looks like when it's over watered?).

I think we should put up a chalkboard or something onsite. The dry erase board got warped in the rain. I might make that a project I do soon. It'd be nice to know for sure whether stuff got watered or not.