Wildman Appearance in the Garden!!

Our Mural Artists - Dani & Emily:

Lovely Ladies:

 Dirty Hands:

And then, much later in the day, 

Guess who showed up!!!???

A Wildman in Blue!

(and then, eventually, some wanna be wild men...)

Snacks!

Big Thank You to Elaine for putting in these signs - now we know what to pick & how to pick it!!

Our first Lunch & Learn - Our first Harvest!!

On Wednesday June 22nd (at 12:15), Dede Bone (Community Kitchens Coordinator) and Elaine Sedgman (Master Gardenere) lead our first-ever Lunch and Learn. Elaine lead us through a short workshop on how to properly harvest Mizuna, Pansies, Lettuce, and Nasturtium for a delicious salad. Dede than created a masterpiece salad for all of us to try. Fratellis donated chickpeas and black beans - which added protein and deliciousness to the salad. 
Wednesday confirmed that our garden is growing beautiful AND delicious food. The vegetables listed above are ready for harvest, so come down to the garden and eat!!
We will be hosting more lunch and learns - bring your lunch down to the garden and join us...Keep posted for upcoming dates.

Dede - Our Oh So Lovely (and colour-coordinated)
 Community Kitchens Coordinator

Composting Workshop

On Tuesday June 21, Sally Andrysiak (Master Composter and Master Gardener in Training) lead a composting workshop on site. She reviewed the various methods of composting and revealed some really effective tricks. Thanks for doing this Sally!! 


The TNRD donated a compost bin for the workshop and it is in the garden to stay. It you're strolling and snacking downtown, drop your apple cores and strawberry tops in the compost bin rather than the garbage!! Stay tuned for more workshops!!

2 Workshops Happening in the Garden this Week!

Join us for 2 workshops this week! 

Tuesday (tomorrow!!) June 21 - 4:30 pm : COMPOSTING WORKSHOP. Learn the basics of composting (so you can become a master) with Sally, a local Master Composter. This workshop will be held on site at 4:30 pm and is open to everyone. Bring your apple cores and banana peels!

Wednesday June 22 - 12:15 pm : HARVESTING SPRING GREENS (Our first everLUNCH & LEARN)! Join Elaine (Master Gardener) & Dede (Community Kitchens Coordinator) to learn how to harvest early spring greens! Dede will share a simple & delicious recipe with us too! There may even be a few samples... Bring your lunch over to the garden and leave with healthy, local recipe ideas. 

If you have friends who work downtown, please tell them about these workshops. We'd love to have a great turn out for our first workshops ever !! See you in the garden!!

One additional note: We delivered edible containers to downtown businesses today - big thanks goes out to: Brownstone Restaurant, KPA Printers, Beauty Code, Fratellis, Cafe Motivo, The Art We Are, Fresh Cafe, Hello Toast, Hot House Bistro, and Pure Cuisine for partnering with us by adopting an edible. 

We've adopted a few plants..

The edible landscaping that was done at the library has been uprooted & relocated. We've adopted them ...

A Few of the Delectable Edibles at the Library - on the evening before the plants were uprooted.

The City Dropped the Plants off On-Site on Friday Morning.

Most of the plants will be donated to designate plots in one of the local community gardens (the harvest will then be donated to the foodbank!!), a few will go to the Kamloops Daily News for their first ever edible garden, and the rest we have planted on site. 

What an interesting week it's been. We are curious to know what everyone is thinking about this controversial plant-in and equally controversial uproot. Please send us an email if you have an opinion (publicproduceproject@gmail.com). This is a great opportunity to gain public input and begin thinking about the future of edible landscaping: the pros, cons, questions, and ideas!! 

P.S. A letter to the editor of the paper or to the TNRD isn't a bad idea either :)

We received a bit of media coverage this week too:
http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20110617/KAMLOOPS0101/306179975/-1/kamloops01/guerilla-garden-transplanted-to-produce-project

Adopt-An-Edible

We will be giving out planters full of EDIBLES to downtown businesses over the next week... 

(they are ready to go!!)

Our participants so far include:

Fratelli Foods - 223 Victoria Street

Fresh Cafe -

Hello Toast - 428 Victoria Street

Hot House Bistro - 438 Victoria Street

Pure Cuisine - 442 Victoria Street

The Grind -

Total Ten - 230 Victoria Street

If you are a business (or know of a business) that may be interested in adopting an edible...

Send us an email publicproduceproject@gmail.com

A Few More Plants...

Master Gardeners: Elaine and Guy were on site on Wednesday to plant the last few beds. 

The garden bed devoted to Bees & Beneficial Insects was planted 

(at the back of the site, to the right).

The remaining plants were put in the ground and we are getting closer and closer to completion..

Thanks for all of your help so far

Square Foot Gardening

"Square-foot gardening is an easy way to harvest a succession of fresh produce from the smallest of yards and even those with poor soils. Developed by Mel Bartholomew in the early 1980s, the concept remains popular today because it offers a simple plan for growing vegetables in compact, raised beds that can be intensively planted with a variety of crops."

http://www.canadiangardening.com/gardens/small-gardens/build-a-square-foot-garden/a/19960 

Annemeike planted two square foot gardens at the Public Produce site this week.

Thank you!

(Canadian Tire donated the plants for the two square foot gardens, thanks!!)

Garden Signs

We were at the Farmers Market yesterday painting signs for the garden. 

Anyone who happened to stroll by was invited to paint a sign - and many did!!

We have so many brightly coloured signs decorating the garden now.

Thanks to everyone who participated and thanks to the Farmers Market for letting us hang out there!

The two most common questions we were asked:

(1) How much does it cost to paint a sign? 

(nothing at all, thanks to some generous donations)

(2) Will you be back next week? 

(No, but we may come back again at some point this summer to paint 

because it was a great time)

Thanks to Shelaigh for all of the supplies (wooden flowers, cedar planks, all of the paints!)

Thanks to Carole for bringing all of the paint to General Paint to have it shaken!!

(and big thanks to General Paint for refreshing all of our colours at no charge)

After the market, a few of us wandered over to the Grind and 

outlined signs as we snacked on some much needed sustenance. 

Lastly...to the garden!

There are more signs on their way...take a wander down..

Oh ya, and the Mizuna showed up this weekend!

The Big, Public Plant-In (Sunday May 29th )

Thank you to so many volunteers who came out last Sunday to put plants in the ground! 

Starting Saturday afternoon, Elaine & Guy marked out all of the beds, hung the twine (for some vertical gardening experimentation), labelled all of the spots, and made sure we'd be ready to go!! (thank you!)

Starting on Sunday morning, at 8am, James and Dennis finished up two of the remaining four beds 

(THANK YOU TO BOTH OF YOU - FOR ALL OF YOUR MANY, MANY HOURS OF CONSTRUCTION).

We then transported all of the plants from Elaine's house 

(she started many of them from seed!!) down to the site.

Thank you to Angela and the Garden Gate crew as well as Paula Rubinson for starting seeds for us & donating many of our plants!! We really appreciate this!

Volunteers started arriving around 10 am and continued to join us throughout the day. 

We planted, watered, shoveled and wheel-barrowed dirt, built rock walls, constructed more beds, got sunburned, constructed vertical garden twine apparatuses, drank water (thanks Shelaigh), and finally headed home at around 4p.m. 

Thank you all for your energy & support.