ABG Highlights from 2016
Alameda Backyard Growers proves that a small group of people with big hearts and a lot of community support can accomplish great things! Take a look at the highlights of our group’s progress and impact in 2016:
- Increased attendance at monthly educational meetings
ABG continued offering educational meetings on timely gardening issues, led by local experts and gardeners, as we have every month since our launch in March 2010. Meeting attendance grew significantly over 2015, and now generally ranges from 35 to 60 attendees. In 2016 our meeting topics and speakers included:
• January Growing Bay Area Native Vegetables with Jeff Bridge
• February Growing Tomatoes in Alameda with Jeff Bridge
• March Vegetable Growing 101 with Ann Naffziger
• April Spring Fruit Tree Care with Marla Koss and Jasmine Tokuda
• May Home Composting with Lori Caldwell
• June Integrated Pest Management with Birgitt Evans
• July Potluck and Update on Jean Sweeney Open Space Park with Alameda Recreation and Parks Director Amy Wooldridge
• August Fruit Tree Gleaning in the East Bay with The Urban Farmers of Contra Costa County
• September Container Gardening with Jennifer McGaffey
• October Seed Saving with Irene Beebe
• November Prepping Your Soil For Great Tomatoes Next Summer with Farm2Market - Created and administered an ABG Survey that helped us determine which meeting topics to include in 2017. View our 2017 monthly meeting schedule here.
- Continued our outreach to the public through a variety of special community events. Collaborated with other community organizations at the following events to encourage people to grow and eat their own fruits and veggies:
• April – ABG had a booth at the City of Alameda Earth Day Festival in Washington Park
• July – ABG participated in Alameda’s 4th of July Parade
• Monthly – ABG provides handouts on growing and donating food at the Alameda Farmers’ Markets on Haight Street - Continued our very popular and productive Project Pick gleaning program. The call to ‘Grow Some, Keep Some, Give Some Away to the Alameda Food Bank’ has been one of ABG’s main goals from the beginning. In 2016, ABG volunteers picked, and donated to the Alameda Food Bank, 3,323 lbs of fresh fruits and vegetables from yards in Alameda – food that otherwise might have gone to waste!
- Added Project Tree, a new, Alameda Sun-funded pilot project that enables us to purchase and offer approximately 30 new mainly fruit trees to interested, qualified Alameda residents. Still underway, this project assures varied, healthy fruit for families and local organizations to enjoy, and share, for years to come.
You can view ABG’s impact from previous years here: