Gratitude Garden Wiki

Ok everyone, I've got a wiki up and running for the Gratitude Gardens, http://gratitude-gardens.wikispaces.com/. So far I've added my answers to the First and Second Steps, and am finishing editing some interviews with farmers and gardeners for the second section. I'll post the answers here, but please check out the wiki and give me some feedback on how we could make a form, a map, and make all of this more accessible.

Riverside, CA Gratitude Garden Information

First Step: Research

1. What Climate do you live in?

1. I live in Riverside, CA USDA Hardiness Zone 9/10. We are a Mediterranean climate, which means we have a year round growing season with enough frost for temperate fruit trees, but enough heat to grow subtropicals and even some tropicals. Garden.org has a good tool for people from the states to find out this information.

2. Find out what edible and useful plants are native to your area.

1. The native plants to the area are acorns from oaks crushed into meal, cactus pads/nopales and prickly pear, clover, cherries, plums, berries, sunflower seeds, pinon/pine nuts, avocado, edible roots, agave, corn, squash, chia seeds, amaranth, and beans.

3. Explore the food and nature-crafts that the indigenous people of your area created.

1. The natives to Southern California are the Tipai-Ipai, Luiseno, Cahuilla, Gabrielino tribes. There are quite a few more, but these are the ones I’m familiar with. They used corn and acorn meal in much of their cooking. They created flutes from wood, and used gourds for storage of liquids.

4. Learn about any colonizers to your area and what food they introduced.

1. The first colonizers were the Spanish, who brought many grains from Europe. They also introduced leafy greens like lettuce, as well as citrus grafts. These exotic citrus couldn’t grow well on their own roots, so they had to graft them onto native citrus rootstock. Later settlers brought in almost every type of food on the planet, as the mild climate allows everything from mangoes to cherries, bananas to apples, tomatoes to lettuce.

5. What are some heirloom or landrace plants (or livestock) that grow your area?

1. We are lucky in America to have many different heirloom seed companies providing rare cultivars of almost every type of vegetable and fruit. The only landrace plants I know of would be the varieties cultivated at local biodynamic farms and CSAs or the native nopales growing wild.

6. What kind of indigenous cultivation and fertilization was used in your area? How did they ensure long-term fertility, instead of short term yields?

1. The Three Sisters guild was planted by several of the local tribes, using the nitrogen fixing rizobium of the beans to fertilize the nutrient hungry corn, and the squash to shade the ground and protect the topsoil. Many native tribes practiced migratory food forestry as well, with settlements by the ocean certain times of year, inland along the river when the nopales were ripe, up in the foothills for the pine nut harves, and so on. They kept groves and crops across California and depended on seasonal harvests for food.

7. Does any of this appeal to you? Seem tasty, useful, interesting? What do you want to grow?

1. Yes! I’d love to grow three sisters, as well as some heirloom species from the seed catalogs. My favorite are the different types of lettuce, we need to find one that is heat tolerant.

Now can I plant the Garden?

We're not ready to grow just yet. No garden should be an island (unless you live on one), we need to tie into larger networks to make sure your efforts and knowledge serve the community at large.

Second Step: Make Contact

1. Find local organizations you can team up with (don't reinvent the wheel) that support farming or gardening. It could be a government agency, a university, a nonprofit, or just a club.

1. We’ve found that there are professors at UCR studying anthropology and botany that could support this program. There is also the national community garden association, Common Ground in Los Angeles, local community gardens at churches, universities, and schools, and organizations like Growcology and the Master Gardeners.

2. Interview local farmers and gardeners that still use traditional methods.

1. In process

3. Ask them about fertility, planting, harvesting, and seed saving.

1. In process

4. Working with your new contacts, find the seeds and cuttings to grow the plants that interest you. Maybe you get them from a farmer, maybe from a nursery, maybe a mail order catalog. List any that interest you:

1. We love Seeds of Change, Seed Savers International, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Native SeedSEARCH, Freedom Seeds, and Turtle Tree Biodynamic Seeds. There are also a few farms around here we’re working on developing a relationship. Hope to post video soon.