Spring Gardening Events

So much is popping here in SoCo this spring with the encouragement of food gardening.

One of the two most notable events is the Sustainable Food and Gardening Festival at the Finley Center on Saturday April 24:
http://www.igrowsonoma.org/content/sustainable-food-and-gardening-festival

This event is kind of a hodgepodge of things, and I haven't found the organizer responsive, but I do plan to go anyway. Ruth Lefkowitz (www.ruthysrealmeals.com) will be selling sandwiches there, and I've offered to help her. I also plan to cruise the booths.

I am definitely helping with the 350 garden challenge
http://www.igrowsonoma.org/content/350-garden-challenge
This is an innovative and collaborative event, over the weekend of May 15 and 16. A number of organizations and agencies are working together to see if we can plant 350 new or renewed water wise food gardens in Sonoma County. Why 350? To link food system and water use issues to climate change, as in the 350.org project, the one that has church bells ringing in October to remind us that 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere seems to be a maximum safe level - and that we have exceeded it.
I like the idea of tying the complex of environmental issues together. Or should I say recognizing that they are tied together.
I also like the idea that the gardens can be big - or just a potted tomato.
At our TLC community garden we are going to talk this Saturday about what we will do to get with the program. And I'm working to link all the church-based community gardens on the west side of Santa Rosa. There are two new ones this year, at Knox Presbyterian(http://www.knoxchurchatwest3rd.org/garden.html), and at Santa Rosa Alliance Church. The latter is a communal urban farm on an acre and a half - Cielo Azul Farm(http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100328/NEWS/3281108?p=1&tc=pg). And I just learned from a fellow knitter last week that the SW Santa Rosa branch of First UMC is putting in a garden - they have all this lush grass (looking to become a mega church, I guess, at least that's the way it felt the one time I attended there) that could be food!

To keep this all down to earth, literally, I am also starting extra seedlings - of the cucurbits mainly - to give away on May 15.