This is one of the kiddie pools in late March - these are the greens nearly five months after seeding! It took a long time but I don't regret having tons of greens in early Spring.

Catching Up

Since that last post nearly half a year ago, a lot has happened. It took a long time for those seeds to grow. Planted in October, they chilled in the soil - hardly growing at best - for about four months. I don't know exactly how much the wooden/glass cold frame increases the temperature. While it seems significant, it wasn't until February that the seedlings started growing. Since then, the greens in the cold frame have produced wonderfully. It kick-started the season by at least three months and we've been enjoying plenty of spinach, arugula, kale, mustard greens and some chard.
The edible deck is nearly all planted and we've added a 400 square plot (at Hawthorne Growing Gardens).

Coldframe!

Details to follow...I'm just too excited to wait.

Getting Ready for Winter

Things with the garden have been interesting lately, especially since it has spent quite a bit of time under a layer of snow.
When Brian and I went to St. John for Brian and Jessa’s wedding in early October, the garden went through its first fall freeze. Anticipating the cold, Brian picked every last fruit (mainly the tomatoes and peppers) in the large, immobile containers. The entire week that we were away, temperatures hovered around freezing. Luckily, our friend Nathan stayed at the place and took care of our little ones like a good uncle would :)
He brought in the smaller containers – tomatoes, zucchinis, etc – and covered the larger ones with plastic every cold night. For light freezes, a tarp or blanket can make all the difference – even more so when your plants are snuggled in the ground instead of in containers. The fruits we picked have continued to ripen indoors, supplying us with wonderful tomato sauce ingredients well into November.
Since early October, most everything else outside has died – with a few exceptions.
The broccoli is better than ever. All season, we felt that we wouldn’t repeat broccoli, particularly considering our space limitations. The first round of broccoli heads was insignificant and slow to develop. However, since cutting off that first round, the broccoli has flourished, we’re now working on our 4th or even 5th round of broccoli and it is tastier than ever. The broccoli leaves – such a great way to beef up a stir fry – have lost their bitterness and are delicious. Even the arugula we planted half way through the season has taken off with the cooler weather. Kale, known to improve in taste with a light freeze, and chard are also still going strong.
We just had our second significant storm, and just the day after finally building our first cold frame. At the moment it is keeping our compost warm, I’m hoping to plant spinach and more arugula in it soon. People say that you can’t grow food in a Colorado winter without heat. I don’t believe them. More on the coldframe in my next post.

Aquaponics in Denver

From the Denver Post...

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13586527

Denver's aquaponics project aims to turn "food desert" into an oasis of health
By Colleen O'Connor The Denver Post
Posted: 10/18/2009

A dilapidated greenhouse in Denver's Elyria-Swansea neighborhood could soon sprout one of the nation's newest trends: inner-city farming using state-of-the-art technology to grow crops and fish in a single symbiotic system that mimics nature's water cycle.
This would solve a problem for the neighborhood, which lacks a full-service grocery store — if the Denver City Council can hammer out a zoning variance to allow Urban Organics to set up its greenhouse- to-table operation at East 47th Avenue and York Street, north of Interstate 70.
"This neighborhood is a food desert," said Paul Garcia, who lives in the neighborhood and is deputy director of the Cross Community Coalition.
"There's no access to fresh produce — no nearby grocery store. The idea of being able to grow and distribute fresh produce in this particular part of town is so encouraging for the residents."
Urban Organics is the idea of real estate developer and broker Paul Tamburello and local food activists, including Ashara Ekundayo, a principal at Blue and Yellow Logic, a Denver startup focused on diversifying the green economy to include all races and income levels.
Ekundayo, founder of the Pan African Arts Society and a longtime social activist, became interested in the food-justice movement during a year-long fellowship at Green for All, a national organization that trains leaders in low-income communities or communities of color to bring the green economy to their neighborhoods.
During the fellowship, she learned of the work of Will Allen, a sharecropper's son and former basketball star who won a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant for his Growing Power, a nonprofit urban farm in Milwaukee.
His concept is rooted in the belief that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban people — linked to diabetes and obesity — can be tracked to lack of access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables.

For the rest of the story: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13586527

Ain't no power like the power of the people...

Power Past Coal:

A Bike Ride for Clean Energy and Climate Justice

Date: October 24th, 2009
Location: Broadway and Canyon, at the Boulder Bandshell
Meet-up Time: 9:30a.m. for coffee and bagels
Ride Time: 10:00a.m. sharp!

October 24th marks the "350" global day of international climate action, which calls for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to 350ppm. Here in Boulder, we'll come together to celebrate bike culture and demand a decarbonized world, based on local solutions, sustainable economies and democratic communities. We'll move through town in a festive bike parade and bring people power to the Valmont coal plant in East Boulder. The ride will finish in downtown Boulder and join the main 350 rally. See you there and spread the word!

Bring Bikes, Banners, Boomboxes, Noisemakers! Your helmet and some water, too!

www.350.org

If you have questions or want to get involved with organizing, send an email to: bike4climateaction@yahoo.com

October Harvest Party

Brian harvested the seeds from our sunflowers - they're delicious! While so many of sunflowers were sacrificed to the squirrels this summer, they were worth planting for just that reason - they protected the rest of the garden from that most persistent pest for most of the season. Several times we saw at least three different types of bees on the sunflowers' faces at one time (one variety I'd never seen before).

The garden is going through a tough transition right now - we've faced below-freezing temperatures for most of the week, and four inches of snow today. Luckily, the harvest hasn't quite ended. Speaking of harvests...

The next monthly Harvest Potluck will be on Sunday, October 25th at Betsy and Matt's house (2537 Bluff - near the corner of Bluff and Folsom) at 2pm.

Hope to see all the regulars! If you've never been - it's a local food potluck/party, join us.