From Dirt to Dinner

The blurb book, From Dirt to Dinner, The Art and Science of Producing a Garden,  is in the very final revision stage.  Since the last post, all the text and pictures have been funneled into the Blurb software.  The formatting that was lost has been restored.  Marcia has been diligently correcting my exuberant use of bold and underline and we are now finalizing the remaining 50 or so pages.  With the Appendix, the book totals 114 pages.  The format is a pocket book size with a color cover.  All inside pages are  black and white.  The illustrations we chose were from the CHSC garden, victory garden posters from WWI and WWII, and  Fred, a handsome garden toad.  It was a very engrossing project that might even prove useful to others.  As insane as it sounds, we have been collecting quotes for Vol 2.

We have been working on our 2011 goals and have contacted the local school principals about including the garden in the school lesson plans.  The intermediate school has forwarded our letter to the science teachers.  Perhaps a bit more followup will be needed with the elementary principals. 

 

 There is an interesting development in gardening called High Tunnel beds.  We are considering requesting a grant from the USDA to erect a demonstration tunnel for farmers in our local counties.  Since we are an organic garden we seem to be on a very fast track for approval of 90% of the construction costs. As often is the case, our reservations are about the amount of available help for a project like this.  We would need lots of bodies not only for construction, but ongoing gardening work to plant, maintain and harvest.  There would also need to be quite meticulous records about tunnel temperatures and humidity levels.  The tunnel would also have to be opened and ventilated nearly warm day.  The tunnel extend the seasons considerably and provide farm income from late/early salad crops, berries, or flowers.  It would be a very exciting adventure, but may be too much project for the amount of labor we can attract.  The application needs to be completed in early March and there is much to be considered and completed if we are going to try to qualify for the money this year.  

Our first garden work day is scheduled for Feb 17th.  We are going to do a bit more cleanup and then spread the compost from the mini-composting stations (tomato cages) and tackle the big bin as well.  By spreading early, any material that is not fully composted can be exposed to the weather and finish in place.  Our winter has been unusually cold and snowy (for Tennessee).  It will be interesting to see how the piles have "worked" over the last few months.  

We have also been talking with our local scoutmasters and have a scout that would like to assist the garden as his Eagle Scout project.   We are still finalizing the details, but hope that a garden bench and flower bed surrounding the sign might be part of this project. 

Finally, the Fiskars Orange Thumb grants will be announced February 11.  All we know now is that our submission was accepted and received before the deadline .