Coalition for a Green Glendale News Flash!

Dear Supporters,

I hope you are doing well. The Coalition for a Green Glendale has been making strides in greening our city and we just want to keep you up to date with what we're working on currently.

1. The Coalition for a Green Glendale is working hard to help support the Neighborhood Services, Kiwanis Club, and the Steering Committee at the Monterey Road Eco Community Garden to build a 2nd community garden in Glendale - named Eco Community Garden - West! This new garden will break ground this weekend, on Saturday May 22nd at 9 a.m. and we could use your help! **Especially those who helped with Monterey Road East** If you plan to come, please let me know - and tools would be very helpful as well - shovels, rakes, gloves, wheel barrows. Call or reply to my email if you have any questions - we hope to see you there! Event location 824 Monterey Road, 91206.

2. Whole Foods has been generous enough to hold a fundraiser for the Coalition for a Green Glendale in order to help out with the funding for both of these gardens. From now until July 4th, Whole Foods Glendale will have a "Recycle Your Change" bin at the end of every cash register where you can toss your loose change in for a good cause. 100% of the proceeds go to us! See the attached pdf for more details, thanks so much for your support!

3. The Monterey Road Eco Community Garden (East) Steering Committee will be administering Garden West. We are currently refreshing our waiting list and encourage anyone who is interested in gardening to sign up and let us know if you want to join. Please provide us with the following information in a replied email to me...

Full Name
Address (Glendaliens only)
Phone
Email
Interested in (mention all that apply) - Volunteering, Gardening, Fund raising

Also please forward this to anyone you may feel this would be helpful. I appreciate your ongoing support and hope you're all doing well.

Best,

Alek Bartrosouf
818-359-0108

--
Coalition for a Green Glendale
www.green-glendale.org

Garden Photos!

Carolyn's cabbage


More Carolyn cabbage


Natasha's sweet peas


Baby peaches!


Dennis' snapdragons?

Thanks to Hannah for these beautiful pictures!

Organic Gardening Supplies and Biological Pest Control Products

This is a web site where gardeners can buy organic pest-control items:
ARBICO (www.arbico-organics.com).

NGA Regional Reports for Glendale

The Regional Report for Glendale from the National Gardeners Association, for March 11, 2010 -- click here.

Carrot Souffle Recipe

This comes via Hannah:

Here's the easier than cheese carrot souffle recipe.

1 lb. carrots, cooked (cover with water, boil, reduce heat and simmer 20 mins)
3 eggs
1/2 c. melted butter
1/2 c. sugar
3 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. vanilla

Blend everything in a blender, pour into baking dish and bake at 350º for 30 - 45 mins, removing when the top is browned.

Thanks Hannah!

Update: TomatoMania is coming to Encino March 26 - 28, and also will be in Arcadia April 30 - May 2.

TOMATO LOVERS
Get ready for a gold medal season!

Stripes, lobes, curves and trusses await you this
summer and it all starts with
TOMATOMANIA 2010!

New events will spread the fever, new varieties will light up your garden and, as always, our team will share all the good info we can so that you have a terrific season

Our current spring lineup is all on our website at:

Tomatomania.com

Additional weekend events will be added soon; in Pomona (The Garden, March 13), Ojai (Flora Gardens, April 23-25) and Larchmont, (Larchmont Charter School, April 24th) our new LA urban location. And there just may be additional East Coast sales in the offing so stay tuned!

It'll be an Olympic caliber year, don't miss it.

Please pass this along to TOMATOMANIACS we've not met!

Some great information from the National Gardening Association:

Get Healthy and Save Money by Food Gardening

It's almost predictable: When economic times are hard, people head to the garden. It happened in the early 20th century with Liberty Gardens ... Read more »

Edible of the Month: Asparagus

It’s almost predictable: When economic times are hard, people head to the garden. It happened in the early 20th century with Liberty Gardens ... Read more »

How to: Build a Raised Bed

Raised beds are a great way to intensively garden without taking up too much space. They are perfect for urban small- space gardens, but also have advantages ... Read more »

Charlie says...

While the intention of this Edible Landscaping newsletter is to help people grow more food for themselves around their homes, I'd be remiss in not mentioning that it’s important to think of ... Read more »

March Q & A

Question: My strawberries are starting to flower but there’s frost forecast for my area. What should I do to protect them?

Answer: Strawberry flowers are particularly sensitive to freezing temperatures. Frost damages blooms by causing ice crystals to form, puncturing the plant cell walls and causing the cells to collapse. Commercial strawberry growers spray their fields with water to protect the blossoms. As the water freezes on the flowers, it gives off heat, keeping the temperature of the flower above freezing. However, this technique can get tricky because if temperatures are in the high 20ºFs, you’ll have to continue adding water and the weight of the ice may damage the plant.

For a home gardener it’s best to simply cover your strawberry plants before sunset with a heavy weighted, floating row cover. These floating row covers are designed to protect plants to 26ºF, while allowing air, light, and water to pass through them. They are worth the monetary investment. Remove the row covers once the temperature warms above freezing in the morning.

Question: I’m starting some basil seed indoors and they germinated fine. However, this morning I noticed many have flopped over and died. What happened?

Answer: It sounds like your basil got attacked by damping off fungal disease. This disease thrives with cool moist soil and poor air movement. It could be you overwatered the seedlings and this led to the disease getting established. Usually the seedlings rot at the soil line and the disease can spread quickly throughout the seedling tray.

The key to stopping this fungus is to act fast. Remove the diseased seedlings and any that look like they might be dying. Allow the soil to dry out by running a small fan over the seedling tray. This will dry out the soil and make the seedlings tougher. If in a few days your remaining seedlings aren’t growing well, consider starting over again. There’s still time to start another crop of basil indoors.

For more of this kind of information, we encourage you to subscribe to their newsletter!