Bucket Brigade

Rain. Chill. Drip. Blah. We know.

Don’t have the garden in yet? Freaking out a little?

If you’re a Seattleite, there will be three Bucket Brigades tomorrow to help you get growing!

Bucket Brigade is a little project of ours that turns unwanted buckets into vegetable container gardens. On Saturday, June 5, we will be planting up and handing out bucket gardens at not one, but three locations:

1. The Duwamish Community Environmental Health Fair at Concord Elementary School in South Park from 11-3.

2. Delridge Day/ReFRESH Southwest Festival from 1-5 pm at the Delridge Community Center and Playfield in West Seattle.

3. Beacon Hill Festival at the Jefferson Community Center, 11-4. Sustainable South Seattle is taking the lead on this one, so look for their booth.

Come chat with us about growing vegetables in containers and in other small city nooks and crannies, and take home a container garden!

What is Bucket Brigade?

Bucket Brigade is a vegetable container gardening project that rescues unwanted containers, turns them into mini vegetable gardens, and brings them to the people.

The idea was hatched last year with Little Rae’s Bakery, which was accumulating 20 plastic buckets a week that could not be recycled.

To save these former egg and fruit containers from the landfill, we hauled them back to Urban Land Army Headquarters and had a planting party.

We then teamed up with St. Vincent de Paul Food Bank - where Little Rae’s sends their extra goodies - and handed out 40 vegetable container gardens.

70 more of the veggie buckets found homes in West Seattle on a rainy Saturday morning.

And supplied folks with fall and winter greens…

Photo by Jerry Whiting, satisfied bucket customer

…all the way up to the big freeze of ‘08!

Bucket Brigade spreads like wildfire in ‘09!

This year, the idea really caught on. Urban Land Army teamed up with neighborhood groups, community centers, public health programs, community festivals, and sustainability organizations to host 10 Bucket Brigades, which brought 625 vegetable container gardens to more than 500 people!

Here is a picture show of a few Bucket Brigades held this year…

Rainier Valley

Neighborhood families filled 50 buckets of compost and swapped seeds and plants for spring planting.

Brigadiers: Healthy & Active Rainier Valley Coalition

Rainier Beach Community Center

25 buckets of soil and handfuls of seed packs found homes on a sunny spring morning.

Brigadiers: Healthy & Active Rainier Valley Coalition and Urban Land Army HQ

International District/Chinatown Community Center

30 kids planted up 40 buckets with veggie plants on Earth Day.

Brigadiers: International District/Chinatown Community Center, Seattle Tilth, Urban Land Army HQ, and Seattle Parks & Recreation

Safeway Parking Lot, Rainier Avenue

70 Saturday morning grocery shoppers took home 80 container gardens.

Brigadiers: Urban Land Army HQ, Healthy & Active Rainier Valley Coalition, and Sustainable South Seattle

West Seattle Edible Garden Fair

50 buckets from a local bakery, tomato plants grown in the neighborhood, and a bike-powered garden hose to water the plants. Sustainable West Seattle all right!

Brigadiers: Sustainable West Seattle and Urban Land Army HQ

Othello Park International Festival

85 containers of plants and 100 packs of seeds will keep people in fall greens through the fall and winter.

Brigadiers: Urban Land Army, the Garden Hotline, Master Composter/Soil Builders, and Seattle Tilth

Want to host a Bucket Brigade of your own?

We learned a lot this year about how to organize these events, like what kinds of buckets are best for certain events, where to get buckets, plants, and soil - and how much.

We also learned that a Bucket Brigade can be anything you want it to be: a free event organized with friends, part of a spring seed, plant, and tool swap with your neighbors, or a fundraiser for your community organization.

A Bucket Brigade is also a really fun project for kids and would make a great school fundraiser, especially those that already have a garden for growing plant starts.

The Bucket Brigade Field Guide

Now that we have some lessons and statistics under our belt, Urban Land Army will be producing a Bucket Brigade Field Guide that will be a helpful planning guide for any community group, school, or individual that wants to host a Bucket Brigade of their own.

The Field Guide will include information such as what plants work best in  containers, how to grow them yourself or source them from someone else, schedules and work plans, supply lists, volunteer roles, and much more.

The Guide will be part of a larger Bucket Brigade Field Kit that will include (almost!) everything you need to host a Bucket Brigade, like container gardening information cards, posters for advertising your event, those rad bucket stickers you see here, handy tools for record keeping, and templates for seed pack stickers.

The Bucket Brigade Field Guide and the Field Kit will be available for order from the website and will be ready in lots of time for spring Bucket Brigades.

In the meantime, get in touch if you have questions about hosting a Bucket Brigade of your own and check out the Bucket Brigade page, too.

Thank yooouuu!

Photo from englishrussia.com

This year’s Bucket Brigades were made possible by generous donations and discounts from local businesses and the hard work of volunteers. Thanks.

Buckets
Little Rae’s Bakery (egg and fruit buckets)
Reclaim Media (cd spindle covers)
Tutta Bella Pizzeria (Columbia City) (tomato, artichoke, and chick pea cans)

Plants
Backyard Gardener
King County Greenhouse
Oxbow Farm
Neighborhood gardeners

Seeds
Dragonstone Farms
Neighborhood gardeners

Soil
Cedar Grove Compost

Top Brigadiers of 2009

Diana Vergis Vinh, Healthy & Active Rainier Valley Coalition
Kate King, Sustainable South Seattle
Maren Neldam, South Shore School Garden
Sue Gibbs, Sustainable South Seattle
Richard Wilson, Sustainable South Seattle
Pam Wrenn, Healthy & Active Rainier Valley Coalition
Becca Fong, Seattle Parks & Recreation
James Morse, Little Rae’s Bakery

I’ve been hearing an ugly rumor that people think it is too late to start a vegetable garden this year. Not true!

There are still loads of vegetable plants at nurseries and by this time they are a fairly good size, so you can get your hands on some pretty advanced tomatoes, eggplant, and maybe even squash. Depending on where you live and how big the plant is, you should probably choose ones that mature in less than 70 days. (Check the plant tag or ask.)

An herb garden is easily within reach - in fact, basil is a slow-starter and doesn’t reach its prime until later in June or July. Buy herbs like basil, chives, oregano, thyme, and so on, as plants (not seed) from your local nursery or other quality plant seller.

Lettuce, beets, beans, and carrots are all fast growers and can still be planted. In fact, you can plant these every few weeks through the summer, all the way up to July or August for a fall crop (at least here in Seattle). If you find lettuce and beets in plant form at a nursery, all the better - you’ll be eating them in no time. Beans and carrots will need to be planted from seed.

Plant onions to eat as green onions - green onions are simply an immature onion. Plant these as a bulb - sold in bags as “onion sets”.

If you have time and moxie, there is still time to rip out your lawn and get a garden in. We show you how.

If the prospect of converting your lawn or building raised beds seems overwhelming or unlikely to happen this year, do not fret: you can garden in containers this year. A container can be pretty and expensive or as cheap as a bucket found in your garage. Both do an equally good job - just make sure to drill or poke holes in the bottom for drainage, add potting soil (not dirt from the garden), and fertilize regularly (ideally with liquid fertilizer). More to come soon on container gardening. In the meantime check out Bucket Brigade - an Urban Land Army project that rescues unwanted buckets and turns them into vegetable containers.

So put on your boots and get out there! You can still have a first rate garden that would make your grandma proud. Just check out posts on fixing up your soil, how to choose seed and plants, and getting the garden in.

Spring is starting to show itself a bit, so that means it is a great time to get your compatriots together and hold a Bucket Brigade!

Bucket Brigades are fun community events where people get rescued, unused, and unwanted buckets or plant pots and plant them up with fresh soil and seeds or veggies, or fill them with compost, or… whatever strikes their fancy. In addition to growing vegetables like a champ, a bucket can be a handy carrying device, a weed receptacle, and it also holds good stuff like tools, seeds, and other odds and ends that a gardener needs.

So, a Bucket Brigade can be anything you want it to be - it’s a free country, eh.

One neighborhood group here in Seattle has already held a Bucket Brigade! This is what they did:

To celebrate the first day of spring, the Healthy and Active Rainier Valley Coalition (HARVC) procured a compost donation from a local company, Cedar Grove Composting, and seeds from individual donations as well as seed company, Seeds of Change. They hauled the compost to a local parking lot and then, with an impressive turnout of neighbors, they filled up buckets and plant pots with compost and held a seed swap. It was so much fun they’re planning another Bucket Brigade for April. We’ll keep you posted on where and when.

Here are some pics from the event. Look and learn, and then check out the Bucket Brigade page to find out how to hold one in your neighborhood!

All photos courtesy of the fine folks at Healthy and Active Rainier Valley Coalition (HARVC). Thanks.