Events

Here’s the deal:

Seattle Tilth has been teaching people how to grow food in the city for over 30 years - way before most of us ragtag gardeners jumped on the bandwagon - and they’re holding their annual Harvest Fair this Saturday, September 12, 10-5.

Gardening workshops, urban livestock, a farmer’s market, music, and good times await you just behind the cheeriest address in Seattle:

Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. (in Wallingford)

And.

Every scrap of our gardening know-how has come straight from classes at Seattle Tilth, so we will be standing proud at the Fair with a booth in the Community Show and Tell area. Stop by! We’d love to meet you and hear how your garden made out this season and your plans for next year.

If you need a hand getting your garden in order, ask us about our brand new Grow It Yourself consulting biz. We can help you transform your yard, balcony, or parking strip into a vegetable garden that would make your grandma proud. I am scheduling appointments and work parties now to get you started on building soil this fall for spring planting.

Also ask us about our Bucket Brigade adventures this year (625 veggie containers handed out!) and how you can hold one of these events yourself.

We’ll be selling Urban Land Army t-shirts…

Harvest Fair pricing! $12 one day only.

And City Seed Packs for sharing seeds with that special someone.

Of course, we’ll have some cute little giveaways too.

Hope to see you there.

Ok, we were too busy talking to the 80 or 100 people (!) who came by to take pictures during the day, but this is how things looked before the gates opened.

Top 10 Best Plant Names.

Sorry, Saskatoon berry. I went on holiday, eh.

Does anyone really use tarragon? Wait, does that say “tarrafon”?

My lovely and charming assistant. (And proud member of Urban Land Army West Seattle!

People like cookies. Thanks, Little Rae’s Bakery.

Posters, information cards, and a draw for an Urban Land Army t-shirt and City Seed Packs. A lot went down.

Bakery equipment in a garden setting.

The Grow It Yourself garden gone wild.

Oops, forgot to weed that patch before people came over.

Or as they say in West Seattle, ‘Black Pineapple’.

We want to thank everyone who stopped by for a tour of the Urban Land Army grounds. It was loads of fun geeking out on gardening all day and meeting people from the neighbourhood. Nothing better!

The 2nd Annual West Seattle Edible Garden Tour was sponsored by Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle and the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. Good work, people.

We’ll be back soon because we have a lot to talk about, like how do you know when a tomato is ready to pick, or when to dig the potatoes, or seed another round of carrots, beets, and salad greens?

(Hint: NOW. But hang on, there’s a bit more to it…)

We are back in the saddle after a 2-week Saskatchewan crop tour, where the mustard is flowering and the wheat is shaping up.

The real deal

And now that we are back, it is time to announce a little crop tour of our own:

The West Seattle Edible Garden Tour is this Saturday, August 1, 10AM-4PM, and Urban Land Army Headquarters is on the route!

Stop by and see us and check out the Grow It Yourself garden, which is now a veritable jungle.

You can also check out a whole other garden that hasn’t been part of our picture show on the website.

It packs in 5 kinds of beans…

20 heirloom tomato plants…

an Egyptian walking onion patch…

an herb spiral (what the?)…

…and much more.

We’ll give you a tour of the grounds, answer your questions, and tell you how we built the garden using sheet mulching and permaculture techniques. We’ll lift the lids on the worm bins and show you how you can compost your food scraps at home, and maybe even get real down-home and do a little garlic braiding.

We’ll also point out what has worked, what has died a horrible death, and why.

For those interested in garden art and “hardscaping”, Urban Land Army’s Head Scavenger will be on hand to discuss the finer points of procuring rock and brick in the city, and the particular promise of used bakery equipment in a garden setting.

So stop by and see us, eh?

We’d love to meet you.

And be sure to check out the other lovely gardens on the tour - vegetables, bees, chickens, and even a hot tub garden await you! Download the tour map at www.ediblewestseattle.org.

The 2nd Annual West Seattle Edible Garden Tour is sponsored by Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle and the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. Good work, people.